Stop Sticking Out Your Tongue, The Feminists are Looking
A look at Missy Elliott’s critique of popular music in 2015
SO…Missy Elliot just released a new song literally yesterday, and no, you’re not flashing back to 2004.
But in all seriousness and with total respect for Missy, she did and it is as fantastic as we could all expect from her.
This song, which at the time of this article being written, already has 7.1 million views on Youtube -I promise they weren’t all me-and shows Missy with Pharrell Williams featured, using a catchy beat and complex rap lyrics to jump back into creating music in 2015. But that’s not all she does in WTF.
Missy Elliott, I would argue, is calling out female artists and the over sexualization of black femininity and the capital made on that over-sexualization. I’m definitely not alone in this opinion. The song has been out for only one day and already it’s being analyzed and closely examined lyric by lyric. Genius.com for example lays out historical and pop culture references in music in crowd sourced annotation.
Throughout the chorus Elliott is demonstrating her criticism of girls too young who “stickin out their tongue”. This seems to be an explicit reference to Miley Cyrus and the infamous pose she inevitably makes in public…
This is not to say that Miley does not have the right to stick her tongue out (and the other behaviors that go along with her public persona) but honestly, what message does that send to the young people who watch this? Does Miley, and other female celebrities, not have a responsibility to the young people that see and listen to their work? Feeding this type of celebrity to younger generations is not going to produce the thinking and responsible feminists that hopefully is the goal we all have.
Even if the song is not calling Miley out, which I do believe it is, WTF is still a critique of the ways in which other artists, black and not, appropriate the elements of African-American culture and create caricatures out of these elements. Another problematic trait of female artists in popular music today is shooting feminism in the foot through the reinscribing of over sexualizaiton of the female body (and capitalizing on it). An example of this would be when bell hooks calls beyonce out as a terrorist here, around 30 minutes in.
So if Beyonce is considered a terrorist for her anti feminist actions (specifically the Time magazine cover) I think it’s safe to say Missy and her new song would have bell hook’s stamp of approval. Go Missy!
In this second video, bell hooks and Beverly Guy-Sheftall hold a discussion about feminism, our current state of affairs, violence against black bodies and so much more.
In the early parts of the video, bell hooks states that in our society today, in the Capitalist White Supremacist Imperialist Patriarchy (also known as CWIP) there is now this appearance of choice for women of who and how we can be but honestly nothing’s changed. Around 25/26 minutes in she states that we (women) may have the high powered job but we’re still wearing the “mini skirts and preferably no underwear”; and “these are the things that come to stand for feminist freedom”. But does this really mean feminist freedom?
And this sound bite: “the push for females to wear overly sexualized clothing is a way of undermining the strength we can have” (1:47–1:48)neatly sums up what may be wrong with popular music- cross genre. This is also what Missy Elliott seems to be rapping in protest to.
Miley has the choice to stick out her tongue, and other female artists have the ability, thanks to the work of feminism, to dress and provide media that promotes overt sexuality but I would say that this choice is dangerous to the future of feminism, itself.
In a society where many popular culture songs make your average feminist-myself included- cringe, Missy’s new song is basically free of any cringe worthy moment. She provides a song that is great to listen to, (PS I’ve had it on repeat during the entire writing of this and I’m still not sick of it) and presents a method that allows her to make money off her talents without capitalizing on the sexualization of black femininity and without acting as a poor role model for the young women (and men) listening to her new hit. Not only does WTF avoid any problematic moments, it makes a pro feminist statement about the responsibility of role models to promote positive modes of femininity.
In other words, Missy Elliott just wrote a new song, and I’m gonna keep listening.
