Literature Review

The average American over the age of two years old consumes more than 34 hours of television per week yet very few of them deconstruct what they consume. (NYDaily News 2014) The images of African American "young ladies" in hip-hop music videos has forged a negative/stereotypical brand into the bodies of all black women. These women go by many different names, some of the most popular include, video vixens, jump offs, video hoes, hoochies, eye candy, and ,most recent term, thots. 

The start of the African American vixen era began with a Khoian slave by the name of Sarah Baartman AKA “HOTentot Venus”. Sarah Baartman was the first African American female documented to be exploited sexually to europeans in the early 1800’s. Her physical characteristics where the basis for most prejudice and injustice cast upon her. At the young age of 20 she was forced to exhibit herself around Britain gyrating her nude buttocks and curvaceous assets for entertainment purposes thus creating the term VIXEN.

 

After traveling from London to Britain to Paris ,where she was displayed naked in their streets and labeled an animal by members of the community, Baartman was sold to a frenchman who then exploited her in France. As a vixen she was the subject of several scientific paintings that exploited her body and unique African American features.  “She was obliging enough to undress and allow herself to be painted in the nude,”(Fred Couvier). Years later after her novelty had worn off on Parisians, she began to drink heavily and support herself with prostitution.

 

Baartman died a few years later ,unable to cope with stresses of not being treated equally as a woman. Sarah Baartman’s story played a significant role in our research because it justified the beginning of the in human treatment given to african american women of such caliber. The fact that she didn't do it as a hobby but was forced to be exploited help further our research on the modernized African American VIXEN particularly, women in hiphop music videos.

 Two hundred years later, the exploitation of African American women has shifted from being a involuntary to strictly voluntary. 

 

"For me [our image] is a reminder of what is already the reality. The women in videos and stereotypes are just not the truth of who we are as a community... But sometimes...those stereotypes define us"( M.Obama, Essence 2010, 10).  Mrs. Obama's quote is one of the main reasons why we chose this topic. Our questions reside around the question that every black woman asked herself when portrayed in hip-hop videos: Why do all black women have to be viewed as sexualized prisoners of the media? Why are the performances of women in hiphop videos deeply affected by the historical nature of Black women's sexualized oppression? These research questions allow us to better obtain information about the historical and current portrayal of these women. 
I found ,by using the LexisNexis database system, was written by Ashante Infantry. In this periodical she introduces some of the stereotypes that come with such positions surrounding women in the hip hop music video industry by using effective qualitative research. In this article she also introduces a television show magnifying the realities of the women who are willingly used as sexual props to fulfill musicians visions referring to these women as "Bikini-clad Sisters".

 

The show "Breakin' In: The Making of a Hip Hop Dancer" , is originally directed by a Toronto TV Journalist named Elizabeth St. Philip who opts to focus on the lives of women who are actually involved in this lifestyle. "I watch music videos and I've always really been curious about who these women are...I've heard a lot of other people talk about what they think of women in music videos, but I'd never heard their perspectives" (St. Philip, CTV).  Phillips initial purpose of the show was to answer her and other peoples suspicions about the lives of these women after they leave the set. The does this by following their realities in real world scenery without the "REALITY TV" shenanigans. The article written by Ashante Infantry shined light to further the research on these women by introducing us to a show that would initially help answer all of our research questions. Although the lives on the women of this show may not end as abrubtly as Sarah Baartman, their intentional lifestyles are the same. Sarah Baartmen will forver be known as the WOMAN that men of that era lustfully admired with no regard for the pain that was felt by her. Sarah Baartman should be seen as the woman that no other woman wants to be rather than the MOTHER of VIXENS. Women should look at Sarah's life and try not to be the person that she was forced to be, but the person that she saw herself as befor she was exploited.