Do You Know What That Means?
Webbie - "Independent"
The obvious reference here is Destiny's Child, not just to the two "Independent Woman"s, but to "Bills Bills Bills." But instead of being a response song, this is more of an...agreement song? It recasts professional women in the hip-hop ideal: rich, hard-working, ambitious, and only needing the opposite sex for, well, sex. And it does so, somehow, almost entirely approvingly. These are good things for women to be.
The video undermines this a little at the beginning with its scantily-clad female students, but then actually goes beyond what the song itself claims. "Female Doctor Wins Nobel Prize," reads a fake newspaper headline, hilariously but accurately, and as the video ends, an impeached white male president has been replaced with a black female president. (With, awesomely, a full contingent of hot female Secret Service agents.) You could talk about that one for days in the current political context (the dream Democratic ticket!), and it'll probably be even more notable as a historical document a few years down the line.
What I like about this is not just that it's feminist--which it is--but that it's a specific kind of feminist. Rather than being a sex-positive feminism like you might be able to claim, were you drunk enough, that Li'l Kim espouses, or a third-wave feminism of Beyonce, the song is straightforwardly endorsing a traditional 60s, women's lib, second-wave kinda feminism. The idea of women assuming traditional male roles and becoming powerful and independent is straight outa Ms. magazine. I don't want to give the impression here that I'm saying this is unusual for hip-hop: this is unusual for any pop music, especially in the present decade, where we're lucky to get a little post-feminism thrown our way. Moreover, it's coming from men. Not only is it praising the idea of an independent woman, but it's making fun of men for opposing it.
This might not be entirely clear, since it's being expressed in the language of pop. Indeed, you could criticize the song for contradicting itself and the video for contributing to the exploitation of women, etc. etc. But in its chosen context, this is silly. Pop has always picked surface over depth, beauty over truth, and while this does not mean there is no truth or depth (just as truth often walks hand-in-hand with beauty), you can't read those surface elements as endorsing anything but aesthetics. Feminism, on the other hand, has never been so good with aesthetics. When it does try and move towards beauty, it seems to move toward feminity-as-it-is-lived and away from justice issues. So does that mean that pop, with its emphasis on aesthetics, can't be feminist?
"Independent" says nope. Where many previous attempts to integrate feminism into pop have either been non-threatening (see The Mary Tyler Moore Show), overly serious (see riot grrl), or critical of its contradictions (see Ally McBeal, Sex and the City, ad nauseum), "Independent" really does deliver a traditional women's libber message in a forthright, positive, and unmistakable way. And it does so by presenting feminism's arguments not as arguments but as foregone conclusions--as facts. This is pop's power. By being explicitly part of the mainstream, any piece of pop implies that all it contains is within the mainstream too. Webby isn't making a case for women being independent, powerful, and professionally successful--he's saying that they are all those things already, and men should recognize and respect that, because otherwise they aren't going to get laid.
And that's why it's not a contradiction. Female doctors exist, and so do inappropriately-dressed teachers and their nubile students, at least in the realm of pop. The video is just presenting them side-by-side. By so doing, it takes feminism out of the realm of the contested. It's over; feminism won. And ain't that grand? What's not to like about independent ladies? After all, as Webby points out, they can buy their men some nice-ass Gucci hats.
posted by Mike B. @ 7:56 AM
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