Female empowerment songs
23/08/2011 # 07:30 # In Press - research # 4 Comments
Pathetic attempts to draw attention to issues such as discrimination, ostracism and harassment faced by females in society? Third year Media Studies student Thato S N Legodi offers some answers.
“If you look back in history/It’s a common double standard of society/The guy gets all the glory, the more he can score/While the girl can do the same and yet you call her a whore!”
Can’t Hold Us Down is Christina Aguilera’s ‘girl-power’ song (questioning the double standards of society between men and women), taken from her 2002 Stripped album. In this song, Christina questions society’s acceptance of males to have more than one female sexual partner (they are applauded for that) while it is perceived off beam for a female to have multiple male sexual partners (they often experience harassment if they do so). What the song is attempting to achieve is a level of impartiality whereby an unfair application of dissimilar sets of values for states of affairs that are alike would be non-existent. Why is it that females cannot have more than one sexual partner without being labelled? If it is decadent for a woman to have several sexual partners, then it should also be morally wrong for males to have multiple sexual partners.
Yes, indeed, there are double standards in society but this does not necessarily imply that it is only females who experience the negative side of this ‘double standard’. According to Shepard (2005), men cannot show signs of vulnerability. They are taught to disavow and despise human qualities such as susceptibility and tenderness. If a man expresses his emotions through crying for instance, he would inescapably be perceived as weak (Shepard, 2005). Despite the media’s attempts to alter these sorts of expectations from men, by showing males crying in soapies for example, men are still to a large extent expected to be brave, and not show any signs of being weak.
Independent Women (2000) and Independent Women Part II (2001) are Destiny’s Child songs on their third studio album Survivor. Both these songs are about female empowerment but I will focus more on Independent Women Part II although the lyrics are more or less alike. With lyrics like “I’m my number one priority/No falling in love, no commitment from me/Try to control me, boy you get dismissed/If you’re independent, I congratulate you/If you ain’t in love, I congratulate you”, these lyrics literally persuade females to deviate from the norm and not be emotionally attached to their male partners (as society expects). The song encourages females to put themselves and their needs first. Accordingly, males have to be victims of their unattached, apathetic, callous and unloving female partners.
Nevertheless, there is something peculiar about Destiny’s Child. After both songs were received well by the general public, they released a disparate song with a totally divergent meaning outwardly going against what they stood for in Independent Women. In 2004, they released their fourth studio album which featured a song called Cater to You. With lyrics such as “My life would be purposeless without you/Do anything for my man/I’m here to serve you/Fulfil your every desire/Your wish is my command, this song is a blatant contrast to Independent Women Part I & II. Why did they do this after such victorious and influential female empowerment songs? Is it because they realised that what they were saying in Independent Women was in actual fact illusory? Cater to You is about a woman who is head over heels in love, committed, caring and affectionate. Consequently, women are still not empowered in a sense that even though they feel the need to be self-governing, they also feel the need to be subservient to their male partners as Cater to You signifies. Not surprisingly, Cater to You was also received well by the general public. What does this say about ’girl-power’ songs and their necessity and effectiveness? Now do we still need to ask if Girls Run the World, if their sole purpose in life is to please their male partners as Cater to You suggests? If female artists contradict themselves in this manner, what messages are the general public supposed to get?
Female empowerment songs such as Ciara’s Like a Boy (2006), Beyonce’s If I Were a Boy (2008) and Jessie J’s Do it Like a Dude (2010) make one wonder if the only way for females to be empowered is if they act like men and do things typically associated with men. Furthermore, these females are actually saying that had they been given a chance to be males, they would do precisely the same thing that males are doing to them. How is that constructive? To add more salt to the wound, if one takes a look at the songwriters behind the ‘girl-power’ songs, the majority of them are males. Perhaps female artists now need to write songs for themselves so that society can hear and witness their struggles through the ‘female’ perspective.
Oh! Didn’t I look at the positive side of Independent Women where they encourage women to depend on no one but themselves? To pay their own bills, buy their own houses, cars, clothes, shoes, diamond rings and the like? Well, how can I when an all-female group called TLC released a song named Scrub encouraging women not to date a man who still stays at home with his mom and doesn’t have a car or money? And, guess what? The song was released just a year before Independent Women. Is that an obsolete case in point? How about you take a listen to Ciara’s Yeah I Know taken from Basic Instinct album of 2010? It has precisely the same meaning!!!
These ‘girl-power’ songs with conflicting messages in fact blur issues faced by women in society (discrimination, harassment, and marginalisation amongst others)!!!
