Journal of

International Journal of
Africana Studies VOLUME
SPRING
I
16,
1
2010
NUMBER
SUMMER
Special Issue
HIP Hop IN THE ACADEMY
Guest Editors
KARIN L. STANFORD AND RONALD
J. STEPHENS
HlP Hop FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES
Aisha Durham
Texas A &M University
ip hop feminism l is an emergent interdisciplinary field of
study forged from the symbolic annihilation of young
women and girls of color in the popular media, and shap­
ed by artists, activists and scholars using the language and opposi­
tional consciousness of hip hop to craft a culturally relevant, gen­
der-specific creative, intellectual, political movement. It also uses
an intersectional mode of analysis to articulate group experience
in order to transfoml the social reality of communities of color still
marred by stmctural inequality (Phillips, Reddick-Morgan, and
Stephens 2005; Durham 2007; Richardson 2007; Peoples 2008).
Media literacy is integral to hip hop feminist studies. Media litera­
cy can be broadly defined as the ability to critically engage with
media and cultural products, practices or performances through
the interpretive processes of deconstruction or contextualization,
applied media production, advocacy or political activism (Hobbs
1998). TIlis article provides a brief overview of hip hop feminist
studies through the lens of media studies, and offers a media liter­
acy model to stage what Marc Lamont Hill describes as critical
pedagogies oj, about, and with hip hop (Hill 2009). The media lit­
eracy model raises awareness about power relations, analyzes lived
and symbolic bodies, and provides cOImmmicative tools to partici­
pate in public conversations concerning women from the hip hop
or the "post" generation (e.g., post-civil rights, post-feminist, post­
colonial).2 TIle model along with concrete examples extracted
from classroom instmction provides a practical application for what
can be more precisely called hip hop feminist media studies.
Hip hop feminist media studies marks media studies as a particular
approach as well as an entry point into the field, and it makes ex­
plicit the assumptions about the role, the representation, and the
relationship of women to the production and consumption of me­
dia. The development of hip hop feminist studies could be map­
ped by media assumptions alone. Two major threads in hip hop
feminist studies tackle representation. The first thread, for exam­
ple, addresses the underrepresentation of homegirls who are writ­
ten out of official hip hop history (Watkins 2005). Early hip hop
studies mirrored rock music research in its treatment of women.
H
117
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INTERNATIONALJOURNAL OF AFRICANA STUDIES
The homegirl could enter the field either as "one of the boys"
(Gaunt 1995), the sexually accessible female fan or cheerleader
(Guevara 1996), or as the nascent artist coming to voice Imder the
guarded direction of her male creative sponsor (Emerson 2002).
These examples demonstrate how the female experience has
been overlooked, and therefore situates the homegirl at the pe­
riphery of hip hop culture. Nancy Guevara argues, "the lll1dermin­
ing, deletion, or derogatory stereotyping of women's creative role
in the development of minority culture is a routine practice that
serves to impede any progressive artistic or social development by
women that might threaten male hegemony in the sphere of cul­
ture production" (1996). Guevara, Tricia Rose (1994), Cheryl
Keyes (1993, 2002, 2004). and others disrupt hip hop phallocen­
tricity by identifying female emcees/rappers, tumtablists/deejays,
graffiti writers/aerosol artists, b-girls, and dancers. More import­
antly, they interrogate an often celebrated hypermasculinity,
which hinges on heteronormativity and female subordination
(Rose 1994). Their interventions offer a more inclusive discussion
of hip hop by intersecting racialized class witk gender.
The cultural criticism that Rose, Guevara, and Keyes provide
explores the gendered experience of yOllilg Latina and Black wom­
en and girls who cultivate distinct literacies and interpretive com­
munities using a race-gender "double consciousness" that might
not be explicitly feminist or womanist, but it is decidedly female­
focused (Rose 1994; Willis 1997; Pough 2002, 2003, 2004a, 2004b;
Richardson 2007a, 2007b). Female rappers, for example, extend
the blues woman tradition by publicly addressing sexual politics us­
ing vulgar, aggressive or profane language, which defies traditional
codes of femininity or middle class respectability (Galll1t 1995;
Haugen 2003). '\t\7bile hip hop is assumed to be a masculine de­
fined space, it remains a site where homegirls stage public redress
(Keyes 2002). The musical redress is best exemplified by the
answer rap, but could be extended to the memoir (Steffans 2005),
the personal essay Qones 1994; Hampton 2001; Jamila 2002), spo­
ken word and poetry (McDonnell 2001; Frazier 2006; de Leon
2007), or ordinary speech acts that work to demystify hip hop's
"golden boy."3 Here, there is an acknowledgement in the first
thread that women and girls can use media to give voice or speak
back to patriarchy from a particular standpoint.
Along with speaking back, other researchers within this thread
attempt to redefine hip hop by suggesting so-called urban male
HIP Hop FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES
119
expressions like rap are rooted, if not replicated, in Black girl cul­
ture. Consider the work of ethnomusicologist Kyra Gaunt (2006).
