Group 5 Music Video: Women and Rise of Raunch culture: Ariel Levy

Ariel Levy

Ariel Levy critiques the highly sexualized American culture in which women are objectified, objectify one another, and are encouraged to objectify themselves.

Levy claimed that the enjoyment of raunch, or "kitschy, slutty stereotypes of female sexuality," has existed through the ages; this is where i chose my Rihanna as an example of this.

Before:

Rihanna came into the spotlight in 2005

Rihanna first song Pon de Replay was Rihanna first music video. It looks like her raunchiness was intentional in this as their is no closes-up on her body parts but despite this she does do some belly dancing moves and the occasional twerking.

Rihanna wears short tight clothing which helps show off lots her physique. This would really attract the male audience.

Overall despite this music video showing subtle footage of raunchiness, in that time.

After her altercation with Chris Brown Rihanna's sense of style changed. Her music was no longer just R&B she moved into the up tempo type songs. This is when people started seeing a whole new side of her. Most of her realised single were sex related and With S&M being one of her most controversial music video it shows very crazy antics.

You can even see it in the change of her album Records. Her evolution through the different the album covers get slowly more sexulised and with her current one (Unapologetic) being her most controversial one as she is bare naked covering her breasts with her elbow and what makes it worse is that her album name is also covering her a breast. Talk that Talk is where she uses her tongue in that sexualise way.

Overall i agree with Ariel Levy. The culture today is booming with raunchy artists in nearly all genres. Before Raunchiness was seen in the limited R&B and Hip Hop culture but now it's becoming a common thing in most genres. This to me is really bad as children of this generation are starting to become under the influence that it is okay to be seen in crop tops or short skirts. In my opinion, it's the public's fault for these raunchy performances as if they didn't take an interest in them then the artist would be force to change their ways. A great example of this is Miley Cyrus. Every controversial thing she does blows up in a commotion which means people talk about her. Her raunchy performances are attracting an audience because in the end Sex Sells. Artists are seen as idols to most people and it shows that they prefer artist's views then political view. As you can see hear Katy Perry is the most followed person on Twitter; then Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga. 7 of the Twitter accounts are music artist with the fourth being the current president Barrack Obama.

On the other hand i think that it depends on the person. For example Rihanna was never seen as a sex symbol or raunchy until she started singing about sex and doing controversial performances. Miley Cyrus use to be a child's role model through being in Hannah Montana throughout being know as Hannah Montana, Miley changed her style by also doing controversial antics and she too has now got a name for herself. However these raunchiness antics are not just present in the music industry, in the movie industry it is seen a lot. Emma Watson is a great example of this as she was known as Hermione Granger from Harry Potter until she cut her hair and played a very different role to which fans are not use too in The Bling Ring. That is why i think it depends on the person because people talked about Emma Watson in that role; same for Selena Gomez; they barely talked about the other the girls but because she use to be an innocent person and played in a movie called "Spring Breakers" it also became a talked about movie.