Welcome to the blog!

          Welcome to our blog, Voices of Misrepresentation!  To us representation is an image that stands in to symbolize the holistic ideas of something.  Therefore, misrepresentation of women is when the ‘mythical norm’ fails to take into account the holistic idea of women and their differences.  It is also when it fails to properly converse with cultures outside of the mainstream, American pop culture.
         We are going to be discussing how the voices of current female artists bring forth images to society which misrepresent women.  We will be talking specifically about Nicki Minaj, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Beyonce, Adele and Kelly Clarkson and possibly others.  These female artists range on a scale from bad to good in their representation of women.  Our focus will be on their music videos and the lyrics of their most popular songs as well as their current actions within the media.
          Music videos all started with the creation of MTV in the 1980s.  Music became an act for watching not just listening.  Music videos even more associated a song with an image.  Madonna was the first female artist to be sexualized in her video for “Like a Virgin”.  Madonna became very popular because of this, but it led other female artists to be viewed as sexual objects if they too wanted to sell their music.  Today, it is very hard to separate the music from the artist.  Music is no longer just an auditory medium, it has become a visual medium as well.  This has been really successful due to the use of the internet and especially websites such as YouTube.  If you like a song you hear, you can instantly search up the artist on the Internet and see how they look or their album artwork.  YouTube has allowed artists’ music videos to be viewed by millions of people all around the world. 
         Female artists especially are overly sexualized and usually half naked in their music videos.  This is an image men and women both see all over the world as an image of the ideal woman.  This woman is usually white and slim which is not an accurate description of the different shapes, sizes and races of women all over the world.  This improper portrayal leads to teens and young women having self esteem issues for not fitting into this pop culture image.
         This blog will be written by Eva and Olenna, two university students interested in the issue of misrepresentation of women in popular music.  If you have any suggestions of who we should talk about next just leave us a comment. We hope you enjoy reading our blog and it opens up a good discussion in your day-to-day lives.

Sources:
Lilly J Goren. You've Come a Long Way, Baby: Women, Politics, and Popular Culture. (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2009.) 59-60