Posted on Wed, Jan. 05, 2005

At last, women lash out at hip-hop's abuses

By STANLEY CROUCH

The most successful black women's magazine, Essence, is in the middle of a campaign that could have monumental cultural significance.
Essence is taking on the slut images and verbal abuse projected onto black women by hip hop lyrics and videos.

The magazine is the first powerful presence in the black media with the courage to examine the cultural pollution that is too often excused because of the wealth it brings to knuckleheads and amoral executives.

This anything-goes-if-sells attitude comes at a cost. The elevation of pimps and pimp attitudes creates a sadomasochistic relationship with female fans. They support a popular idiom that consistently showers them with contempt. We are in a crisis, and Essence knows it.

When asked how the magazine decided to take a stand, the editor, Diane Weathers said, "We started looking at the media war on young girls, the hypersexualization that keeps pushing them in sexual directions at younger and younger ages."

Things got deeper, she says, because, "We started talking at the office about all this hatred in rap song after rap song, and once we started, the subject kept coming up because women were incapable of getting it off their minds."

At a listening session that Weathers and the other staffers had with entertainment editor Cori Murray, "We found the rap lyrics astonishing, brutal, misogynistic. ... So we said we were going to pull no punches, especially since women were constantly being assaulted."

They were inspired by a campaign that some fathers and daughters led against Abercrombie & Fitch demanding that half-clad young people no longer be used to sell the clothing. When the campaign succeeded, the Essence staff realized there is a serious problem in the world of advertising as well as music.

"When we started this," Weathers said, "all the editors came together. We formed a music committee - staff volunteers who did the research and then focus groups of women and men of all ages.

"Then in April, there was the demonstration at Spelman College in Atlanta. The young women - supported by the men at Morehouse, by the way! - told the rapper Nelly that they didn't want him on campus because his work was too insulting.

"We realized that, my God, we were right on point! What we were feeling and what we were finding out in our research was all correct. It was time. Women were no longer going to sit still."

Essence has a year-long strategy that includes a town meeting at Spelman College in February.

Things are getting hot. This is a beginning that has been a long time coming, and it is good to see it all forming naturally with the women in the lead.

Source: http://www.philly.com/mld...568382.htm

Bout damn time.

JANFAN4L said:

Cue Essence photoshoot featuring scantily-clad magazine editors.

kinda off topic i heard on the radio that time magazine is buying essence also.

heybaby said:

Oh, well then it will be turned into the sort of magazine where the editors at the round table think up different ways to scare people.

VoicesCarry said:

heybaby said:

"OPRAH WINFREY NUDE PICTORIAL! Life-size poster included."

heybaby said:

Yeah, I heard that, too. I kind of don't know how to take that. A successful, black-owned (which is rare) publication being acquired and absorbed by Time, Inc. Reminds me of BET being bought out by Viacom in the late '90s.

JANFAN4L said:

And we all know how well that went....

VoicesCarry said:

it's a black clone of mtv now.

1. Essence has finally seized on the obvious. Sometimes hip-hop makes the blaxploitation era look like the Harlem Renaissance. As many hip-hoppers would tell you, blaxploitation WAS the Harlem Renaissance.

2. Crouch is ignorant of hip-hop and will seize on its negatives without the proper context.

3. Hip-Pop will burn out and the genre will return to the underground.