She remaps rap musicality (e.g., the break and vocal line) to Black
girl hand-claps, game-songs and dance improvisation (Gaunt 1995;
Guevara 1996). Moreover, the interplay between singing and rap­
ping in songs perfonned by female emcees, such as Angie Stone
(fonnerly Angie B of Sequence) and Queen Latifah in the early
1980s predate those from male rap artists such as Andre 3000
(Outkast) and Mos Def (Black Star), who are considered cutting­
edge because they experiment with various vocal styles and music
traditions. By documenting female artists and our artistry rooted
or replicated in girl culture, researchers demonstrate the ways
yotmg Latina and Black women and girls actively contribute as
producers of hip hop culture.
If the first thread of hip hop feminist studies recognizes UIl­
derrepresentation as the central concern contributing to the in­
visibility of the homegirl, the second thread calls attention to the
overrepresentation or the hypervisibility of the sexually objecti­
fied female body in exploitive media. The second thread is dem­
onstrated by the shift in focus from the empowering images of the
fashion-forward fly girl o{ the Mrocentric Queen mother (Keyes
2002) to stereotypes, such as the sexually adventurous freak (Hill
Collins 2004). There are several factors contributing to the shift
that cannot be explored in detail in this article. Elsewhere, I de­
scribe the profitable marriage between hip hop culture and the
adult entertainment industry (Levande 2008; Miller-Young 2008;
Watkins 2005; Durham 2012). The booty, for example, has served
as a racial sign of sexual difference historically (Willis 2010). TIle
booty makes hip hop intelligible to a young VVl1ite male audience
previously adept at consuming racially coded pornography defin­
ing Black female desirability from behind (Dines 2010).4 Describ­
ing the shift in rap representations in the music video, Imani
Perry recalls,
It seemed to happen suddenly. Every time one turned
on BET [Black Entertainment Television} or MTV [Music
Television], one encountered a disturbing music video:
Black men rapped surrounded by dozens of Black and
Latina women dressed in bathing suits, or scantily clad
in some other fashion. Video after video proved tile
same, each one more objectifYing than the former.
Some took place in strip clubs, some at the pool, at tile
OF AFRICANA STUDIES
beach, or in hotel rooms, but the recurrent theme was
dozens of half-naked women (2004, 175).
Perry points to the increased sexual objectification of Latina
and Black women in rap music videos as hip hop becomes profit­
able for youth culture industries, such as BET and M1V. Her obser­
vations about the cultural changes signal a shift in the academic
discussions about hip hop as well. Researchers from the first
thread use media literacy cultivated by minoritized youth to ex­
plain the complexity of hip hop aesthetics and signifying systems
to folks outside the culture. In a way, ethnographies from a cultu­
ral studies perspective worked to legitimate hip hop in the acade­
my. TIle second thread, however, sees media literacy as required
weaponry for the same minoritized youth who are assaulted with a
barrage of controlling images and so-called negative media mes­
sages in popular hip hop. There is no explicit pronouncement, but
there is a definite assumption about an all-powerful media manipu­
lating a vulnerable, if not passive, audience. As hip hop studies ex­
pands from its earlier humanistic traditions, a quasi-media effects
emerges to explain the adverse impact of-hip hop in the lives of
Black youth and women. Dionne Stephens and April Few, for ex­
ample, interviewed fifteen low-income Mrican American middle
school youth about body images using hip hop controlling images
of self representations, such as gold diggers. TI1e girls intemalize
Eurocentric standards of beauty from hip hop imagery (Stephens
and Few 2007). Drawing from Stephens, other researchers show
increased exposure to stereotypes in hip hop music videos over
time adversely affected Black girls' sexual schemas, and exposure
to rap music could predict the occurrence of health risk behaviors
and STDs (Stephens and Phillips 2003; Wingood, et al. 2003;
Ward, Hansbrough, and Walker 2005; Watkins 2005). Although
Stephens and Perry use different methods to describe the chang­
ing landscape of hip hop, a common strand stemming from the
second thread suggests that the dominate stereotypes and images
of the Latina and Black female body constrain how we can imag­
ine ourselves in the culture.
The two m<yor thread.. of hip hop feminist studies rely on me­
dia to stake positions about the role, representation, and the rela­
tionship that Latina and Black females have with hip hop produc­
tion and consumption. To be certain, I have oversimplified these
threads to identify distinctions in order to map an altemative gen­
ealogy of hip hop feminist studies. The second thread dominates
HIP Hop FEML'lIST MEDIA STUDIES
121
the academic discussion of hip hop, especially as it concems gen­
der and sexuality. This is in part due to the cultural currency of rap
misogyny in popular hip hop production as well as the profit-driv­
en knowledge production pushed by an academic industrial com­
plex that no longer values the labor-intensive ethnographic field­
work some researchers conduct to describe the nuance of Black
culture. Cultural immersion is imperative to flesh our complex and
often contradictory relationship with hip hop, which goes beyond
the exhausted heteronormative metaphor of hip hop love or hate.
Hip hop feminist media studies attempts to weave the two mcyor
threads to offer a multiperspectival approach to exploring the lived
and imagined reality of women of color from the hip hop gene­
ration.
