Whether You're a Working Class Woman or Nicki Minaj, Marriage is Still the Ultimate Goal

The music video for Nicki Minaj’s hit song “Moment 4 Life” is at once both completely tame and highly problematic. The lyrics are, for the most part, very pro-woman, as Minaj sings about her successes as a hip hop artist which is a very male-dominated sphere: she sings “Don’t worry about me and who I fire/I get what I desire; it’s my empire…/In this very moment I’m king/ In this very moment I slayed Goliath with a sling.” The song itself presents Nicki as an empowered woman who has overcome significant obstacles and prejudices to become the star she is today.

The music video, however, completely negates these successes by portraying Minaj as a typical Disney princess, complete with a fairy godmother. She sings the lines “I wish I could have this moment for life,” while wearing a wedding dress and getting married to the co-star of her video, Drake, whose rapping is also featured in the song. Indeed, having the wedding as the focal point of the video seems to argue that the reason she is “king” is because she managed to tie down such a popular and wealthy rapper like Drake, not due to her own merits as a singer and artist. This type of portrayal simply reinforces the idea that, while women can now be accomplished in the same fields and occupations as men, their ultimate goal should still be marriage.

Isis King: Model or Media Spectacle?

America’s Next Top Model cycle 11 contestant Isis King was never the strongest competitor, but she was invited to compete for the title again in ANTM’s “All Stars” series this fall. I think this is largely due to the fact that she is transgendered. Her appearance on the reality show garnered significant media attention, and she was popular enough to be dubbed a “fan-favorite” and be included in the latest season. While there is no doubt that Isis is an extremely beautiful woman, she only made it into the top ten finalists in cycle 11 and she has already been eliminated from the current season, so it seems that she was simply being used as a spectacle to achieve higher viewership for the show.

In fact, Tyra Banks took such a liking to Isis’s story that she invited her on the Tyra Banks Show after Isis’s first appearance on ANTM and introduced her to a plastic surgeon who would perform her sex reassignment surgery pro bono. She made a second appearance after on the Tyra Banks Show after her surgery was completed to show her new success as a model and, indeed, as a woman: the big finale of the episode was that Isis’s boyfriend proposed to her in front of the live studio audience. The proposal and the sex change were given higher emphasis in this People magazine article than her modeling achievements. This representation enforces a myriad of American cultural values, such as the importance of marriage for women and plastic surgery as charity. While I think it’s important to integrate members of LGBTQ community into all aspects of the media, including television, I think America’s Next Top Model and the Tyra Banks Show’s representation of Isis was wholly exploitative, making her into a media spectacle for their own popularity.

Dr. Pepper 10: Since When is Soda Gendered?

How do you market a diet soft drink to men? If you’re Dr. Pepper, you rely on gender stereotypes of typical masculine and feminine roles. This advertisement for “Dr. Pepper 10” is set in a fictional action movie and uses the hero to sell the soda to men. He tells us that “It’s only 10 manly calories, but with all 23 flavors of Dr. Pepper. It’s what guys want.” It is obvious that Dr. Pepper is exploiting men’s insecurities over their own masculinity in this ad: the crux of the commercial’s argument is that masculinity is defined by a lack of femininity, a cultural belief that is extremely pervasive in our society. Indeed, women aren’t even allowed to drink it, as the hero tells us “ladies” that “Dr. Pepper 10 is our soda...You can keep the romantic comedies and lady-drinks—we’re good.” The advertisement ends with the slogan “Dr. Pepper 10: it’s not for women.”

Thankfully, this commercial has recently sparked a backlash in the online community, with websites such as Jezebel.com and Gothamist.com writing articles criticizing the way it enforced stereotypical gender roles. An online petition has even sprung up to have the ad pulled from the airwaves. What do you think it says about our society that men today see diet sodas as equitable to emasculation, to the point that advertisers feel the need to overcompensate to such an offensive degree?

"Men-Ups": A Gender-Bending Take on Traditional Pin-Ups

     Last night, I stumbled across University of South Florida student Rion Sabean's "Men-Ups" photography shoot. The series is a spoof of popular female pin-up models of the 1940's and 1950's, and I was surprised to see that the photographs push the boundaries of the gender binary in what I believe to be a good way. The pictures show attractive, strong men with typical masculine props, such as hatchets, baseball bats, and drills, in wholly emasculating positions.
     The juxtaposition between the manly men and their effeminate poses is surprising and comical. As Sabean says in this Jezebel.com article, "The imagery of showcasing the feminine/masculine ideals in one single image just struck me as something that could really work." Indeed, the stark contrast between the male models and their girly body language highlights the ridiculousness of both the masculine and feminine gender scripts our society places so much value upon. By giving the models props like drills and baseball bats, both items that could be seen as symbolic phalluses, and pairing them with highly sexualized traditional female poses, Sabean makes a well-executed critique of our culture's restrictive gender binary.