So evidently everyone has something to say about video girls and everything they do. How they look, what they wear, how they dance and the money they make. Is it really that bad though? I mean seriously, I don’t hear anyone complaining about skinny supermodels making $10,000 to $20,000 a day walking the catwalk half naked. So I find it pretty contradicting when people have a problem with a healthy model – you know the kind with meat on her bones – making her money. It’s no secret that high fashion, editorial models are notorious for eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. You have NEVER heard of that sort of thing about a video model. In the hip hop world, the more the better. Just watch any Lil Wayne video and you’ll see what I mean.
Just like anything else, people quickly stereotype video models as hoes or groupies and that’s probably because of a promiscuous little character named Karrine Steffans. But EARTH to the WORLD…not every video model is Karrine. She was a special breed to say the least and that doesn’t mean that every single video model followed in her footsteps. If anything, they learned what not to do from her. Some of these girls are getting their degrees, supporting their families and using this platform as a stepping stone for a career in acting or dancing. If you would see them in normal everyday life you would think she was just another girl - probably a really pretty or ridiculously curvy girl but nonetheless normal – getting her money and paying her bills. Contrary to belief not everyone wants to date a rapper let alone sleep with one and I’m sure after doing a couple videos the hype of it probably gets old. I know some girls who are actresses and in school getting their Bachelor’s who model because it’s good money and has a more flexible schedule than a retail or corporate job. Therefore it makes it much easier to fit in classes or auditions or time for family. Some of them are mothers and found that they can make good enough money to put food on the table with a gig like this. People like watching these types of girls in videos and probably wouldn’t watch them as much or at all if it was just a mediocre looking rapper standing sans models with his even worse looking entourage spitting lines at the camera. At the end of the day, it’s a job and there are girls who do it very well.
So are video models the new standard or without standards as they’re labeled?
Some argue that at least these models aren’t stripping. Well if they were some of them would be making a lot more money and since they are already wearing next to nothing in these videos anyways, why not take it all off? I mean the way these girls are booty poppin, making it clap and shake it this way and that doesn’t really leave much to imagination. So why bother? If it’s all about the money and getting a lot of it then you might as well take off the very little you have on to double or triple the money you’re making.
Harsh? It is what it is.
“Stripping is degrading…how can she take her clothes off for money…blah…blah…blah…” It’s easy. The same way you get up every morning and do whatever it is you do for the man. Quite frankly the stripper who is taking her clothes off for an audience could very well be much more modest than the video girl who is trying to further her career by sexually advancing herself to an artist and/or director. So which one is worse? Having sex with a motive or undressing for your job? At least with stripping, your paycheck is guaranteed.
I kind of wish that all women would get together, take a stand and refuse to be in videos…at least not as degrading sexual objects. I can’t even be mad at the directors and artists for giving into “favors” and degrading the models because it is the women who are doing it to themselves. Really, no one is forcing video models to do what they are doing – at least not giving them a life or death ultimatum. It’s as if they are volunteering the degradation of themselves.
Now, I can’t sit up here and say that I don’t understand the issue a little bit. For some of these girls, this is the first time they’ve had the spotlight put on them and the new attention feels great. But sometimes it’s easy to get lost in all that and mistake the attention as your worth. And so when a woman thinks she’s only worth a video or an appearance in it, should someone be at fault when they treat her like that? I’m not saying it’s right or that all of these models act like this, but it’s not unheard of either.
Inevitably, no matter how much I write and regardless of me saying it over and over again like a broken record the truth remains the same: For every woman who is willing to stop, another is willing to go…
...HARD.
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