S.O.S (Save our Sisters)

In Elaine Richardson's article, "She was working like Forreal", she interviews three young African-American women on the subject of Nelly's Tip Drill video. At a glance of this video you would simply think that it was plain nasty but the degrading scenes of women in this video goes way beyond being just nasty. Elaine explores the different possibilities of why the women choose to reveal themselves in such a un-kept way. The three ladies that are being interviewed simply states that it's a stripper song made or strippers, which to me means that the ladies in the video knew what they were doing and knew they were being degraded so it’s not such a big deal. And it is. What led us, as a society, to think that his behavior is the norm? How did those women end up in that kind of video? And most importantly why do we accept such degrading things from our own race?


Elaine goes into detail to say that sometimes it's the women up bringing that leads them there and basically it's all they may know or think their capable of. I know that that isn't true. No matter how you were raised, if you want to be more than that then you can. Society also have a hand in the exploitation of women because the paint the picture that "sex sells". So we think that in order to get a head and to get attention and move up in the entertainment business hat we have to show our bodies. It is also mentioned in the article that some blame can go to the white executive producers that exploit the black women in these videos. But I think that it is very essential to point the finger at the Black race as well. We somehow have accepted the role of the typical video "ho" and we often judge it instead of doing something about. We think that hey it's their bodies, but their bodies are our bodies and it shapes the mind to think that all black women are like that. I think that it's going to take more than Spelman College to make a change. It's time to get the word out because obviously someone's slipping.



-Kiah Ellis