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Emily Hoch
English 2700/Kilpatrick
Final Paper
May 2, 2016

Are Women Getting a Bad Rap?

A Mulveyian Analysis of Rap Music
For years hip-hop/rap* music has had an extensive and complex relationship with
women. Since its wildly popular creation in the 1970s, hip-hop/rap has had a powerful impact on
society, never fearing to address a wide variety of controversial topics in an effort to shed the
proverbial light on various issues that pester society. A persistent theme found in this celebrated
genre is the misogynistic portrayal of women. This paper will discuss the representation of
women in rap music through the lenz of Mulveys theory on the male gaze.
Its important to clarify that not all hip-hop/rap is misogynistic; further, its not just hiphop/rap that has a misogyny problem. Rather the sexism we see in some rap music is a reflection
of societys attitude towards women in general. But in hip-hop/rap, the misogyny tends to be
more explicit, even though it is born of the same poisonous assortment of accepted gender
stereotypes, double standards, and male egos that other musical genres similarly promote.
In her essay Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulveys main argument
is that film uses women to provide a pleasurable experience for men. She argues that the gaze of
the camera is masculine, the woman is the object in view, and the camera influences how we
visualize the female characters. In cinema, the woman is often viewed as an objecta thing that
provides pleasurenot as a human being. Mulveys opinion on the portrayal of women in film
could easily translate to the portrayal of women in rap and hip-hop music because women are
often rendered as sexual objects or accessories in both forms.
*throughout the rest of the paper, I will refer to hip-hop and rap as rap.

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Mulvey discusses how our seemingly subconscious patriarchal view has shaped film and
how we interpret it. The sexualization of women in the media is common because we are
concerned with male possession. Women are often portrayed as trophies--objects for the male to
possess in order to showcase his success. Think about the powerful and wealthy male character
youve likely encountered while watching a popular film. Take a James Bond villain for instance.
In addition to his spy gear, tuxedos, and sports cars, perhaps his greatest collection is his
entourage of glamourous young women. This is a reminder of his accomplishments, a
manifestation of his power. Of women in cinema Mulvey says, She [the woman] is isolated,
glamorous, on display, sexualizedher eroticism is subjected to the male stare alonethrough
participation in his power, the spectator can indirectly possess her too.
Similarly, in rap music women are portrayed as possessions. And just as the spectator can
indirectly possess the glamourous girl in the movie, the listener can indirectly possess the girl in
the hip-hop song too. In a song entitled, Successful, rapper Trey Songz says: The money, cars,
clothes, the hoesI supposeI just want to be successful. The chorus of this song is just one of
many examples in rap that indicates a womans role is to function as a decoration, a prop for
male pleasure, therefore reinforcing Mulveys belief that society is more concerned with how the
female inspires the male, rather than focusing on what the female herself accomplishes.
This unfair portrayal of women as property is a gateway to more disturbing depictions of
women in the genre. Often, rap glorifies messages of violence against women promoting themes
of rape, torture and abuse, submission, which encourages and even normalizes the sexual
objectification and degradation of women. These violent themes first emerged in rap songs in the
late 1980s and have become even more apparent today as women are more frequently being
portrayed as sex objects and victims of sexual violence. In a study conducted by Margaret Hunter

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and Kathleen Soto entitled, Women of Color in Hip-Hop: The Pornographic Gaze, they
specifically study how women of color are portrayed in rap music. They, like Mulvey, are
concerned with the male gaze or in other words, how women are represented in hip-hop. They
found that the most common nouns used to refer to women in rap music were bitch, hoe, and
whore. The nouns were most often used in negative contexts, usually in more hostile and
sexual ways, to imply a womans low status or unimportance. These findings in particular seem
very representative of our culture and support Mulveys supposition that women are often
depicted in negative ways.
Their article presents an analysis of the lyrics of forty-nine of the most popular
mainstream rap songs over a two-year period. Their examination revealed three consistent
themes regarding women of color in rap music: 1) women are commonly branded as sex
workers, mostly strippers and prostitutes; 2) women's voices are used deliberately in songs to
"sell" particular images of compliance and submission; and 3) women are often valued for their
devotion to male partners despite abuse and risk of danger (Hunter & Soto, 2009).
Their study presents an important point that Mulvey doesnt specifically addressthe
women described in rap music lyrics are not just women, but specifically women of color. And
yet rap, a genre that tends to be associated with minorities, is sold to a largely white audience
(Allers, 2005). This presents a paradox then in which not all women are represented in rap, and
those women who are represented are minorities who seem to be caught between a great divide
in which they dont inherently belong in white culture, but they arent represented accurately in
their own culture.
Depictions of women of color are common in rap, leaving the listener with little doubt
that the stereotypes it communicates represent women of color, not white women. The racial

