Love And Hip-Hop Misogynistic Analysis

Introduction

The subcultures of rap and hip-hop have been around for over twenty years, and throughout hip-hop, there have been misogynistic messages and images of African American women. In recent years, women associated with the hip-hop culture have been in the forefront of the popular reality television shows Love and Hip-Hop, Love and Hip-Hop: Atlanta, and Love and Hip-Hop: Hollywood. The majority of the female cast members in these shows are African American. Consequently, these African American women are depicted in particular ways.

The purpose of this study is to discover if audience members believe if the Love and Hip-Hop franchise positively or negatively depicts African American women. Traditionally hip-hop has an extensive history

Some show African American women as strong to build them up and others show them as weak or needy exchanging sexual favors to obtain a particular lifestyle (Stephens & Few, 2007). Identities of African American woman are defined and perpetuated by those who have always held the power to create and distribute messages in the music business. Misogynistic views in hip hop are narrated by male Hip-Hop artists, but distributed for economic gain by record labels usually ran by wealthy Caucasian man —making the commodification of sexually scripted African American women highly profitable (Rebollo-Gil & Moras, 2012). The media has various methods of exposing the negative images of African American women such as mainstream rap to being heard on the radio, projected on television, downloaded on the Internet and consumed on YouTube. In the world of Hip-Hop and Rap, the sexual objectification of African American women is obvious, “bitch” and “hoe” are common labels used to describe women or to add insult to injury labels women call themselves. Those labels are not the only labels out here being used Strippers and female exotic dancers are increasingly common images in Hip-Hop and Rap music and music videos. With these relatively new labels and the previous sexual scripts teenage girls and even younger little girls are starting to believe that they need to portray themselves as

To further explain the African American female stereotype the article “Black Female Stereotypes in the United States” by Dr. Morgan Kirby goes into depth about the patriarchal and misogynistic lens rap has been under all of these years. One really prevalent stereotype African American female is the “thot” or for lack of a better word the “whore”, a women who is seen as a prostitute or someone exchanging sexual favors for money, someone who uses “what she has to get what she wants”, in the hip hop community, media, and society a whore is a very negative term but also is a common term almost as if the word is a functional element in the rap world. These derogatory words have become a part of many peoples everyday vocabulary and it just further digs African American women into the hole they are in. The franchise of Love and Hip-hop is a very toxic show, which promotes fighting, verbal abuse, the altogether tearing down of the African American women and to think it all stemmed from the misogynistic, patriarchal, and sexually charged world of rap and