MEDIA LITERACY AND HlP Hop FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES
That media-makers craft communication across different plat­
forms to persuade, entertain and inform audiences is the hallmark
of media studies. Media are pedagogical- teaching us about our­
selves, others and our place in the world. Media literacy, then, in­
vites us to explore the stories media-makers choose to tell. Hip hop,
as a part of the mediaJandscape, also perfonn "public pedagogy"
(Hall 2009) by conveying stories of the "post" generation through
embodied, expressive Mrodiasporic art. Hip hop cultivated my
race-gender-class consciousness as a Black girl living in public
housing years ago, and it continues to unlock the imaginative pos­
sibilities of language as a media studies educator today (Durham
2011). The scholarly and community-ba"ed media studies that I
bring to the classroom works to bridge the real and the imaginary
body from popular media and locate it within a specific social,
historical and political context. Hip hop feminist media studies culls
three interdisciplinary fields, and the approach uses feminism(s)
and a media literacy model to examine hip hop cultural products
and performances made for; about, or by women of color. The
central aim of this approach is to understand the symbolic and
lived reality of women of color, so that we can hone "tactics" of en­
gagement to advocate for ourselves in shared struggles for self de­
termination. In this way, hip hop feminist media studies offers more
than a skill, it offers a liberatory strategy in a vVhite supremacist
capitalist heteropatriarchal media-centric society (hooks 1992;
Smith 2006).
Hip hop feminist media studies is one of several approaches de­
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INTERNATIONALJOURNAL OF AFRICANASTUDIES
veloped across the academy that uses hip hop as pedagogy (Rahn
2002; Pough 2004; Dimitriadis 2009; Hall 2009; Pulido 2009) or
what Marc Lamont Hill calls hip hop based education (2009). I
draw from Hill, A.A. Akom (2009) and Ruth Nicole Brown (2009)
who describe pedagogical approaches that are African-centered,
transgenerational and dialogic, experimental and experiential, co­
operative, and potentially transformatory. Akom and his colleagues
adopt a Freirian model to flesh out the ways Critical Hip Hop Peda­
gogy (CHHP) merges theory with practice; Hill draws primarily from
cultural studies scholars to explore the ways educators can use
pedagogies of, about and with hip hop to examine iden tity and so­
cial formation, generate cultural criticism, and teach other sub­
jects, such as history. 111eir approaches are necessarily messy. By
this I mean, they pull from the popular; lived experience, and com­
munity fieldwork projects, and place them alongside canonical cul­
tural and sociological theory-in effect legitimating underrepre­
sented voices and forms of knowledge. At first glance, CHHP and
Hill's "tripartite" appear unwieldy, but the strength of both ap­
proaches is the focus on media literacy. Media are in tegrated not
merely to "connect" ,..rith youth, but to facilitate critical thinking
that can extend beyond the classroom. Their approaches demon­
strate how media literacy can serve as a "form of literacy for free­
dom" (Akom 2009).
Hip hop feminist media studies is heavily informed by the work of
Ruth Nicole Brown who privileges the experiences of Black girls,
or the homegirls from her community-based initiative called SOL­
HOT (Saving Our Lives, Hearing Our Truths). In Black Gi1'lhood
Celebration, Brown outlines hip hop feminist pedagogy as one that:
(1) appreciates creative production expressed through language,
art or activism, (2) privileges the in-betweenness of a Black girl
epistemology or a Black feminist standpoint, (3) values and cares
about the shared knowledge produced by Black girl presence, (4)
interrogates the limitations and possibilities of hip hop, feminism,
and pedagogy, and is therefore self adjusting (5) and, stages the
political through performance-based cultural criticism (2009). Her
description resembles the group-based consciousness and concrete
knowledge that anchors Black feminist thought (Hill Collins
2000). Drawing from Gaunt, Brown suggests media and the body
are both technologies that transmit cultural memory. Watching a
video file capturing a multiethnic, transgenerational cipher of
home girls performing a Black girl dance called Little Sally Walker,
HIP Hop FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES
123
Brown remarked,
Every time I watch the video, I learn more about the
girls with whom I work, the purpose of SOLHOT, and the
sanctity of Black girls and women coming together for
the purpose of collective celebration. ... I played the
video version of little Sally \Valker for my daughter's
father [in the kitchen] ... ''You all were dancing. Okay
..." He waits for me to explain. I go numb. I stare at
him expressionless. «Is tllat all you saw? Forget it then."
I forfeit (2009, 102-103).
At an invited conference, Brown adds,
The audience watched a short dip of the video un­
moved ... Barbara, the same SOLHOT homegirl who re­
corded the dance vvith her cell phone, attended the talk
and was searching for tissue to \..>ipe her weeping eyes as
she viewed her production on the big screen ...
Someone looking like a "real" researcher raised his
hand and said something to the effect of "So you all
dance. Wbo does not dance? Tell me about how SOL­
HOT creates community and exists as a site of political
education."
I [Ruth-Nicole Brown] know the power of little Sally
"'Talker because I can feel it ... I know we are doing
much more than dancing (2009, 103-104).
