Kalala 1 Amira Kalala Prof. Presnell Engl.

1102 12 April 2012 The Effects of Rap Music on Women in Society

My interest in this subject first peaked when I started wearing the Hijab. Hijab is the Islamic head and body covering. It is meant to protect a womens modesty. When I started wearing it I noticed people respected me more, especially men who were non-Muslims. Their respect made me think about music and other media influences and why women are always degraded. I realized that one of the reasons is because they do not respect themselves as women. One of the first things

someone might think about when they hear the word rap is something like guns, violence, and degradation towards women. The reason for this is so commonly, because this is the music of today. Rap music, especially, is notoriously known for portraying negative images that can affect society in many ways. Most album covers in fact, have pictures of alcohol, guns, knives, blood, money, and half naked women on them. For some reason, negative images such as these always sell to people, especially to a younger audience. The youth discovers these images and thinks that it is cool, but what they do not realize is that the images and lyrics have a deeper, more problematic meaning. Rap Music & Attitudes: In 2008, at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, a study was conducted about the negative relationships between young men and women, based on their exposure to rap music/videos. The study was also completed to find out their relationship between society and personal acceptance of negative images in rap videos in African American adolescents. The main

Kalala 2 theory of this study was that adversarial attitudes toward male-female relationships are influenced by psychosocial factors, like family, religious/spiritual involvement, ethnic identity, development, and media exposure. The researchers of this study observed the participants for a year. Participants viewed rap videos, and completed surveys about them. The results of the study found that 52% of participants were okay with how the women acted in the videos. While 48% of the participants said that they were not okay with it. Then, 73% of participants thought guys prefer girlfriends that acted like the women in the videos. Rap Music & Health: In another study, conducted in 2003, in Birmingham, Alabama, researchers aimed to predict the occurrence of health risk behaviors and sexually transmitted diseases amongst adolescent African American females, over a twelve month period. The study was conducted on 522 single sexually active African American females, between the ages of 14 and 18 from a poor community. The researchers wanted to study African American women, because they wanted to observe a population that they felt was vulnerable. the course of the study, the researchers tested the girls for chlamydia, trichomoniasis, and gonorrhea. The measures of the study also included finding out the level of exposure to rap music videos, which was determined by asking the girls to estimate how many hours they spent watching rap music videos on a daily basis. The study also assessed what type of rap music videos the girls watched, with whom they watched the videos with, and where they watched them. As little factors as these things may seem, actually have a major influence on the perspective that the girls have on the videos. The girls were also asked about their relationships with their families, extracurricular activities, and their religious group activities. The results showed that 37.6% were infected with a sexually transmitted disease, 4.8% hit a teacher, 12.1% reported being arrested, 14.8% had sexual Over

Kalala 3 intercourse with someone other than their steady partner, and 44.6% reported using drugs and alcohol. Therefore, these results showed that greater exposure

to rap videos the more negative the effects from them. The study also found that the largest viewing audience of the gangster rap videos is white suburban youth, because they have better access to cable television channels, like MTV and BET. The researchers also explained that repeated media exposure makes behaviors like the ones in the videos seem normal, which might account for the high statistics. Films Regarding Rap Culture: Award winning documentary film maker, published writer, and anti-sexist activist, Byron Hurt made a film in 2007, called Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes. The documentary aimed to question the violence, and degradation of women, in rap music today. In an interview with The New York Times, Byron claimed that the reason for making this film was because he became very conflicted with the music he loved. The intended audience for this film was the fans and artists themselves, who rap about women and luxury. The film shows that money is made by promoting the bad influences, such as portraying women as sex objects. As a result, the youth have become obsessed with rap music, because they see the artists as having fame and fortune, but not really understanding what the lyrics really mean. The youth imitates them because they think it is okay to act out. Young girls see women provocatively dressed and men harassing them, and they think that is how society wants them to be. Perspectives From People in the Business: Thembisa S. Mshaka, a former advertising copywriter who designed campaigns for Sony Musics hip hop and R&B artists, who now works for BET, was interviewed by a pop culture journalist about her view points of how rap music has changed over years. She claimed, The most glaring

Kalala 4 shift Ive seen in the last Ive seen in the last five to ten years would have to be the focus on stripping and lap dance/bar-and-bottle-service expenditure within club culture. Mshaka also mentioned that a lack of strong, empowered voices of women is negatively affecting them. She said, There is not enough support for women, not enough positive influences and positive role models. She also mentioned, The dirtier the songs get, and more degrading, the more teens are encouraged towards teen sex and other bad behaviors. This shows that the teens are solely affected by what they see. Another famous rap star L.L. Cool J, made the appeal to rappers, to stop demeaning women in their videos. He said, Portraying them all as strippers and prostitutes sends a message to girls that this is all there is for you to do in order for you to make it. Many would agree that the way that rap music is portrayed is in fact very negative. Unfortunately, our youth does not realize how corruptive this type of music can be. My Rap Investigation When I began to research this topic more, I decided to construct a survey to see how others like myself felt about rap music and its effects on society. I made a survey on SurveyMonkey.com, and I put it on Face book. I asked all of my friends to take it. I received about thirty responses in total. My goal for this survey was to view the opinion of the general public. I asked some minor demographic questions, regarding gender, age, level of education. 75% of the respondents were female, while the other 25% were male. The majority of respondents were also in the 18-26 age category, and over half of them were students in a college or university. When people were asked how they felt about the music on the radio today, they responded with, overplayed, loud, rash, profane, vulgar, contains a lot of sexual content, trash,crap, dirty, unnecessary curse words, disturbing, inappropriate, violent, meaningless,

