Complicated crossroads: black feminisms, sex positivism, and popular culture

This article will explore pro-sex, black feminist performance, and more specifically, the music videos of contemporary African-American female popular music entertainers. African-American politics of respectability continue to influence how black feminists, and more broadly, how African-American communities, delineate what constitutes hypersexuality and objectification. Contemporary black female entertainers and their sexually explicit performances provide unique sites for dissecting the interplay of contemporary black feminist standpoints, sex-positivism, and popular culture. I will address questions such as: Does the historical legacy of dehumanizing and exploitative images of black women in popular culture foreclose possibilities for African-American women artists claiming pro-sex standpoints? What are the transgressive possibilities of black women's bodies within contemporary popular music performance? Can African-American women's performances in sexually explicit music videos contribute to the reclamation of healthy, black female sexual expressivity? Using a hip hop generation feminist standpoint, I will examine emergent pro-sex, black feminist perspectives rooted in contemporary popular culture.