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message rap engenders about women of color is especially significant given the fact that young,
well-to-do white men consume more rap music than any other racial-gender group (Allers,
2005). Rap music's success, then, is directly connected to its substantial dependence on familiar
racial and gender stereotypes often instigated by the very racial groups that communicate it.
In their commentary, Hunter & Soto also discuss female rappers and whether or not they
contributed to the various characterizations of women in rap. They found that female rappers like
Lil Kim and Missy Elliott were certainly more fair in terms of their interpretations of women,
but they still heavily relied on pornographic content in their songs. Hunter and Soto contend that
the reason for female rappers promoting the very stereotypes they claim to reject is because they
maintain the position that a woman gains her power from her ability to please a man, and by
using her sexuality to her advantage, she is in control of the male gaze.
But Hunter & Soto are sure to make the distinction that they sole reason these women are
successful in the rap industry is due to their race and gender which makes it acceptable for them
to promote the very stereotypes that may in fact limit them. They said that the characters that
most female rap artists create only work because they are African American. Because they draw
on those familiar stereotypes of the hypersexual and depraved black woman, they are able to rely
greatly on their sexuality without much outcry from the public because they are women of color
rapping about issues that are supposed to represent women of color (Hunter, Soto, 2009).
Among many other things, Hunter & Soto establish the connection between pornography
and rap music (hence the title pornographic gaze) and how the pornography industry has
affected the commercialization of rap music. They concluded that that trends in popular
pornography have also saturated best-selling hip-hop music, which theoretically explains rap
musics success. After studying the lyrics of best-selling rap songs, the themes that arose from

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their research was most consistent with popular themes in the pornography industry. Typical
heterosexual pornographic videos increasingly feature women as props for male pleasure and
they tend to focus on male power and/or anger towards his female counterpart. Mulvey
foreshadows this unfortunate preoccupation with male power (in pornography and in rap) when
she states: the woman displayed function(s) on two levels: as [an] erotic object for the
characters within the story, and as [an] erotic object for the spectator.
This issue is significant because the inaccurate or insufficient representation of females in
nearly all forms of entertainment and art has been common for centuries. Yet despite many
efforts to shed light on this issue, not much has seemed to change, even though many studies
have proven that these unfair portrayals of women have a significant impact on our culture. In
fact, misogyny in music is increasing in intensity. In rap music alone, researchers have found
that young men and young women who listen to the popular genre are at higher risk for
substance abuse, dating violence, and precarious sexual behaviors. The pornification of rap
over the past few years has only increased the problematic public health outcomes for girls and
boys. In addition to contributing to unhealthy social behaviors, mainstream hip-hop music
communicates pornographic gender stereotypes. Young women and men are bombarded with
images of men of all races sexually humiliating women of color, which in turn contributes to
higher rates of violent and sexual crimes against women of color (Hunter, Soto, 2009).
Drawing much-needed attention to many debated subjects, rap music seems to be the
voice of change of this generation. And yet for all rap music has accomplished for minorities
there continues to be a fatal flaw-- for a genre so concerned with bringing about change it has
limited the females role in the world. The research is clear that rap music is obsessed with male
power and male needs and in the process it routinely mutilates and racializes the female body,

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making it nearly impossible to fully and accurately represent all women. Until this changes, the
phrase rap is crap is a cry that can be legitimately raised by the female population.

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Works Cited
Allers, K. (2005, August). The new hustle. Essence ,. Retrieved on January 22, 2009.
(http:www.essence.com/news_enteitainment/entertainment/articles/thenewhustle).
Hunter, Margaret, and Kathleen Soto. "Women of Color in Hip-Hop: The Pornographic Gaze."
Race, Gender, & Class 16 (2009): 170-91. JSTOR. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." (1975). Web. Apr. 2016.