“Gender Role Reversal in Music Videos Can Only Be Achieved By Objectifying Women”

Amanda Hess' opinion piece in Slate magazine examines gender reversal attempts in the recent music video for Maddie and Tae’s new hit single Girl in a country song. Hess argues that despite the song’s thematic rejection of the objectification of the country girl icon, the lead singers, all female, are inherently still objectified through sexualized imagery aimed at attracting male audiences. Hess' initial assertion is valid. While the men in the video do experience a form of gender reversal by being portrayed in skimpy outfits frequently associated with cowgirl imagery, the women in the video, including the lead singers, also are dressed in similar outfits. This knowledge claim, while relative to diverse perceptions of dress within different cultures, is generally in accordance with the current western standard for what constitutes cowgirl garments, as well as little clothing. Essentially it is valid observation based on visual evidence that is easily verifiable, ignoring relativistic connotations. Nonetheless her consequent assertion that this continues the same objectification of women the song supposedly objects is less clear. The women’s clothing might evoke sexual connotations, but sexualization is not necessarily synonymous with sexual objectification and the writer makes no attempt to redefine objectification or connect objectification to sexualized imagery. The women in the video, if one accepts the premise of sexualization, still demonstrate autonomy, personality and by virtue of being vectors of art do establish some form of creative personality, firmly establishing their capability for cognition and sentience. Cognition and sentience, as well as aforementioned characteristics demonstrated throughout the video clip are expressions of personality hardly associated with objects. Furthermore, by virtue of the lead singers gender, women cannot almost by default be completely objectified. Conversely the opposite sex do not talk or do much more than stagger around and whistle like wolves throughout the duration of the clip, or dress like the cowgirls, more muttonhead mammals than men, yet Hess hardly acknowledges this fact. Additionally Hess scrutinizes other popular music videos that endeavor at gender role reversal. She cites Shaina Twain’s Man I feel like a Woman as another example of failing to sub verse or avert objectification. Commenting on this older music clip Hess states, “Twain’s video succeeded in showing that women can objectify men, too—but not that they can release a successful music video without taking off their own clothes, too.” While it seems pop music has a penchant for videos of women in varying states undress, this claim is undoubtedly false because the language is in itself too absolute. Sinead O’Connor for instance released a massively successful hit single with an equally successful video clip in which she sings, head-shaved draped in full black turtleneck.
I believe Hess’s arguments are imprecise because of a lack of consistent language. The term objectification is used interchangeably with sexualization, and yet she cautions that the lack of sexualization of women does not itself mean an abandonment of gender roles, which by virtue of equivalency suggests not objectifying the women in music videos is not necessarily an abandonment of gender roles, which seems to contradict the underlying theme of her piece. Hess states that the sexualized clothing of the cowgirls perpetuates a gender role that intrinsically represents women as sexual objects, yet popular media similarly portrays the country boy persona in an arguably sexualized manner, because, as Hess perhaps fails to acknowledge, the standard for the sexualization of men and women is different.
Linguistically and within a logical framework the argument is not completely valid, but with more accurate knowledge of key anthropological terms used in the piece I can more accurately assess the text. A more complete assessment might also be possible with more extensive assess to databases of the history of popular music.