Rashida Jones Speaks About the Pornification Of Pop Stars
Rashida Jones
Quincy Jones’ daughter, Rashida Jones is an actress but she also writes for Glamour magazine, and one of her columns was reflecting on 2013’s pop culture. It was a few months ago but it probably resurfaced in the news because she was part of 2014 Women in the World Summit with Tina Brown a few days ago. ‘Why is everyone getting naked?’ she asked while discussing the ‘pornification of pop stars’. ‘Stripper poles, G-strings, boobs, and a lot of tongue action were all now normal accessories for mainstream pop stars. Across the board the Instamessage seemed to be: ‘You know you want to have sex with me. Here, take a look at lots of parts of my body,’ she wrote, mentioning the usual suspects, Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Lady Gaga… ‘I am not a prude. I love sex; I am comfortable with my sexuality,’ she continues, ‘Hell, I’ve even posed in my underwear. I also grew up on a healthy balance of sexuality in pop stars. Yes, we had Madonna testing the boundaries of appropriateness, but then we also had Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Cyndi Lauper, women who played with sexuality but didn’t make it their calling card. And for every 2 Live Crew “Me So Horny” video girl, there was Susanna Hoffs singing tenderly about her eternal flame.’
If you only consider mainstream music, she is 100% right, there is an ongoing contest happening at this level between all these front girls! But wait a minute, didn’t she forget Taylor Swift? That’s true that people think she is a slut in real life, but she just shows the right amount of skin, right? Anyway, who cares about mainstream music! Apparently a lot of teen girls if I look around, there is a daily fight against the dress code at any school, where the whore-look is very popular like anywhere else.
On Twitter, Rashida was accused of ‘slut-shamming’, of being anti-woman and other nonsense, but I agree with Rashida, all this pole dancing, twerking and tongue hanging is so staged, so unnatural, and such an escalation into an exaggeration of sexuality that it turns into a laughable parody. It is opposite of sexual freedom, ‘This isn’t showing female sexuality; this is showing what it looks like when women sell sex,’ wrote Rashida noticing that pop stars are role models despite their reluctance at it. She ends her column, asking for ‘more clothes on’ once in a while… And this is where I don’t follow her… it’s not going to happen, mainstream music is so mediocre that they have to keep up with all the sex imagery to continue to sell it.
