Written by Tonesa Jones, contributor.
Pop music seems obsessed with big butts this summer with a lot of debate stemming from Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda.” Minaj’s remixed version of Sir-Mix-A Lot’s “Baby Got Back” divided listeners into two camps: those who found it empowering and those who found it degrading. The “it’s empowering” group tends to be drowned out by the voices of those who are exhausted from confronting images of half-naked women and dismiss female artists’ risqué performances as nothing more than selling sex. The problem with dismissing every performance as merely selling sex is it denies a nuanced discussion about what the body represents.
Not all half-naked bodies are over-sexualized. Beyonce’s titillating “Partition” video drawing Bill O’Reilly’s ire and Minaj’s bare butt which drew more criticism about appropriateness illustrates we are far from a healthy place when talking about women’s sexuality. Our culture is still afraid of openly expressed sexuality, even as we are inundated with imagery from every aspect of media. The problem with the butt is not just with the image, but with what it is saying. It is bold and feminine and represents full figured women free of the “accepted” body standard.
Commentators of pop culture don’t react as vehemently to male artists’ use of over-sexualized women in their videos. That’s because their bodies and subsequently their sexuality is ornamental: a beautiful prop serving the purpose of the music and the male artist. Selling sex is ok as long as it is not sold as a main subject, as long as it remains a prop in the background, but once it comes to the front in the form of a jiggling butt, there is a problem.
“Anaconda” attempts to suggest a woman’s sexuality can exist independently of men by presenting this all women world where women can freely shake their butts. Although, this message is compromised by the emphasis of the phallus in the video and the title of the song. Therefore, I would not call Minaj’s song empowering.
Minaj’s expression of her sexual agency does not equal a universal anthem for women’s sexuality. But it opens a pathway for greater exploration of the topic and normalizes the female body, which always seems to exist in this tug of war between taboo and fetish. Perhaps this barrage of body centric music will desensitize us to the idea of women loving their bodies and enjoying the freedom of sex. If society can get over the fact that a woman’s sexuality is independent of a man, then we can talk about more important things like sexual assault on college campuses — but for now, let the butt talk.