#rewind&reframe

NUS Scotland is the national representative body for college and university students across Scotland.  

NUS Scotland's Zone Conference brought together experts and campaigners from a range of fields and backgrounds to inform and inspire their officers, to help them to think differently, and ultimately to help them develop future policies and campaigns.

I was so pleased when I heard about the launch of Rewind&Reframe last week. Finally a campaign to unite the myriad voices that have spoken out - sporadically but in ever-increasing numbers - about the hyper-sexualisation of pop music and the impact this might be having on younger audiences. What I particularly like about the campaign is its clear message of empowerment. Rather than merely identifying a problem and complaining about it, Rewind&Reframe aims to help facilitate individuals to take positive action, to have a voice and use it.

For the past 6 months, I myself have been part of a project with the same ethos. In an audacious and provocative protest against the world’s flagrant attempts to sexualise and commodify childhood, the award-winning performance artist Bryony Kimmings and her 9-year-old niece Taylor decided to take on the global tween machine at its own game. They invented Catherine Bennett (or 'CB' to her fans)  –  a dinosaur-loving, bike-riding, tuna-pasta-eating pop star – and vowed to make her world famous to prove that an alternative was possible. CB is played by Bryony, like a character, and is managed by Taylor (that’s right, the 9 year-old is in charge!). You can meet CB and hear her music here.

I loved Bryony and Taylor’s project so much that I decided to make a documentary about it, to capture their story and contextualise the cultural environment in which it is unfolding. Since we started, we’ve witnessed the Blurred Lines furore, Miley’s twerking (and the various celebrity responses to it), Charlotte Church’s John Peel lecture, Lily’s controversial come-back, and now Rewind&Reframe. The debate is happening, and all of these things – whether you see them as positives or negatives  – are feeding into it, which can only be a good thing. All the while CB has been racking up hits on Youtube, going into schools to talk directly to tweens about the media they see, interviewed on BBC and Sky News, featured in the Guardian and The Independent, and had one of her songs played on Radio 1 by the awesome Gemma Cairney.

The most striking thing I think I’ve realised since starting my own journey with this project is that there really isn’t anyone like CB out there right now. She is a true alternative; a quirky, fun, popstar for tweens who sings about animals, friendship, and the future whilst wearing funky bright clothes and shoes which are practical rather than prohibitive. And, you know what, tweens love her! One girl we spoke to at a CB gig said to us “I think (it’s) the type of music that I’d listen to because it’s quite upbeat and about subjects that I like.”

I’m a big believer in the phrase ‘if she can’t see it, she can’t be it’, and that’s why a range of female role models for young people in our popular media matters (If you’re interested in reading more on this see my blog for the Guardian Women in Leadership here: http://tiny.cc/j6bh6w ). But let’s be realistic, the music business won’t change for the good of humanity (the clue is in the ‘business’ bit). So it’s up to us, the audience, to use our collective power to show them that it’s in their interests to start offering something different. To start being a bit more creative and to realise that there’s a huge, untapped audience of young people who would love more music about the things that they’re interested in and for it not to be sung to them by someone who is semi-naked and gyrating against a pole/bottle of vodka/crotch/all of the aforementioned. It’s not about censorship, it’s about choice. And right now, we’re not delivering choice for younger audiences.

We really hope that the CB experiment might lead to some real change, by proving that a genuine alternative can be successful and that there is a desire amongst the audience for it. And I think that’s also what Rewind&Reframe has the power to do, through the voices it will help to facilitate. It’s time for the music industry to start listening, for the penny to drop. Because that penny could just turn into a pound or two for them.

Advocate is a group of Girlguiding members aged 14-25 from across the UK who come together to discuss the things girls care about and seek change. In 2013 they have given evidence in front of MPs, made speeches about body image and prompted Girlguiding to ask all members aged 16-25 whether they wanted to come out in support of the No More Page 3 campaign. They said yes.

Here are some of the Advocates’ thoughts about how women are portrayed in music videos.

Amy Callaghan, 15 from Glasgow

There is no way people can watch music videos without some sort of impact on their perception of women. They are definitely a factor in society’s perception of women as sex objects, and have been for a long time.

In 2013 I spoke out about the No More Page Three campaign as a Girlguiding Advocate. I’m passionate about the issue of the sexualisation and objectification of women in the media, and I’m glad the RewindReframe campaign gives me and others a chance to speak out.

Daisy Draper, 17, from Holmfirth, West Yorkshire

I don’t have to spend long on YouTube or watching music channels to see a music video with a ‘strong and powerful’ man dressed in a suit whilst a ‘vulnerable’ woman dances around him – then you realise this happens all the time.

