Rap, Women, Hypocrisy and Double Standards

Did Mary J. Blige parse her private aims and demands for respect with a more public ambivalence about misogyny, or worse, tacit approval of it?
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ludacris and MJB.JPG

After bringing down the house at the Grammys on Sunday with her inspired version of "Be With You," Mary J. Blige hit the stage again to perform "Runaway Love" with Ludacris, a song I first encountered while I was on the elliptical machine one morning at the gym, courtesy of the mini-TV embedded in my machine.

Because I was listening to my own ipod playlist, for the first few minutes I only watched as Ludacris and Mary J. roamed the streets of a nameless, desolate city, apparently singing the stories of three different young girls who were physically, sexually and/or emotionally abused and ultimately ran away from their homes because of it.

The sobering images playing out soundlessly in front of me sparked my curiosity/concern, so I plugged my earphones into the TV just in time to catch the tail end of the song, where Ludacris raps,


"Yeah, I can only imagine what you're going through, ladies
Sometimes I feel like running away myself
So do me a favor right now and close your eyes
And picture us running away together and
When we come back everything is gonna be OK..."

Hmmm. This was coming from the guy whose other lyrics include lines like, "Move bitch, get out the way, get out the way bitch, get out the way"?

A minute or so later, after switching back to my ipod, I had my second epiphany of the six a.m. hour: 2LiveCrew's "Hoochie Mama," a song I'd had on my "running fast" playlist for years, poured out of my headphones. I had never really considered the lyrics before, but now, I almost fell off my machine as, for the first time, I actually listened closely:

"...But the bitch ain't shit, so you need to make a switch
Smackin' on ya lips with your hands on your hips
Triflin' slimy, don't try me
Playin' on the phone? You supposed to be grown
Bitch, stop lyin', I ain't with it
Keep runnin' ya mouth and I'ma stick my dick in it..."

(And it gets a lot worse.)

Of course I'm aware that rap and misogyny often go hand-in-hand--it was just never a subject I'd given much thought--but the hypocrisy and double standards I saw in the situation came to a head for me that morning at the gym. I contemplated Mary J. Blige: she's been a monumentally successful part of R&B and hip-hop for the last fifteen years. More importantly, though, she found the wherewithal in the last few years to kick major alcohol and abusive relationship habits and come back with a renewed musical soul and vigor, capping it off with three Grammy awards this year alone. Mary J. is both smart and sexy, and obviously strong, leaving the misogyny she came up against in her personal life far behind. I wondered, then, how she was able to justify her close associations and collaborations with rappers like Ludacris. Did she parse her private aims and demands for respect with a more public ambivalence about misogyny, or worse, tacit approval of it? Where did her standards lie?

It seems at times for me, Mary J., and plenty of other women out there that there's inherent difficulty in shedding what feminist writer Laura Kipnis in The Female Thing calls the "collaborator within." She says by way of explanation, "Without substantial female compliance, wouldn't masculine privilege pretty soon find itself crammed in with all the other debris in the trash can of history?" Then she adds, "Women across the globe are suspended between progress and tradition in one form or another," concluding, "Among the many 'things' that don't yield to progress, foremost would be women's relation to the female body." In other words, it would seem based on Kipnis's thesis that in part because of our problematic relationships with our own bodies, we women allow men to debase them, fueling the vicious circle of our own hypocrisy and subjugation.

These ideas are a lot to contend with, but they seems to fit in with the kernel of truth I uncovered at the gym: by criticizing Ludacris, and then turning around and without a second thought buying music with similar--or worse--lyrics, I'm engaging in the uphill battle of ardently campaigning against the treatment of women...that I myself perpetuate. The prominence of Mary J. Blige and the apparent disconnect between her private struggles and public persona further indicates this notion of "collaborator within" is systemic--why else would women tolerate, and in fact sing along, when Snoop Dogg raps "G's up, Ho's down" or Jay-Z blares he has "99 problems but a bitch ain't one"?

Speaking of Jay-Z, one thing I've often wondered about in the context of this discussion is what his better half Beyonce really thinks about that line, among some of his less-than-savory others. In her newest song, which shot to the top of the charts, Beyonce passionately sings that her [ostensibly fictional] cheating man is not "irreplaceable," and she kicks him to the curb. I appreciate the principle of empowerment, but what about if she regularly sang about fucking a bunch of (disposable) guys? I think it goes without saying Beyonce as both a person and an artist would be seen in a much different light.

Or as Lil' Kim and Christina Aguilera put it in "Can't Hold Us Down":

"Here's something I just can't understand
If the guy have three girls then he's the man
He can either give us some head, sex her off
If the girl do the same, then she's a whore..."

I'm certainly not Mary J. Blige, or Beyonce, or Lil' Kim; I'm a white girl from Buffalo, on the elliptical machine in my Manhattan gym at 6 a.m. I know I'm only looking at what they choose to show me, and reacting to that. Race is obviously a big part of hip-hop, and within pop culture at large, and I would never presume to speak on behalf of these artists, or claim to know best what they should do or with whom they should perform. All I can do is point out double standards and hypocrisy where I see them. And if Laura Kipnis' "collaborator within" theory suggests women take control of our "seriously conflicted inner terrain," that, at least, I can do--starting with my next playlist.

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