Brown invites the two men from the Black private and White
public sphere to see hip hop through the lens of Black girls. The
female-focused perfommnces even make the sacred hip hop ci­
pher lmintelligible to the men who see 'Just dancing" rather than
the participatory citizenship, athleticism, and improvisation that
often accompanies theorizations about the dance practices per­
formed by b-boys or male break-dancers (Guevara 1996).5 Brown
emphasizes embodied forms of knowledge and she locates her
theorizations about hip hop pedagogy from the local, interpretive
community in which she is immersed. Brown and her homegirls
enact the very ethos of hip hop. From the two exchanges, how­
ever, Black girl cultural production and Black women's intellectual
production are devalued. Brown remains unapologetic. "[SOLHOT]
is living and breathing our feminism, invoking the word, in the
same institutional spaces that seem to thrive on patriarchal leader­
ship, and a hip hop feminist pedagogy that feels too much and too
little like school for critics on both sides" (2009, 104). For Brown,
hip hop feminist pedagogy requires researchers to use new lan­
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INTERNATIONALJOURNAL OF AFruCANA STUDIES
guage, new frames of reference, and locate new sites to recall,
remember and represent the homegirls from the hip hop "gen­
deration."
Like Brown, my articulation of hip hop feminist media studies
comes from embodied knowledge cultivated in the classroom where
I teadl hip hop feminism and popular culture, and from com­
munity-based workshops where I have engaged .vith youth by shar­
ing media literacy. Examining gender representations in media is
not a new enterprise. I emphasize the term articulation to mark
the ways hip hop cultural products, hip hop feminist theorizations,
and media studies approaches congeal at this moment to form a
distinct intellectual project within hip hop studies. TIle need to
name it, to explain it comes from a real place. As Brown demon­
strates, it comes from our frustrated efforts of translating hip hop
aesthetics and knowledge outside masculinist frameworks. It comes
from the educator who held up Home Girls Make Some Noise! Hip
Hop Feminism Anthology (2007) and asked panelists: "I have the
book, but how do I teach it?"
The media literacy model is my formal attempt to answer the
educator's question. I identify three entry points to engage with
hip hop cultural products and performances made for, about or by
women of color: awareness, analysis, and advocacy (see Figure 1).
In the follmving section, I explain each entry point and offer
classroom examples that reflect experiential, experimental hip
hop pedagogy. I dose by sharing suggested classroom exercises
and a topical reference guide, which serves as an additional re­
source for educators interested in teaching hip hop feminist media
studies.
FIGURE 1: MEDIA LITERACY MODEL
AWARENESS
The manifold aim of awareness is to understand the conversa­
tions about gender and sexuality that take place in hip hop cul­
HIP Hop FEMINIST MEDLt\ STUDIES
125
ture and in the academic field of hip hop studies, acknowledge
the aesthetic contributions of homegirls, and explore the group
experiences that characterize the hip hop generation. Bakari Ki­
twana, for example, explains the world in which the hip hop gen­
eration emerges. He suggests, increased visibility of Black youth
culture impacts black media representations and the "Afro-Ameri­
canization" of Wl1ite youth; globalization intensifies poverty in
new deindustrialized city centers; new racism and the "illusion of
inclusion" supplants Jim Crow; state militarism is legitimated by ra­
cially biased laws and public policy regarding drugs and senten­
cing; and, the overall quality of life for Black youth decreases as a
result of poverty, HlVIAIDS, and suicide (2002). Welfare reform
transforms communities of color as well. Political elites and news
media-makers constmct the welfare queen to gamer public sup"
port for limited benefits and mandatory employment for poor
Latina and Black mothers (Smith-Shomade 2002; Jordan-Zachery
2009). In many ways, welfare reform operates as a gender-specific
form of racial surveillance by policing reproductive choices, work
opportunities and housing eligibility for poor mothers (Price
2007). The welfare queen morphs into hip hop's baby mama; both
use children to sipllOn money from fathers or the patriarchal state
(Cooper 2007). Awareness asks us to make explicit the interrela­
tionship of the two images that depict Latina and Black female
sexuality as predatory. Moreover, it asks us to connect the past
with the present so that we can better understand the historical
context by which hip hop images gain meaning.
The emergence of hip hop feminism is addressed as well. Early
on, we identify the intellectual interventions from Tricia Rose,
Joan Morgan, and Gwendolyn Pough. Rose, for example, docu­
ments homegirls as hip hop practitioners and active consumers
while Morgan coins the term hip hop feminism and situates hip
hop feminist sul?jectivity within a longer trajectory of Black femi­
nist thought. Pough places Black, hip hop and third wave fem­
inism in conversation with one another. and outlines hip hop ped­
agogy. Pough, Rose, and Morgan describe the complex, often con­
tradictory relationship women have with hip hop, yet each are in­
formed by the oppositional consciousness embedded in hip hop.
We also interrogate the very idea of popular hip hop as opposi­
tional. Hip hop media, for example. can recall dominant relations
of power by reproducing racist stereotypes about Black female
hyper sexuality and by reproducing the logic of capitalism through
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INTERNATIONALJOURNAL OF AFRICANA STUDIES
its familiar trope of the pimp and ho. Hip hop feminism is anchor­
ed by in terse ction ality. Through hip hop feminism, we adopt a
gender standpoint to describe the cultural production and COll­
slunption of homegirls.
Cultural immersion is in tegral to become familiar with the life
stories, the artistry, and the ongoing conversations about the hip
hop genderation. I rely heavily on videos, songs and spoken word
to hmnanize academic discussions about real bodies, and to privi­
lege marginalized forms of knowledge in the academy. Students
are exposed to independent art in order to raise awareness about
alternative spaces of cultural production. This exposure encoura­
ges students to consider why particular forms of hip hop media,
such as queer and feminist rap music, are underrepresented in the
popular. Here, we return to stnlctmal and cultural constraints.
