Jan. 31, 2008

Pellissippi State hosts author of book on hip hop and women

She’s married and has a 5-year-old daughter, but T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting sure isn’t your typical mom.

The Vanderbilt University professor and author has a bone to pick with the new gender politics, and hip-hop music and strip clubs in particular, and she’s written a book about it.

The book, “Pimps up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women,” deals with how men treat women and how women see themselves.

Sharpley-Whiting will talk about her latest book as part of Pellissippi State Technical Community College’s Black History Month celebration.

The public is invited to hear her presentation on Feb. 12, 12:30-1:30 p.m., in the Performing Arts Center on the Pellissippi Campus on Hardin Valley Road and again at 7 p.m. at the college’s Magnolia Avenue Campus. The event is free.

“One of the arguments of the book,” she said, “is that our youth culture and hip-hop music have helped shape the way young men and women view one another. I think global and economic opportunities have certainly redefined gender relations in very tangled ways. Young men are competing with young women in ways they never had to before.”

Sharpley-Whiting says this has resulted in “hyper-masculine” men and “hyper-feminine, hyper-sexualized” women.

“As Americans, we tend to want ‘manly men,’” she said. “It is that kind of ethos that has led men to feel women are encroaching on their space. If you feel like, ‘Here comes Hillary Clinton stepping into a man’s world,’ you can turn to popular culture, where women have their place—at the bottom.

“You can see a half-naked woman not just in hip-hop videos but in rock videos, or you can go to Hooters. Strip clubs are more popular than they have ever been. They’re mainstream now. There’s a reason why those kinds of venues exist. A lot of it has to do with the gains women have made. With the privileges, you have to expect some backlash. It’s a way in which you can still have the fantasy of what women should be.”

Is American culture more misogynistic than other developed countries?

“I think it comes out in different ways in the U.S.,” said Sharpley-Whiting. “In other countries that we consider less democratic—like India—they’ve already had women candidates for president. Simultaneously, we see in some of these countries, women who might not have the same access to jobs or education. There are certainly things we get right and some things other countries get right. We don’t like to deal with class, and we’re still behind on race and gender.”

Sharpley-Whiting says she became interested in women’s roles in hip-hop music gradually.

“I’m a person of the hip-hop generation,” she said. “I came up with the music and watched the culture evolve. It was interesting to me to see how women became very central to corporate bottom lines. The mass-media appeal of hip hop and its global appeal is very dependent on young women. The reason it’s so profitable is that we have a lot of eye candy.”

She believes part of the solution is to become active consumers. By listening to alternative hip hop, rather than commercial stations, fans will have a more diverse selection. In addition, certain types of music shouldn’t be played at certain times of the day, she says, because they’re not appropriate for children.

“At four o’clock in the afternoon, that’s an FCC issue. At 10 at night, that’s a parenting problem,” she said.

Sharpley-Whiting teaches on a variety of topics, from 18th and 19th century French narrative to Jazz Age Paris to film and black popular culture. She is director of the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies and director of the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies at Vanderbilt.

Her books include “ Negritude Women” (2002), “ Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French.”

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