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hmmm,
popular culture is indeed the correct place to locate your critique. in an of itself it embodies these ‘contradictions’ that we so often encounter in daily lived experiences. Why is it that one may call herself (for these purposes, let the term refer to women) ‘feminist’ (and here I encourage you to conjur up all the stereotypes that you know abound about feminists ) yet yearn for a husband, 2.5 kids, big house on the prairie with picket fence and dog in tow? Why does she want it all yet desire independence and equality (with men)? and, why is her understanding of empowerment located in the material – shoes, cars, clothes, diamond ring (refer to Independent Women Part I and II for clarity)? why is that not ok?
perhaps the mistake is to believe that women should not embody these (binary) contradictions, or have these ‘competing/contending’ desires, expecting Beyonce and her back up singers (and by extension, like minded women) to remain forever independent because Destiny’s Child said so. can a woman not change her mind?!!! does this (your article and the questions it poses) not work to type cast women, perpetuating the status quo? or is it perhaps easier to be mediocre and not desire something different, outside of the norm.
popular culture has come to the point where it has internalised these binaries and contradictions, even if the rest of society has not.
contrary to your belief that ‘girl power’songs blur issues faced by women in society, they in fact SPEAK DIRECTLY TO THEM. they are particular to the experiences of some women (B, Jessie J, Xtina, Ciara etc) and their responses to the challenges they have had to face.
to locate your argument in South Africa, perhaps then South African women have misplaced their identity and desire for empowerment in the usa, and american pop culture (as expressed by the bevvy of woemn you mention): thandiswa mazwai (a south african) has been consistent in her articulation of views about women for instance, empowering them with songs like ‘Kwanele’. Thembi Seete in ‘Sho ntombazana’ does the same. local is lekker.
this observation aside, my opinion is quite simple: choice is empowering. when my society has come to the point where it respects a woman’s right (and consequent responsibility) to decide FOR HER SELF, then feminism would have done it’s job. and i would be proud to have contributed to THAT status quo
Dear Naledi
Thank you for having taken the time to read my article and comment on it. Your response is very good and you give me and (other readers) something to think about.
Perhaps you are right, it is not wrong for females to have competing desires as you argue. It would be unwarranted to expect women to be entirely independent in every sense of the word (thereby not having it all as you put it). Nevertheless, isn’t it problematic when these songs perpetuate gender roles? Are you suggesting that there is nothing wrong with being submissive and passive female because the society expects females to have those qualities? Perhaps it is (and perhaps it’s not) and one needs to contemplate the incorporation of this duality you are referring to.
I agree with your point about ‘girl-power’ songs speaking directly to females; however what I think is of concern here is how do they do so? Is it positive and advantageous for female artists to respond to the difficulties faced by women through encouraging them to adopt the “male” mentality of what it means to be a “Man” in society and how one must treat women? Is that the only alternative apart from material empowerment? To act like ‘men’ and treat male partners the same way they treat women?
Indeed, “local is lekker” and its about one investigates what ‘feminism’ means to African, South African female artists in particular.
You could be justified in your conclusion stating that it is up to females to decide for themselves “what they are, who they are and who they can be” as Beyonce puts it.
Thank you once again for your eye-opening contribution.
I recently attended a seminar that was arranged by the dean of Wits Humaties and a few other crucial members (excuse mmy incompetence at forgetting their names), what this seminar sought to do was see or project women through the only lense that was able to: a woman’s. This is not to say to that a man can or could never see a female or even add some know-how on the fairer species, that argument would be superficial and contemptuous. Yet I would wish to point out that some of the questions posed and the ideas basing them are equally as inflated with each element. There is the common inaccuracy made by some to suggest that a female dressing “Like a Boy” and having the occasional “If I was a boy” fantasme can only be summed up in terms of an unconscious yearning for “maleness”. I would like to point out that it is the complete opposite, women have been constrained to an ideology for far too long. This ideology is that of eternal chastity, fertility, modesty, inaudibility and a frilly pink frock. The 21st century has paved a path away from that through the acknowledgement of women as individuals; having the prerogative to dress how they want, say what they feel, choose not to bear offspring, boast their successes and engage in carnal activities in any manner or however often they wish. The artists above are by no means symbols of feminist revolutions and iconic entities of change for the modern female to aspire to, they are just (as all women and men are) individuals expressing what it means to them to be a woman.
Dear Thandi
Thank you so much for raising your concerns regarding this issue. It is much appreciated.
You really make valid points which to some degree I agree with. Nonetheless, I do feel that you might be taking the influence these female artists have on the general public too lightly, as studies have indicated that people tend to choose public personas as their role models and accordingly imitate their behaviour. Subsequently, these artists have the power to shape how people think and behave (not to say that the audiences are passive). Although you argue that these female artists are not “symbols of feminism… for the modern female to aspire”, the problem is that the power of these female artists is so pervasive that what they say and do is accepted as the way to think around the issues of feminism. As a result, one can argue that these female artists inevitably become symbols of feminism to aspire.
The seminar you attended wanted to look at women through the lenses of ‘women themselves’ but still permitted males to add their knowledge of how do to something. Nevertheless, if you were to agree with me stating that female artists who sing ‘girl-power’ songs inescapably become symbols of feminism to aspire, then it would not be far-fetched to argue that it is in actual fact women who add their ‘know-how’ about female
empowerment as men are the driving force behind this ‘female empowerment’ as I have highlighted in my piece of writing that it is males and not females who dominate the writing process of these ‘girl-power’ songs. We might then want to ask if females really have the exclusive right to say what they want to say(amongst other prerogatives/privileges you’ve mentioned) for example.
Thank you once again for your enlightening contribution Thandi.