Body Image and Music "Music is a significant medium in a young person's life, particularly during the teenage years. While other media may occupy a greater number of hours, it is most often from music that teenagers define their identities and draw cues about how to dress and to behave"-Media Smarts
SEX SELLS! Don't believe me, just turn on the radio, listen to your favorite song on your iPod, read the lyrics to a song, watch a music video on MTV, and notice how many times the media uses gender roles and identities to send out negative messages about women and their body image. It is said that society has an unhealthy obsession with images of beauty, good looks and the idea of perfection. The fact of the matter is, the music industry relies on our materialistic values. That is why we always see music artists dressed in something impeccable from the "hot" new designers with fancy cars and jewelry. They too have meet this standard of meeting society's expectations to be commercially successful. From them, society, specifically women, learn that you have to be rich and should envy their lifestyles. As for the bystanders and video girls found in the videos, society, specifically women, learn that you have to be "made up", have an amazing body with matching assets (big breasts and voluptuous behind), fair skinned, natural beauty is not widely accepted, and imperfections should be covered up. All of these unrealistic expectations lead to body dissatisfaction and lowered self-esteem.
It is important to recognize that music is everywhere, it can affect one's mood, and the way one looks at themselves. Not to mention, we are prone to hearing what we hear in our music, but in the long run, music effects body image because if you do not fit, you feel inclined to internalize societies expectations to fit in or to conform to become accepted. Throughout the various music genres, rap is the one of the easiest genres to point out examples of music lyrics and the depictions of women. In many rap songs, you will hear the phrases "bad bitch, red bone, and dime". All of these phrases are aimed to represent a woman that rap artists are looking for, and majority of young girls want to meet the requirements to fit into these groups so that they can be a bad bitch (flawless and attractive body, with equally attractive face and know how to get what they want), red bone (light skinned, with thick thighs, big behind, pretty face), or a dime (a very attractive women who rates as a 10 on a scale from 1 to 10). Nevertheless, they all have negative connotations, because if you do not fit into these roles, then you are left out. Also within rap music is the misogyny, which refers to lyrics, videos that support, glorify, justify, or normalize the objectification, exploitation, or victimization of women. As for country music, country artist tend to talk about the "american girl", which happens to be a thin woman with a thin waist.
To to reduce the negative effects of the media, specifically the effects from the music industry, we must counter these unrealistic, objectifying media representations of women's bodies, and promote realistic messages of confidence and body satisfaction!