Tag Archives: BBC3

Who wants to be a video chick?

Not me. Last night, the BBC attempted to tackle the issue with a sliver of sensitivity in the documentary ‘Music, Money, and Hip Hop Honeys’.

I can’t be the only black woman who is sick to the back teeth of other black women’s bodies being oiled up, dissected and objectified in hip hop and grime music videos.

I’m tired of seeing hip hop, R&B and grime videos that so gleefully encourage and illustrate male dominance and female subservience. By dominance, I don’t mean a numerical advantage- quite the opposite. Women often outnumber men in these videos, but the men are fully clothed and the women are partially dressed. The men are speaking and the women are silent. The women are jiggling their buttocks into the camera lens, but there no sign of the dominant male figures waggling their crotches into the lens for the good of the audience. 

Call me a prude, but the truth is I couldn’t care less about the supposed sexual liberation or empowerment that these women gain from starring in these videos. Instead, I’m pretty worried about the skewed representation of black and minority ethnic women in the mainstream media. I’ve followed hip hop, R&B and grime music since my early teens, and from the beginning I understood that misogyny was the norm. The day I realised hip hop wasn’t going to tackle its misogyny any time soon was the day hip hop star Chris Brown punched, slapped and bit his R&B girlfriend Rihanna, and his fans bent over backwards to excuse the abuse and blame the victim.  In hip hop, grime and R&B, the majority of black women’s bodies are constantly up for degradation or consumption.

In hip hop and R&B, lyrics about and towards women have changed dramatically over the years. In 1994, Boyz 2 Men crooned the lyrics ‘I’ll make love to you/  like you want me to/ and I’ll hold you tight/ baby all through the night’. Eleven years later, the Ying Yang twins rapped the lyrics  ‘You like to fuck, have your legs open all in da butt / Do it up slappin ass coz the sex gets rough’, with a chorus consisting almost entirely of the words ‘I’ma beat that pussy up’. Note that the word ‘pussy’ is completely divorced from the unfortunate female who happens to possess the genetalia in question. It’s no surprise, then, that the representations of women in the music videos that are paired with these songs are increasingly degrading and misogynistic.

In a world that’s crying out for black female role models, these images only peddle in and pander to the empowerment lie, albeit with new specifics. Black women aren’t really represented as fully human in these videos.  Instead, we’re subservient, covered in baby oil, and constantly jiggling. We’re portrayed as tantalisingly voluptuous and always sexually available. Our bodies are dissected by selective camera shots like slabs of meat.

Americanised popular culture is inescapable, and black women need diverse and positive representation. Currently, we’ve got Michelle Obama and Rosa Parks firmly in the heroine camp, and on the other side of the scale we have video chicks- black women who are paid to wear thong bikinis and shake their oiled buttocks at the camera.

Sometimes it feels like hip hop, R&B, and grime videos hold a unique kind of contempt for black women , one that prioritises female subservience and submission above all else. Feminists often protest objectification, but the knee jerk default is to challenge the Hugh Hefner-esque, pink and blonde, creamy skinned feminine sexual ideals.  We must never forget that black women are heavily objectified in the media too. We just have a different cookie cutter mould that we’re expected to conform too. Big buttocks, heavy breasts, thick thighs, tiny waists and full lips. It’s just as narrow, and just as damaging.

And what of the women who are enticed into the industry on promises of glamour, money and fame? What I saw from the BBC3 documentary, the ambition was possible, and also, very, very rare.

The UK has always lagged behind the USA, and the video chick phenomenon is no exception. Black women in the US have already reached Katie Price proportions when it comes to exploiting the video chick role- the BBC3 documentary reports that the most successful video chicks can make $9,000 for just showing up a premiere and $12,000 for two days filming. A few years ago, ex-video chick Karrine Steffans released the hotly anticipated expose and biography Confessions of a Video Vixen, detailing her career starring in videos and her affairs with the hip hop stars who hired her.

But here in the UK, video chick haven’t quite reached that level yet. Instead, women often respond to adverts on social networking websites calling for girls to star in low budget grime or hip hop videos.  In the words of one of the grime video directors who featured in the documentary, these women are often ‘swindled’, and promised pay that never appears.  This female empowerment lie tricks women into playing into the misogynist’s hands. You can have the money, the fame, the confidence and the admiration. You’ll be a better person for it. All you need to do is take your clothes off, spread your legs, push up your breasts, and pout.

For the purpose of convenience in this post, black defines those of non- Caucasian origin- African, Asian, Middle Eastern, mixed race, etc.

Feminism, fakery and the parody of performance

Snog, Marry, Avoid- a tale of our time?

Now well into its third series, BBC3’s Snog, Marry Avoid is billed as a make-under show that promises to ‘transform OTT girls and boys into natural beauties’. Tune in and you’ll witness scores of women who are apparently in need of a  drastic make-under in order to reassure them they look fine just the way they are, and that they don’t need fake tan, nails, hair and eyelashes to look their very best. One sentiment echoed by almost every young woman hauled into Song Marry Avoid’s personal overhaul device (abbreviated into P.O.D- the harsh robot with a big heart) is that they don’t feel comfortable without make up. They don’t feel like themselves without make up. They feel unattractive without make up on, and some refuse to leave the house without at least a slick of mascara. The programme sometimes deals with interestingly decorated men too- but the majority of Snog Marry Avoid’s applicants are women.

