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THEY'RE what male fantasies are made of; one brown-skinned sister wearing painted-on jeans and four-inch stilettos with an ample booty and sleepy eyes.

Another woman is a petite baby-doll size with long bleached-blonde curls and supersize cleavage bursting out of the tiny piece of fabric that is her top. A third is wearing a metallic gold cutout bodysuit, heels and a micro-mini.

Collectively they strut around oozing sex, demonstrating all the sexual things a man would desire them to do. Who are they? Hip-hop models.

These are girls who make a living appearing in mainstream rap music videos, magazines, calendars and other forms of media.

Hip-hop models also dubbed as 'hip-hop honeys', 'dimes', 'video vixens' and 'eye candy' are seen by many, especially young impressionable black girls, as role models who they aspire to be like.

"I want to be a hip-hop video girl," says Kelly aka Lady Love from south London. "Well that's what men want me to be so I aim to please. I watch the videos on MTV Base, The Box and others music channels to get ideas on how to act sexy."

example

Just 14-years-old, Lady Love is a prime example of how numerous young girls use music videos in particular rap and hip-hop as a benchmark to define their sexuality. In a recent study in the US, a survey revealed that watching rap music videos that are overly sexy and violent led to alcohol abuse and promiscuity among young black girls.

Based on a survey of 522 African-American girls aged 14 to 18 who were asked how often they watched rap videos, questioned about their sex lives and asked to provide a urine sample for a marijuana screening, researchers found young black girls who frequently watched rap music videos were more likely to binge drink, have sex with multiple partners, test positive for marijuana and have a negative body image.

Published in the Journal of Women's Health, the report entitled 'Images of Sexual Stereotypes in Rap Videos and the Health of African-American Female Adolescents,' evaluated that the glamourised depictions of alcohol and drug used in conjunction with sexual imagery within in rap music videos suggested that "African-American girls' perceptions of stereotypical images of women may contribute to adverse health outcomes."

But is this true? Speaking to The Voice, Lady Love revealed that she wanted to be a professional pole dancer because they "earn a lot of money." She added: "Music videos, in particular rap such as 50 Cent or Jay-Z, teach me all the latest moves making me the centre of attention when I go clubbing. Guys love when you dance sexy like booty clapping, dropping or popping. If you can dance well everybody wants to dance with you making you buff."

expert

Admitting that she is not a virgin (she lost her virginity at 13) Lady Love watches music videos with the devotion most record companies long for and logs as much time in front of the TV as some spend in a full-time job; making her an expert on rap and hip-hop videos.

"You have New York—style videos, with the high-class, skinny girls who look like models. They just stand there looking good. And there's this one 50 Cent video with women on leashes.

"Then you have videos from Down South, with half-naked rump shakers, and others where the guys sit in barbers' chairs, and the girls show up in tight pants and bend over, and their booties start jiggling. I love watching them all. I wish I could be like them."

Echoing the report that suggests that young black girls become promiscuous by watching too much rap and hip-hop videos is Dr Alvin Poussaint.

A noted professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of numerous books on child psychiatry, with particular focus on the raising of African American children including his recent book 'Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victor,' which he co-wrote with Billy Cosby, he told the Voice exclusively that: "Rap and hip-hop videos are so sexualized that they encourage young people to have sex.

"They are shaping young peoples values because young people imitate what they watch on the box. A lot of videos, in particular rap and hip-hop, degrade women and depict them as sexual objects as hos and bitches."

Concerned about the black community going down the drain, and in particular the future of black youth, Poussaint stated:

"The videos shown on MTV or BET do not encourage young people to focus on education but to have sex and look pretty so there is no surprise that girls who spend all their time watching these videos become highly sexual. The videos evoke a message that girls get status if they are sex objects, pretty and if they satisfy men sexually.

"Girls will pick up a bad body image from rap and hip-hop videos because the women featured are always extremely attractive and are light-skinned with straight hair so, if you've got your typical young girl who is dark-skinned and her hair is not straight they in turn, are going to feel unattractive because they are not the ones being sought after by celebrities and hip-hop artists."