Take the gender concept of respectability. Interviews with emcees
and graffiti writers suggest girls and young women who dare to
participate in male-dominated street culture with male crews (of­
ten at night) risk "losing" respectability (Guevara 1996). A popular
artist like Seyonce, for example, avoids acquiring the bad reputa­
tion of the "loose" woman by adopting a freaky stage persona cal­
led Sasha Fierce. Cultural immersion expands how we might think
about female art and consider the conditions that media are form­
ed. Exploring the hip hop generation, hip hop feminism, and fe­
male art are all components of awareness. Awareness underpins
the other moments of the media literacy model, and it is there­
fore a suggested entry point to critically analyze racialized gender
and sexuality in hip hop media.
ANALYSIS
Analyzing hip hop media is useful to thinking critically about
the '\AI4yS messages are constructed and interpreted. Textual meth­
ods, such as discourse, semiotic or rhetorical analyses, examine the
meaning-making process of language and culture. As discussed
earlier, hip hop feminism is concerned with the underrepresenta­
tion and overrepresentation of women and girls. In class, we ask:
"Vhat stories do we tell in hip hop media about women and girls?
How are these stories communicated? Who benefits from the cir­
culation of these stories? Why are the stories (re) told? To decode
hip hop culture, we develop a common vocabulary by recalling rep­
resentations, stereotypes and sexual scripts germane to hip hop
culture (Phillips, Reddick-Morgan, and Stephens 2005; Stokes
HIP Hop FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES
127
2007). Jotting terms associated with women is an immediate, ef­
fective strategy to illustrate the significance of sexuality that de­
fines the visibility and desirability of Latina and Black women. In
addition to iden tifying gender represen tations, we leam visual cul­
ture techniques and forms of objectification. vVe incorporate these
decoding strategies to read still and moving images in hip hop
media.
Color, for example, is used in visual culture to convey meaning
in still and moving imagery. Consider pink, which is a color associ­
ated with girlhood or femininity today. Pink also recalls prepubes­
cent sexuality, blending the innocence of vVhite with the adult
sexuality represen ted by red. Also, sexual proficiency can be re­
flected by the intensity of pink (e.g., hot pink). vVhen we decode
aJune/July 2010 Vibe magazine cover featuring rapper Nicki Minaj
wearing hot pink, thigh-high boots in a baby doll dress, it suggests
sexually proficiency and gender subordination. The latter combi­
nation is a familiar trope in pornography and her represen tation
recalls infantilization, a form of objectification where women are
depicted as children. Pink is repeated in moving images as well. I
point to the music video "vVhateverYou Like" by rapper T.I. (2008).
Music videos involve-a multisensory engagement where the inter­
play with image, narrative and sound work together or undercut
one another. Students recognize how prepubescent sexuality is
conveyed by the red and vVhite stripe uniform and the pink bed­
room of the rapper's love interest. T.I. introduces the low-wage fe­
male worker to the accoutrements of high society and he grooms
her sexually as she dons solid red by the close of the video. Stu­
dents often highlight tensions with the text. They grapple with
objectification illustrated visually and through rap lyrics with the
vocal delivery that they interpret as a "love" song. The sing-song
rap T.I. performs counters the aggressive masculinity from other
rap music. Not only do studen ts appreciate his vulnerability, they
suggest the melody works to undercut a narrative that essentially
tells Black women to barter our bodies in exchange for his wealth.
His love interest is adored in the music video, yet women who ex­
press desire for money or opt to sell sex for financial security are
demonized as gold diggers and hoes. Through encoding, we can
better lmderstand how gender and sexuality are constructed in
the hip hop imaginary.
It is important for us to recognize ruptures when analyzing
music videos featuring female rappers and singers. They, like the
128
INTERNATIONAL] OURNAL OF AFRICANA STUDIES
actresses and dancers of the hip hop dream world, participate in
media industries tmder particular structural and cultmaI con­
straints. The video "Wait a Minute Gust a Touch)" by Estelle (2007)
provides an example of the way we can read mpture on multiple
levels. First, Estelle contemplates a one-night stand with a man
she meets at a party. From the outset, Estelle defines the parame­
ters of the potential sexual encoullter. The refrain "wait a mi­
nute," works to slow his sexual aggression and it serves as a point
of critical reflection for the rapper who walks to the front door,
gives him goodbye kiss and walks away from the man. Close up
shots offer Estelle subjectivity denied to other women in the hip
hop dreamworld that might be depersonalized when the camera
frames the booty or pans the body. Estelle retums the gaze. The
audience is invited to identify with Estelle and understand the
narrative from her point of view. vVhile Estelle discusses sex, it is
seen as fun and flirtatious (e.g., just a touch). Rana Emerson ar­
gues hegemonic and counter hegemonic themes, such as sex and
freedom, occur simultaneously and are interconnected, and they
demonstrate the complex and contradictvry representations of
Black womanhood (2002). By incorporating multiple decoding strat­
egies and contextualizing representations within specific structur­
al and cultural constraints, we are able to recognize ruptures and
the in-betweeness that hip hop feminism privileges.
