摘要:American culture, being traditionally perceived as quite liberal and democratic, is in fact paralysed by the overwhelming power of stereotypes which shape the current image of culture at large and its industries
). Furthermore, as Tricia Rose estimates, such female rappers often “felt that they were being used as a political baton to beat male rappers over the head, rather than being affirmed as women who could open up public dialogue to interrogate sexism and its effect on young black women” (1994, 150).
Naturally, it is impossible to speak about equality and independence of black female rappers and their creative work since, being few compared to the mass of male rappers, they could hardly change stereotypes and dominant ideologies in a day, a year or even a decade because as a rule they have been viewed as “interlopers – either butchy anomalies or cute novelties who by some fluke infiltrated a boy’s game” (Light 1999, 177).
On facing such a resistance, from the part of the mass audience influenced by the dominant sexual and racial ideologies in American culture black female rappers, as one of them Kid-N-Play said, “have to work twice as hard [as males] to get half the credit” (Rose 1994, 146). As a result, it is not surprising that many black female rappers are harsher to one another than to male rappers that may be also explained by low number of black female rappers compared to males and by their intention to please the predominantly male audience for the sake of commercial success. This often led to limiting female rap songs to verbal ‘catfights’ and the typical ‘battle of the sexes’, especially in 1980s.
Furthermore, it should be pointed out that since 1980s there have been two main ways on which black female rappers could achieve success. On the one hand, there is the ‘I am as tough and as good just as the next ‘man’ role but very few black female rappers have chosen this way to success, though those who have chosen it are the most respected. On the other hand, there is an alternative that the majority of black female rappers have chosen and nowadays it gets to be more and more popular, is simply to sell sexual images that is not surprising because it is acceptable by the dominating male ideology in the industry for “that sex sells is the first axiom of
advertising, and sexual ads are everywhere. And in order to titillate a sexually jaded society, you have to push the boundaries. You have to be a bit more brazen than the last hot little number, a little more ‘edgy’” (Burford et al. 1999, 72) and this is exactly what many of black female rappers are currently doing to be successful.
Unfortunately, the dominant sexual and racial ideologies in American culture result in the situation when “portraying African-American women as stereotypical mummies, matriarchs, welfare recipients, and hot mommas helps justify US black women’s oppression… These controlling images are designed to make racism, sexism, poverty, and other forms of social injustice appear to be natural, normal, and inevitable parts of everyday life” (Collins 2000, 70). Moreover, often black female rappers are portrayed as ‘hootchies’ since men allowed many of them to rap. ‘Hootchies’ is a term used by Joan Morgan in her book “When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost” (2000) and it signifies women who use sex to get what they want from men. An example of such a type of black female rappers is Lil Kim.
Consequently, the controlling image of black females becomes more and more widely spread and in general it is influenced by the dominant sexual and racial ideologies in which males play the main role and the desire to achieve commercial success force black f
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