A Black Christian Woman’s View of WAP
When the world was swept by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s #1 hit I initially was happy. I’m always happy when women, especially women of color, get praise for their work, contribution, or talent. Now, my husband informed me about the popular song and what WAP stood for. I was sitting in my home office working and stopped everything to verify what he said and it was true. I sunk in disappointment. I watched the video and my husband just looked at me and said “You should voice your opinion on that, the internet listens to black women.” I knew what he meant. In today’s culture and time, our country has been rocked with a new wave of fighters for justice, especially in regard to racial matters. Black and brown voices are being heard more than ever and it’s a beautiful empowering thing.
There was one problem though, I’m a devout Christian woman. A believer in the Messiah Jesus Christ. Raised Baptist in Philadelphia, PA where I used to live and briefly attended college before moving to Chicago with my husband, Demarcus. I knew responding to this as a Christian would make people roll their eyes, laugh, and more. I was scared to say anything about it until an old friend from Philly was found by my husband through Twitter. He encouraged me to get on social media and after some initial apprehension, I decided to get on Twitter. I’m still new to it but have tweeted some small things here and there until my friend said he felt pressured as a Christian man to speak on WAP because he knew as a man he’d be given a hard time. I understood his concern and so I tweeted a thread about my thoughts on the song and he retweeted it. I thought that was the end of it.
Days later I kept hearing the song played and even young ladies at my church were quoting the lyrics and it broke my heart. In my tweet, I said it terrifies me that the glorification of a woman's vagina has superseded the glorification of God. I was told this song is supposed to empowering to women but I just didn’t see it. The video in my eyes was softcore porn. A feast for the lustful eyes of both men and women. Cardi and Meg, I imagine are very smart women. They know sex sells and our culture, unfortunately, has made sex a “golden calf” if you will, that we worship incessantly. The lyrics suggest nothing empowering. It’s all glorifying a women’s private part and of course, vividly and colorfully portraits sexual acts.
I believe sex is a beautiful thing, honestly. It’s a physical activity that involves emotions, the mind, the spirit and should be enjoyed. As a Christian woman, I believe it should be enjoyed within the context of Marriage and that whatever you two do is between you two, not for millions of people around the world to see and hear. Now I can only speak as a Christian to Christians because we all have our free will to listen to, look at, and do whatever we want. However, if you as a Christian; as a bible believing, Jesus worshiping Christian, can listen to this song, think it’s affirming a positive message when listening with a biblical worldview, something is wrong.
The music is coming from, again, very smart women who know sex sells. They know it’s “controversial,” it’ll pull eyes and ears, they know the explicit nature of the music, and the video will garner attention, thus more money. Sexual objectification is a real thing and while some are trying to dismantle that point of view of people others fully embrace the objectification. Yes, we’re all human beings at the end of the day but there are some people who know physical attributes can garner them attention and even wealth so they exploit that. Have you ever notice artists (male or female) in the music industry who do these provocative songs and videos almost NEVER speak about the objectification of women in the music industry? It’s not empowering it’s an illustration of our sexually obsessed culture.
To the young ladies who see this as empowering and encouraging I can assure you that you can find even more profound empowerment in Jesus Christ who treated women in a way that shook the culture of that time. Yes, be proud of your body no matter if your thin, slender, chubby, plus-sized, etc but your body was not designed to be glorified, worshipped, or obsessed over (men or women). You’re not an object but you’re also not the property of this world if you belong to Jesus. And if we say we belong to the Messiah then we should adhere to the scriptures where it says to honor God with our bodies (1 Cor 6:18–20)
Finally, I want to say this is not me judging Cardi, Megan, or any women who choose to perform in this way. Judging in the sense of sending someone to hell or heaven as I don’t have that authority or final say for someone’s eternity. No one does. I am exercising John 7:24 and out of love saying this does not have to be this way. From what I understand Cardi has a relationship with God which is always a beautiful thing. I don’t know her personally, probably never will either, but if I was a friend of Cardis or someone close I would encourage her that her love for God should also reflect in her artistry because I would challenge her that if we, because I include myself, love God then our actions whether privately or professionally should reflect that and not go against what the scripture, which he inspired, teaches.
All out of love and sincerity,
Jeanette Brown.
