When the artists are male, there is a very large tendancy to have hot women in very little clothing to star opposite them, showing that he is really manly and can almost get any women in the world. This occurs in almost every R&B or Rap video, for example Smack That - Akon ft. Eminem and Gold Digger - Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx.
And sometimes when the artists are female, they themselves also wear little clothing and dance sexily to target the male audience, especially those in girlbands, for example The Pussycat Dolls and Girlicious. An artist which Jess Rich and I looked at in detail was The Pretty Reckless, with their frontwoman Taylor Momsen. Taylor is only 18 years old, but dresses really provocatively to target the male audience, sexualising her body. It may just be our biased view as girls about the same age, but we thought that this was really bad and derogative, especially in the media, as she is a role model for teenage girls around the world, especially those of which who watch Gossip Girl (where she played a main character for many seasons).
However, some female artists do this more subtly, taking the powerful-but-sexy-woman route. For example, Beyonce is a powerful female icon, and in songs which are all about women being on top such as Run The World (Girls), she still dances in a sexy way and wears clothes that reveal her legs.
So as you can see from above, women are generally viewed as sexual objects or icons. So for our theme, Jess Rich & I wanted to challenge this stereotype and look into the female artists that don't use their body and female attributes to make money, but concentrate more on their music.
We found that there were a few artists in the Pop genre that were in fact innocent anddidn't flaunt their body, for example Leona Lewis, Adele and Kelly Clarkson. And it's not even the fact that they aren't sexy and shouldn't be proud of their bodies, as they are all completely capable of looking beautiful; it's just that they care more about the music being good than looking good.
We looked at Leona's US video for Bleeding Love, A Moment Like This and Footprints In The Sand, all of which where she where's clothes that do not reveal a lot of skin. In the US video for Bleeding Love Leona actually wears a coat for most of the video, and in the other shots of her wearing dresses, they are mostly floor length. This was also shown in A Moment Like This where Leona just stands still on a stage wearing a floor length dress, showing that it's all about the music, not her, and not the performance. And as Footprints In The Sand was actually used for a charity single, Leona's innocence is highlighted, with her wearing minimal makeup and just wearing a simple white tshirt.
Another female artist we looked at was Kelly Clarkson, and her videos for Since U Been Gone and My Life Would Suck Without You. In both videos we see Kelly wearing very simple, basic clothes, ones that which every ordinary girl would wear. This also reflects where she came from; she became an artist due to the TV show American Idol, showing that she is just an ordinary American girl. We looked closely at the video for My Life Would Suck Without You, as it not only shows her innocence, but highlights her power too. In the video we see the story of her relationship with her boyfriend, and see how she throws all his clothes out of the window. Although it doesn't show complete female power over males such as videos like Rihanna's Man Down and S&M, it shows how she has the say and control in the relationship.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, is Adele. She is almost the epitome of not selling your body but selling your music, being a larger and curvier artist in the industry. She was in fact quoted saying 'I like having my hair and face done, but I'm not going to lose weight because someone tells me to. I make music to be a musician not to be on the cover of Playboy.' showing her innocence and female power. This has also been shown through all of her music videos, especially Rolling In The Deep, where she just sits in a chair and sings, not caring about her appearance or performance.
Being females ourselves, after looking at all these strong, innocent female artists, Jess Rich and I both agree that it's still really effective to just sell your music, and not the music and the body. It's okay to be innocent in the industry, in fact, it's actually really successful! All of these female artists have sold millions of records worldwide, showing that you don't have be sexy and dance provocatively to be successful. Of course, it's nice to get a little male attention here and there, but it is just as well to target the same gender and be a positive role model.
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