Kalala 5 degrading to women, okay, decent. I also asked if they felt that music had any negative effects towards society and our youth. Many people said that things like, Yes. A lot of it has an influence on alcohol, sex, etc by the lyrics mentioned. Some of the younger generation may get ideas or try something out because of what the lyrics have said. Others said things like, Yes, people think that everybody can be a celebrity and make the "big bucks" so they try to imitate that lifestyle and that can cause people to do bad things. When respondents were questioned about whether or not rap music is degrading to women, everyone responded with yes. No one could disagree that women are more than often verbally abused in rap music. One surveyor said, Yes for sure. A lot of today's rap music is very sexual and makes women out to be nothing more than objects to be used, (see figure to the left).Women deserve much more respect than they are given in today's overtly sexually oriented culture. America seems to be forgetting or ignoring core moral values. However, a lot of respondents also

agreed that some women even degrade themselves. One response stated, Some rap artists degrade women, and some do not. Women should always be treated with respect, and glorified. But a woman who disrespects herself and her body should be called by how she acts. When Good =Bad and Bad=Good: After reading the responses to the survey, I could not agree with them more. In fact, a lot of the comments that people made have actually been proven. I remember once I was driving with my father, and we were listening to an Islamic lecture series about knowledge. The scholar who was speaking mentioned that about ten years ago, there

Kalala 6 was a study conducted on the influence that books have on children. He mentioned something that sparked my interest. He commented that researchers have noticed a pattern about children who enjoy reading. The researchers studied children from a young age, and noticed that these children grew up in a household with a lot of books. They also noted that they would often sit with a book and pretend to read, acting the same way their parents did. Then as the children grew older the same researchers discovered that these children had a passion for reading. They also mentioned that the children were very smart, and were interested more in science and learning than playing video games and watching television. The conclusion behind the study was that children are affected by what they see. The way humans, like a lot of other mammals learn is through imitation. It is also the same influence that rap music, celebrities, and much of the media influences have on people. People are strongly influenced by what is going on in the world around them. The scary part of this process is that people are often imitating the bad instead of the good.

Rap Evolution: Words Pleading For Change: Having been raised in the United States all of my life, the music on the radio is all I knew for a very long time myself. I listened to a lot of Arabic music as well, but a lot of the time I listened to the radio. At a young age, the content being played often made me wonder what a lot of it meant. When I grew old enough to realize that the majority of songs had a negative message, I stopped listening to it completely. I knew then that I did not want to listen to something that is meaningless and harmful in thought. As I became more aware I discovered a new type of rap. This rap was more positive, and was classified under Islamic Music, or Nasheed. This type of genre was not at all negative, nor were women portrayed as sex objects. The essential meaning was often positive, and was enjoyable. Some of the artists, included Native Deen. Native Deen rapped about religion, negative

Kalala 7 effects of media influences, and a lot of other interesting topics. Another artist wrote a song entitled, Queens of Islam, which portrays women in a positive way and sends a message to women that being modest is what you must be, in order to stay focused. A picture paints a thousand words, and depending upon the picture can often send a negative message to our young men and women, that hurting others, engaging in promiscuous behaviors, and abusing drugs and alcohol is okay. In order to protect our future generations, we must educate artists, and our youth that rapping about degrading women, violence, and abusing drugs and alcohol is not just, not okay, but is also morally wrong.

Kalala 8 Works Cited. Bryant, Yaphet. Relationships Between Exposure to Rap Music Videos and Attitudes Toward Relationships among African American Youth. Journal of Black Psychology 34:3 (2008): 356-377. UNCC Atkins Library Database. Web. 23 Feb 2012. Eckholm, Eric. Fan Asks Hard Questions About Rap Music. The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Dec. 2006. Web. 28 Feb. 2012. Fritsky, Lauren. Thats a Rap: Music Still Putting Down Women Lemon Drop. Lemon Drop: Entertainment News, 26thJun. 2009 Web. 21 Feb. 2012. Kalala, Amira. Effects of Rap Music on Women in Society. University of North

Carolina at Charlotte, 2012. Web. Kirchheimer, Sid. Does Rap Put Teens at Risk? WebMD. WebMD Health News, 2003 Web. 21 Feb. 2012. Wingwood, Gina, et al. A Prospective Study of Exposure to Rap Music Videos and African American Female Adolescents Health. American Journal of Public Health 93:3 (2003): 437- 439. Web. 29 Feb 2012.

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REFLECTION 1. What was the hardest part of putting your sources together and writing this essay? The hardest part of writing this essay was finding the right way to incorporate my own voice into it. 2. What do you like best about what youve done? I like that I was able to relate my personal experiences to this essay. For example in my introductory paragraph I talked a little bit about how I first noticed this subject when I started wearing the hijab. I like that I can connect with my subject, in a way that maybe others cant. 3. What class activities/brainstorming activities worked best to help you get your ideas together? The talking headers really helped me a lot. It helped me organize my information in a way that made the paper write itself. I also think that the activity where we brought the artifact and had to write a paragraph on it helped me a lot too. I based my introduction off of the paragraph that I wrote in class. It was a good way to help me get started writing. 4. What have you learned about writing an essay with research that you didnt know before? What have you learned to do better than you did in the past? I learned how to incorporate myself in the essay. I never did this before, and I was not sure how it would turn out. Also, I never conducted a survey for the primary research part of this assignment. I was kind of nervous about it because I was not sure if I would have good results. I think I am definitely more confident about these things now.