ADvOCACY
Advocacy emphasizes accountability. New knowledge acquired
from hip hop culture and generated through classroom collabora­
tion should be shared publicly with the communities we call home.
The media literacy model is multidirectional because our commu­
nity engagement can raise awareness about the hip hop gendera­
tion and anchor our analysis of hip hop media. The imperative to
share notwithstanding, Advocacy should not be prescriptive. In­
stead, modes of advocacy could be co-created to respond to the
needs of students, who are members of diverse communities as
well. During one semester, students developed talking points to
educate their peers about Black representations during the Don
Imus spectacle while another group of students requested we take
time to collectively address partner abuse after then-boyfriend
Chris Brown battered Rhianna. 'While there are activist-oriented
approaches that orchestrate service learning as a form of built-in
accountability, I want to encourage a kind of critical reflection
HIP Hop FEMINIST MEDIA STUD IES
129
that has the potential to inspire willing students to use media
literacy to transform their lives and the lives of others. TIlat said,
advocacy at the level of the personal should not be llilderestimat­
ed. It is by personal reflection, interpersonal interaction, and col­
lective engagement that we perform praxis. This point is especial­
ly salient for yOtmg women of color who learn a vocabulary to
name their lived experience using a hip hop feminist standpoint
and familiar franles of reference. Naming concretizes experience;
it makes theory real. We can advocate for ourselves. Remember,
Joan Morgan nanled hip hop feminism and she ignited a move­
ment.
Collaborative performance is another strategy employed in
Advocacy to incite change. Exploiting the emotive and evocative
power of language, performance compels us to (re)act at a visceral
level. Performance privileges embodied ways of knoV'.ring. Here,
we might recall Ruth Nicole Brown and the hip hop cipher cap­
tured on a cell phone at the commllility center. In the classroom,
we read "If Women Ran Hip Hop" by Aya de Leon (2007). de
Leon uses hip hop as a metaphor for society, and she describes a
world free of ageism, homophobia, hypermasculinity, misogyny
and violence. Using de Leon as a template, students complete the
phrase: "If women ran hip hop...." Their individual statements are
compiled and composed as a llilified performance read aloud. The
performance stages citizenship. Personal dreams become a part of
an overall (re)vision of hip hop. Students hear their wishes voiced
by others. Their voice -the single sentence -is powerful when
heard in concert with their peers who imagine what hip hop could
be. The performance is in part a form of collective naming or advo­
cacy where we see our vested interests connected with other
members of the classroom comrmmity. Through awareness, anal­
ysis, and advocacy, we can explore, examine and ultimately be­
come empowered to make real the world we envision.
CONCLUSION
In this article, I provided an alternative genealogy of hip hop
feminist studies, and I offered a media literacy model to llilder­
stand the symbolic and lived realty of the hip hop genderation.
The model illustrates how to think critically about hip hop media
and how to translate new knowledge to other commllilities. TIle
classroom is one commllility. It is a site where students can ex­
amine the twin processes of production and consumption. The
130
INTERNATIONALJOURNAL OF AFRICANA STUDIES
utility of the media literacy model is in its flexibility. It is capable
of responding to the changing hip hop media climate and the
changing needs of the classroom community. The creative-intel­
lectual work cultivated in the classroom from minoritized commu­
nities should be shared publicly like the hip hop art we analyze.
Hip hop feminist media studies serves as one approach where we can
explore, analyze and create culturally-relevant media that informs
how we understand society.
Hip hop feminist media studies engages with hip hop cultural
products and performances made for, about or by women of color.
The approach goes beyond integrating audiovisual material about
women in hip hop in the classroom. It necessitates that students
and educators become versed in the lived realities of women of
color, and recognize that women of color share an interpretive
community with distinct literacies to define the world. Put anoth­
er way, our lived experience mediates how we express culture. In
this article, I provided practical classroom exercises and examples
of decoding still and moving hip hop advertisements. In one class,
however, we learn more than thirty repre~ntations, images and
sexual scripts associated with women in hip hop, six basic tech­
niques to decode visual culture, and six forms of sexual objectifica­
tion. 6 The interpretive possibilities are abundant, especially when
we represent embodied knowledge in forms devalued in the acad­
emy (e.g., spoken word). Hip hop 'culture and hip hop studies al­
ways have been enriched by the creative and intellectual contribu­
tions of women and girls. Hip hop feminist media studies serves as
the latest example in a long tradition of women bringing wreck.
HIP HOp FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES
131
ApPENDIX
SUGGESTED RESOURCES FOR COURSES IN
HIP Hop FEMINIsT MEDIA STUDIES
HlP Hop ART AND THE POETICS OF GENDER
Batiste, Stephanie. 2007. Hip-hop and this one-woman show. In Home
girls make some noise: Hip hop feminism anthology, eds. G. Pough, E. Rich­
ardson, A. Durham and R. Raimist. Mira Lorna, CA: Parker Pub­
lishing.
Gaunt, Kyra Dallielle. 1995. African American women between hop­
scotch and hip-hop: "Must be the Music (That's Tumin' Me On)."