Dr. Poussaint, who is an expert on race relations in America, told the Voice that parents along with the collective community - because it takes a village to raise a child - need to be more selective in what they allow their kids to watch.

"All TV should be monitored and kids should be reading positive literature about themselves and their culture.

"Mothers need to stop referring to 'good' hair 'bad' hair because it creates a low self-esteem for girls and replace old slave sayings such as 'black and ugly' with positive words because the constant repetition that lighter is better is still poisoning our community."

affirmation

He also added that parents need to tell black kids that they are wonderful and beautiful and give black dolls for their children to play with rather than blonde, blue-eye muppets.

Many argue that artists are capable of going either way with their music and lyrics, but when it comes down to it, revenue is what determines the path they will take. And in the UK and the US sex sells everything.

One artist who will not be taking the musical yellow brick road route is Keke Palmer who shot to stardom after playing Akeelah, in the movie Akeelah and the Bee. The 14-year-old was headhunted by Atlantic Records in March 2006 but since her signing her mother has become angry that the record label wants to market her daughter as a sexpot and have her sing Adina Howard's Freak Like Me.

Backing Palmer's mother, Sharon refusal of allowing her daughter to be sexualized, Paul Porter of www.industryears.com says:

"Keke Palmer is the poster child for what's wrong with the music industry. Imagine being 14 year's old and Atlantic Records trying to mould Keke in the mold of Lil Kim or Foxy Brown."

Another supporter of Sharon Palmer is British actor Danny John Jules. "It's a modern day slave mentality that black female singers must be heard to be singing about how horny they are and how much men want them.

"It was music to my ears when I read that Keke's mother stood up to the Atlantic Record giants. We need more proactive parents of singers to protest to the record label giants who continuously sell us out."

Jules added: "What puzzles me is that Girls Aloud are not singing about how much man they've got and how much big wood they're expecting yet they are deemed as sex goddesses.

"They did not become sex goddesses by spreading their legs in their videos yet black songstresses are always expected to demonstrate their sexual appetite in order to get record sales and be accepted by the masses."

The effects of seeing scantily clad females in rap and hip-hop videos serving men has also led to the argument that, young black girls view themselves as a commodity, using their bodies as barter to get what they want.

As seen in Nelly's Tip Drill video, where men throw cash at women's crotches and, in one scene, a man swipes his credit card through a woman's buttocks, such depiction increases fears that mainstream society only sees black women one way.

Commenting on this situation is Michaela Angela Davis, the fashion and beauty editor of Essence. She stated: "The image of the black woman portrayed in many hip-hop videos has become the pervasive image of black women.

"Research has shown that the main consumers of hip-hop are young, affluent, white men and I fear that society as a whole is getting a 'sick' image of what black women are all about.

"That sickness is becoming the psyche of young women. Who they are in this culture, where they fit, what their value is, or their lack of value, because if this is the only image that they see of themselves in a pseudo-glamorous way, meaning if they look at a fashion magazine there's no girl that looks like 'Tamico on the block' (an average black girl), but in rap videos they are. Black girls are always going to opt for the image that they relate to best even if it is hurting them."

Hunting for a solution, many experts feel that the best way to arm young girls against the bombardment of images that promote black women as sex objects is to talk with them about what they are seeing.

"We live in a sexualised society," says schoolteacher Marie Johnson who runs an after-school mentoring club for girls in east London.

"But you can't say to a teenager by turning off the television because that's not going to work."

Johnson adds: "We need to watch these images with our children and use it as a teachable moment. Ask what the video is about, what is the woman representing, how is that similar to how girls at school act and dress? And talk about how the video makes you feel so you can discuss your value system."

Most of all, says Johnson, "We need to help young girls see that there are other messages of what it means to be a black woman. There is so much more to black women than just bouncing to the beat."

Published: 25 November 2007
Issue: 1297

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