I think the most distressing thing about the portrayal of women in music videos is that so often the blame is placed on the women that appear in them. We know how much Miley Cyrus was slated after her performance at the VMAs and what she was wearing. What I think many people failed to realise was that there was another world famous singer on that stage (Robin Thicke) - so why was he put in such a different category?

Morgan Goodsell, 16, from Folkestone

For me, the Rihanna’s Pour It Up shows the pressure on female artists to be increasingly racy - over time her music videos have gradually become more sexual. People in the music industry seem to believe that the more sexual the content in music videos, the better.

I think there should be some sort of government regulation to prevent racist or sexist content from being shared with the public which would prevent young people getting distorted ideas about race and gender positions in society.

Michaela Le Roux, 16, from Bexley, Kent

So many music videos, even of professional female artists, involve the sexualisation of women of all backgrounds. I think this undoubtedly contributes to this culture of boys valuing girls for their looks and sex appeal, and girls being criticized and feeling ashamed for not fitting the cookie-cutter standards that women in music videos portray to girls.

Isla Whateley, 17 from Glasgow

I experienced harassment from boys when I was in my early teens and it was not a good experience at all - I think music videos could partially be to blame. Women are shown as objects, just there for male pleasure. This definitely has an effect on the way girls are treated by boys; they see their music idols treating women like this and that makes it okay for them to do the same. I think the best thing is to educate young people about the dangers of sexism and racism portrayed in music videos, and teaching children (especially boys) from a young age that girls are people and should be respected.

Ellie Dibben, 17, from Hemel Hempstead

Music videos have an undeniable impact on how boys see girls, and, more importantly, on how girls see themselves. Girls who don’t fit the music industry standard of a ‘size-zero white model’ are left feeling out of place, and lose self-confidence. Black and minority ethnic (BME) women especially face huge amounts of stereotyping and objectification in music videos, and the industry needs to drastically rethink its priorities.

At the moment I must admit that I’m a bit obsessed with the music video for Mary Lambert’s She Keeps Me Warm. It includes women of different ethnicities, body shapes, and sexual orientation, and works perfectly with the song- not something which is normally achieved. It’s not often that I watch a music video and feel remembered by the industry, and videos like this lift my spirits and give me hope.

I am at the dissertation stage for my MA in Women Children and Abuse at London Metropolitan University. I decided after much wrangling to conduct a primary research study on how black women make sense of representations of sexualisation in the UK media and popular culture. I knew this was an under researched topic. Yes there are images of Miley Cyrus twerking away on stage with Robin Thicke during their onstage rendition of ‘Blurred Lines’ during the MTV awards. You had to have lived in a cave to have escaped this ‘tune of the summer’ and the controversial video that accompanied it with half naked young women. Miley Cyrus does seem to continuously court controversy (along with many others) last night wearing a ‘barely there’ dress with deceased rappers Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur on her posterior to the MTV European Music Awards. Coupled with this she appeared to be smoking a joint. Maximum publicity! It’s the availability of these images and the normalisation of them that is terrifying. Middle aged fully clothed male music stars such as Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke appearing on videos with half naked writhing and pouting much younger topless women. Are these the images young women are having to make sense of? Amongst this are discussions that twerking had been going on for years before with 2 live Crew and their explicit x-rated videos in the early 1990s and even dancehall star Patra who was famous for her popping and gyrations. So why is this such big news now? Could it be that now the images are everywhere and they’re not just hidden within the black community? The young women I interviewed for my research were aged 18-25 and were black and of dual parentage. They were shown a series of images of the most famous women that are shown in the media. Not only was sexism an issue and the overt sexual images these young women were exposed to every day but colourism. Colourism (a term coined by Alice Walker) was also a point that was brought up several times. Black women were being represented in an overtly sexual way in the media and in music videos in particular. Their bottoms were emphasised and their ability to move freely in an exaggerated sexual way. Whilst interviewing it was pointed out dark skinned black women are almost absent in the media. Rihanna, Beyoncé and Nikki Minaj who are the most prominent black singers are all light skinned with hair weaves. Videos that promote women in a sexual and writhing way even in overtly sexist music videos still exclude dark skinned women (“Blurred lines” is an example of this). The women in these videos always seen to be white, mixed race, light skinned, anything other than dark skinned. It is almost as if the dark skinned black woman has been erased from the music media. One of the young women I interviewed told me to “check out Twitter” #teamlightskin vs #teamdarkskin where black people from these two camps ridicule each other and try to determine who’s best. The extremely sexualised images on @postbadbitches of young women of all races posting photos of themselves are just a click away. #blackgirlsunday, #mixedgirlsmonday and #whitegirlwednesday are other ways young women post both sexual and non sexual images of themselves. These are then shared and commented on. Sexualisation is prevalent in our music video industry and the way in which black women are presented in particular needs addressing but sitting uncomfortably alongside sexism and racism is the issue of colourism which also needs tackling.