In Feminisr", rmlltiwltumlism,and the media: Global diversities, ed. A.N.
Valdivia. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Guevara, Nancy. 1996. Women .mtin' rappin' breakin'. In Dwppin' sci­
ence: C1itical essays on rap music and hip hop culture, ed. W.E. Perkins.
Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
McDonnell, Evelyn. 2001. Divas .declare a spoken-\vord revolution. In
Black feminist cultuml criticism., ed. J. Bobo. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Raimist, Rachel. 2007. B-Girls, femcees, graf girls and lady deejays:
'Women artists in hip hop. In Home girls make some noise: Hip hop fem­
inism anthology, ed. G. Pough, E. Richardson, A. Durham and R.
Raimist. Mira Lom<x Parker Publishing.
Rose, Tricia. 1994. Black noise: Rap music and black culture in CO'ntemporary
America, Music/Culture. Hanover, NH: University Press of New Eng­
land.
HIP Hop FEMINIsM AND!AS THE THIRD WAVE
Hill Collins, Patricia. 2006. From Black Power to hip hop: Racism, nation­
alism, and feminism, politics, history, and social change. Philadelphia,
PA: Temple University Press.
Morgan, Joan. 2006. Hip-hop feminist In The women s movement toda),: An
encydopedia of thinl-wave feminism, ed. 1,. Heywood. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press.
Peoples, vVhitney A. 2008. "Under construction": IdentifYing founda­
tions of hip-hop feminism and exploring bridges between black
second-wave and hip-hop feminisms. 1'vletidians: Feminism, race, trans­
nationalism 8: 19-52.
Pough, Gwendolyn D. 2002. Love feminism but where's my hip hop?:
Shaping a black feminist identity. In Colonize this!: Young WOTnen of
color on todays feminism, eds. D. Hernandez and B. Rehman. New
York, NY: Seal Press (distributed by Publishers Group West).
Springer, Kimberly. 2002. Third wave black feminism? Signs: Journal of
Women in CultU1l! and Society 27 (4): 1059-1082.
132
INTERNATIONAL]OURNAL OF AFRICANASTUDIES
CULTURAL IMAGES AND SEXUAL SCRIPTS
Keyes, Cheryl. 2004. Empowering self, Making choices, creating spaces:
Black female identity via rap music perfonnances. In That the faint!:
The hip-hoi} studies 'Il'!adm; ed. M.A. Neal and M. Forman. New York,
N"Y: Routledge.
Rivera, Raquel Z. 2003. Butta pecan mamis. In New York ricans fmtn the
hip hop zone. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stephens, Dionne, and Layli Phillips. 2003. Freaks, gold diggers, divas,
and dykes: The sociohistorical development of adolscent African
American's sexual scripts. Sexuality & C'llituTe7 (1):3-50.
Stokes, Carla. 2007. Representin' in cyberspace: Sexual scripts, self-defi~
nition, and hip hop culture in Black American adolescent girls'
home pages. Cultu~ Health and Sexuality 9 (2): 169-184.
s
HIP Hop DREAMWORLDS
Emerson, Rana. 2002. "v"'here my girls at?": Negotiating black woman­
hood in music videos. Gendu & SOCief:Jl 16 (1): 115-135.
Fitts, Mako. 2008. "Drop it like it's hot": Culture industry laborers and
their perspectives on rap music video production. Meridians: Fmni­
nism, Race, Transnationalism 8: 211-235.
..
Perry, Imani. 2004. The venus hip-hop and the pink ghetto: Negotiating
spaces for women. In PnJjJhets oJ the hood: politics and poetics in hip hop.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Richardson, Elaine. 2007b. "She was workin like foreal": Critical literacy
and discourse practices of African American females in the age of
hip hop. Discourse & Sociel)' 18: 789-809.
Sharpley-"Vhiting, T. Denean. 2007. "I see the same ho?": Video vixens,
beauty culture, and diasporic sex tourism. In Pimps up, ho's donm:
Hip hop's hold an young black women. New\brk, NY: New York Universi­
ty Press.
Shaviro, Steven. 2005. Supa dupa fly: Black ,'VOmen as cyborgs in hip­
hop videos. Quarterly Rel.liew ofFilm & Video 22 (2): 169-179.
Smith-Shomade, Beretta E. 2002. I got your bitch!: Colored women,
music videos, and punnany commodity. In Shaded lives: African-Ame1~
ican wmneTl and television. New Brunswick, N J.: Rutgers University
Press.
URBAN GIRLHOOD
Brown, Ruth Nicole. 2009. Black gitlhood celebration: Toward a hip-hop
fmninist pedagogy, Mediated Youth. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Keeling, Kara. 2003. Ghetto heaven: Set It Off and the valorization of
black lesbian butch-femme sociality. Black Scholar 22(1): 33-46.
Pastor, Jennifer, Jennifer McCormick, Michelle Fine, Ruth Andolsen,
Nora Friedman, Nikki Richardson, Tanzania Roach, and Marina
HIP Hop FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES
133
Tavarez. 2007. Makin' homes: An urban girl thing. In Urban gills
re1lisited: Building stTengths, ed. B.J.R. Leadbeater and N. \Vay. New
York, 1\TY: New York University Press.
