"Shawty wine voor me slow": Representation of gender in Dutch hip-hop by six male artists

Abstract

This thesis examines the gender representation in contemporary commercialized Dutch hip-hop music videos, contrasting the hypermasculinity and misogyny displayed in visual gender discourses. The focus will be on the following research question: How is gender represented in the music videos of the Dutch ‘new wave’ generation hip-hop artists in the #MeToo era. The #MeToo movement started to break down power structures by challenging the normalization of unwanted sexual behavior. This is in contrast with the misogyny present in hip-hop, in which women are objectified for male pleasure. Representation of gender matters because visibility in the media influences gender discourses within society. Gender is a performative act that requires actualization and interpretation to repeat, appropriate or refuse the gender norms in our society. By maintaining hegemonic masculinity that normalizes the objectification of women in a patriarchal society, the media teaches women to objectify themselves and to be evaluated by others which can lead to mental health disorders. Dutch hip-hop is highly influenced by American hip-hop that sexually objectifies black and Latina women. While Dutch hip-hop is a mixture of different races and ethnicities without objectifying predominantly black women, the overall hypersexuality and sexual objectification of women is in line with the hypersexuality of American hip-hop. The misogyny in Dutch hip-hop did not reduce in times when the #MeToo movement went viral. Instead, the pandemic in 2020 forms a more plausible reason for the reduction of misogyny in Dutch hip-hop.