While reading the article "She was Workin like Foreal" by Elaine Richardson, I found the topic to be very recurrent. Prior to reading this article, I’ve had discussion about this same topic: Do rap videos degrade Black women? This topic is brought up a lot in the black community however and it has brought much controversy. I was about 12 or 13 and in eighth grade when the song came out. I heard the song before I saw the video and I liked the song even though, back then, I didn’t know what the lyrics were about or really cared. All I knew was that it was a popular song at the time. I remember when the video came out and how kids in my eighth grade class, mostly the boys, would talk about the video was cool and how they liked it. I also remember so of my girl classmates talking about how they know how to do the dance that the women in the video were doing. About a year ago I saw the video for the first time and I thought it was very lude and distasteful. But the lyrics of the song were basically portrayed out in the video, but I don’t say that to condone the actions of the video, I just feel that most rappers rap about money, cars, and girls and all three were in video. But looking back on the time when I was 13, and listening to my peers say they enjoy s images like that at such a young age it troubles me because those images are not positive and the youth are inspired but what they see on television. Richardson does point this out in her article, basically saying how the images in the media can be the most influential things to young children. More specifically rappers and the “models” that are in the video. If a young sees that image of a black man in nice clothing and with women surrounding him, the boy is going to think if he (someday) has the same clothes or same car women will be all over him, which is not true. Also if a young girl sees an image of a woman in a video dancing and is surrounded by men and getting the attention, she’ll think that if she dresses like the video model or if she dances like the video model she’ll get the same attention which is not positive attention. If more positive images of black people were put into the media kids would what to aspire to be more than rappers and video dancers.
-Candice Frazier