TaylOl~ Jill McLean, Carmen Veloria, and Martina Verba. 2007. Latina
girls: "vVe're like sisters -most times!" In Urban gids 'I7!1Jisited: Build­
ing stnmgtlis, ed. B.J.R. Leadbeater and N. "'Tay. New York, 1\'Y: New
York University Press.
Willis, Andre. 1997. A womanist turn on the hip-hop theme: Leslie Har­
ris's Just another girl on the IR T. In Language, 1-h.'yth11l, and sound:
Blacll papulaT cultuTeS into the twenty-first centwy, eds. J.K. Adjaye and
A.R. Andrews. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
MOTHERHOOD, WELFARE REFORM
Coopel~
& REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE
Brittney. 2007. Excavating the love below: The state as patron of
the baby mama and other ghetto hustles. In Home giTls make some
noise: Hip hap feminism anthology, eds. G. Pough, E. Richardson, A.
Durham and R. Raimist Mira Lorna: Parker Publishing.
Jordan-Zachery, Julia Sheron. 2009. You better work: "Rehabilitation"
and welfare policy. In Black women, cultll'ral imagrJS, and social polic),.
New York, NY: Routledge.
Price, Kimala. 2007. Hip-hop feminism at the political crossroads:
Organizing for reproductive justice and beyond. In Home gids make
some noise: Hip hap felhinism anthology, eds. G. D. Pough, E. Richard­
son, A. S. Durham and R. Raimist. Mira Lorna, CA: Parker Publish­
ing.
Smith-Shomade, Beretta. 2002. Pubic hair on my Coke and other freaky
tales: Black women as television News Events. In Shaded lives: Af1ican­
American women and television. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press.
134
INTERNATIONALJOURNAL OF AFRlCANA STUD IES
NOTES
L Hip hop feminism is a contested term. For a detailed discussion of
hip hop feminism, see "Under Construction" by V{hitney Peoples
(2008). In this article. I use it as an umbrella tenn to encompass
creative, intellectual work regarding girls and women in hip hop
culture and! or as part of the hip hop generation. I define hip hop
feminism as cultural, intellectual and political movement grounded
in the situated knowledge of women of color from the post civil
lights or hip hop generation who recognize culture as a pivotal site
for political intervention to challenge. resist and mobilize collec­
tives to dismande systems of exploitation. Dr. Zenele Isoke (2010)
contends: "Hip-hop feminism effectively challenges and transforms
power structures, social order, and "videspread cultural practices.
and is proving to be efficacious intersectional strategy for under­
standing complex identities and difference in Women's Studies and
across academic disciplines. Simultaneously, hip hop feminism en­
gages effective grassroots community-based social justice movements
across transnational frameworks."
2. Here, the hip hop generation references a "post" generation, which
deviates from the original 1965-1984 that B~kari Kitwana (2003) iden­
tifies. A.A. Akom (2009), for example, uses post hip hop generation
to desclibe those born after 1984. The range addresses the politi­
cal, economic and social changes for African Americans. Postfemi­
nism or the depoliticized consumption of female empowerment is
an important feature emerging alongside the mainstream absorp­
tion of rap and I want to suggest this places women within an inter­
secting, yet different mapping of the hip hop generation.
3. In her song, "Golden Boy," Res (2001) desClibes the rapper adorn­
ing bling and adored by women as a construction of the hip hop
imaginary sold to an uniformed public. Res adds, "Would they love
you if they knew all dle things we know? These golden boys are all a
fraud, don't believe their show ... Golden boy, life ain't a video."
4. In the 1990s, 2 Live Crew provided the porn chic or the popular
porn blueprint for the emergent lyrical and visual content in rap
music videos where regional representations of the booty and the
accompanying bass-heavy "booty" music eclipsed other aesthetic
forms for hip hop for audiences tuned into MTV programming,
such as Yo! MTV Raps (1988-1995). By 2001, Snoop Dogg produced
an award-winning adult film fashioned as a music video. The Tip
Drill music video that aired on the defunct BET Uncut in 2003 pro­
vides an important flashpoint to illustrate the convergence of the
backwards gaze ,'lith familiar tropes from pornography. The hip
hop music video formula highlights hypermasculinity through the
accumulation of wealth and sexually available women.
HIP Hop FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES
135
5. Addressing the devaluation of female dance practices, Nancy Gue­
vara adds: "To most commentators, breakdandng developed exclu­
sivelyas competition between males and requires this macho qual­
ity to be executed. But the assumption that breakdancing draws
only from male,elated activities ignores other possible influences.
The speedy footwork and acrobatic tricks of freestyle double-Dutch,
for instance, are no less impressive than those of breakdancing.
like most breaking moves, this energetic female street game de­
pends on how well the jumper balances her body weight, the swifl­
ness of leg and feet movements, and the gracefulness of her per­
fornlance" (1996, 58).
6. Students document representations £i'om readings. They add repre­
sentations from insider knowledge. Other forms of objectification
include: fragmentation, depersonalization, and tropicalization. Stu­
dents learn to deconstruct still and moving images by addressing
the significance of color, setting, and framing. See Appendix for
suggested resources for hip hop feminist media courses.
136
J
INTER..~ATIONAL OURl"JAL OF AFRICANA STUDIES
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] 40
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