Those of you who watch the X Factor will probably remember a young woman from Yorkshire who named herself Chloe Mafia. Chloe had a pretty good singing voice, and had also featured on Snog, Marry Avoid earlier this year. She eventually became the tabloid news’s object of ridicule thanks to her dress sense and beauty regime, which included barely there outfits, fake tan, heavy makeup and thick hair extensions. Queue vilification from the press and numerous allegations of Miss Mafia’s dalliances with the sex industry.

With both case studies, a few questions spring to mind. Why are young women so insistent on donning these extra bits and pieces, these add ons and addendums, in order to feel fully physically attractive? How did it come this? These women’s ideas of what constitutes as sexually attractive may be somewhat exaggerated, but ultimately, by toning down their image a tad, the same tired old formula of physical attractiveness = self-worth is still pushed, just at a different speed. Watch the Snog Marry Avoid ladies rush into the arms of their loved ones after their make-unders. They smile, they gush, sometimes they cry, as their boyfriends and husbands and sisters and friends exclaim ‘don’t you look beautiful!’. These make-unders aren’t as progressive as they seem.

Now, I’m no anthropologist, but I’d like to put forward the theory that the very same women who wear excessive amounts of makeup and fakery have been subjected to hundreds upon thousands of distorted and doctored images of ‘perfect’ women throughout their lifetimes. Fashion, beauty and lifestyle magazines aimed and women and teenage girls have long been advocates of using airbrushing technology and digital body sculpting in the pictures they publish. On top of this, there’s the issue of the women being photographed for those magazines being unhealthily thin in the first place (not all- but an unacceptable amount).  These magazines have the audacity to pass their doctored images off as real- as an accurate representation of what an attractive woman looks like.  These pictures are a unique kind of conditioning- over the years, if you’re led to believe that a woman is only attractive with all of these add ons, you’re bound to do it too. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, when women in their late teens and early twenties attempt to do the same with the resources they’ve got. We definitely shouldn’t pour scorn on them. All of us are guilty of emulating our icons, and it’s by no means something to be ashamed of.  The pictures are fake. Can you blame young women for aspiring to be fake, too?

An open letter to BBC3

I used to feel confident in trusting the BBC. I and many others my age enjoyed our late 90s childhood years. We were quite comfortably over saturated with CBBC’s after school entertainment- the eye catching, bright colours, the chirpy, spirited young presenters who seems to relate to us all so well. It suited our demographic well and I don’t think any of us, at 8 years old, had any complaints.

However, we are not children anymore. The BBC’s mission statement maintains that they aim to ‘enrich people’s lives with programmes that inform, educate and entertain’. All very well. Considering the BBC’s diverse range of media outlets are aimed at an all inclusive modern day Britain, I can only assume that, in the case of BBC3, these programmes have been carefully designed for idiots. Let’s not beat about the bush here- it’s pretty much an ‘either/or’ situation.

BBC3 seems to take the BBC’s mission statement and manipulate it ever so slightly; instead of these programmes being informative, educational and entertaining, they are educational or informative or entertaining. And, lets not forget, BBC3’s definition of entertaining is dubious at best. As students, we fit rather neatly into the channel’s suspiciously vague 15-34 year old target audience demographic.  Essentially, BBC3’s target audience age range may contribute heavily to the core of the problem. The rather loosely grouped ages 15-34 tends to span from under eighteens to those well established into adulthood, and all those tricky years in between. What do BBC3 choose to feed these fertile, tumultuous, rapidly expanding young minds?  Well it seems that if you’re aged 15 to 34 and you find yourself suddenly and urgently concerned about Danny Dyer’s opinions on the existence of aliens, BBC3 is your first point of call. To put it simply, almost all of their programmes are so incredulously cretinous that I often wonder, whilst watching, if BBC3 are actually just playing some kind of cruel joke on me. The informative ‘Don’t Get Screwed’ is a programme consisting of consumer law set to a Top Of The Pops soundtrack and fronted by vacant looking pretty people who appear to be suspiciously dead behind the eyes. Then there’s the relatively new ‘Hotter Than My Daughter’ series- a makeover show presented by a forgotten member of a forgotten girl band that pits mothers and daughters against each other in a bid to look the most attractive.

Get your act together BBC3, because I am not informed, not educated and certainly not entertained by these poor excuses for television programmes. Of course, it’s important not to forget BBC3’s educational documentaries, but even then, they’re fronted by a presenter with celebrity credentials in order to drag in more ratings. As far as I can remember, BBC3’s origins were rooted in showcasing sharp, young British comedy and drama. Although these gems still sparkle on their listings, it’s now rare. There appears to be such a lack in quality British programming for young people- in turn giving way to vapid, soulless, condescending MTV style programming for the masses. Is this the way forward for youth television?