Quit Tryna Convince Me Misogynoir is Just for Funsies

But that day, the dogs didn’t try us. So I boarded the bus with a good feeling. And there he was. Jadeem. The 7th grade boy I had a crush on. He was seated in the last row of the bus. I walked back in that direction. Careful not to get too close. Not to be visibly jocking him.

I took a seat two rows ahead of him. Periodically, I’d turn around to say something to one of the other homies. Catch a glimpse of him. Some days, I thought he noticed me, took an interest in me. Other days, I thought he didn’t. 

That day he didn’t take an interest in me or anybody else. While we goofed and gawked, he bopped to his own groove. He had his headphones on, the big thick 90s version, later brought back by the likes of Dre. His eyes were closed. He nodded his head, enraptured. I didn’t wonder what had bewitched him so. I could hear the song bleeding through the speakers. It was the biggest rap hit of the summer. “Rump Shaker” by Wreckx-N-Effect:

All I wanna do is do my Zoom, Zoom, Zoom and a Boom Boom!

JUST SHAKE YOUR RUMP!

I had seen the video. Black girls of every hue traipsing around a sunny beach in bright, tight, tiny bikinis. Some of the men in the video are shirtless, but all of them have on pants or shorts--that is, not bathing suits. Many are wearing T-shirts, and some are wearing full tracksuits and work boots. Most of the video is a close-up of Black women’s shaking asses. Teddy Riley is seen notoriously filming the entire scene on a 90s-era camcorder, reminiscent of that Aretha Franklin gif people trotted out when Jesse Williams dropped his dong on us.

Something about the song, but especially the video, had always bothered me. I went to my aunt who was like a big sister. She was 22 at the time. I was like,

“Why are the men fully dressed, wearing boots and the whole thing, but the women all have on tiny bathing suits?”

“What difference does it make?!” She’d cried in her loud nasal accent. “It’s fun! Just enjoy it!” My sis, bless her, was the definition of a ratchet LA chick. Though she might deny it at times, at other times she reveled in it.

It wasn’t just her. Everybody I knew seemed to love the song. My mom would be pumping her fist singing it, rolling down the street in her doo-doo brown Nissan put-put.

I looked at Jadeem differently after that.

 

* * *

 

Five years later, when I was a senior in high school, I went on a campus visit at UC Berkeley, where the college seniors asked us, the incoming freshmen, 

What happened to love in the Black community? 

It was a question we high school girls couldn’t begin to answer, so we fumbled. But the boys retorted: Why a girl wanna get mad when you wanna pass her to the homie?! No, the boys had a great time.

 

* * *

 

I flashback to “Rump Shaker.” I remember that being unlike any other rap video I’d ever seen before. But it was exactly like the majority on BET and MTV by the late 90s. And everywhere else ever since.

For the longest time, people kept trying to convince me featuring Black women exclusively as shaking asses, as pieces of pussy to be passed between men, as “the nappy dugout,” is just party music. Have fun! But how can it be fun, or more preposterous yet, “sex positive,” if Black women feature only as the latest hole for fucking? As “them hoes over there,” while the men bleat, “we don’t love you hoes?” 

No, misogynoir is not just for funsies. How many young Black women just like me found that out while trying to date men in the age of popular rap, of hip pop? The kinds of men who show Black women again and again that they wanted to find a quiet place to fuck you, then release you back into the wild? And let’s never forget, while it was mostly Black men making this music, white people are the single biggest audience for rap music.

Maybe you’re a young Black femme wondering why none of the Black boys or men you’ve met would remotely consider you for a partner? Maybe you’ve got Black daughters who’d like to find a respectful partner, but can’t? Maybe you’ve got Black sons who won’t even look twice at a Black girl, considering them “too ratchet,” or “too trashy"? 

Sure, white supremacy invented the Jezebel. But rap is now a global phenomenon. And it became one largely by having Black men wipe their feet on the dignity of Black women. Yes, among rap’s many achievements, we have to add to the list spreading the view that Black women are thick jiggling asses, and holes to finger-cuff, with the homie of course. 

We need to own that first, and then we need to do better. 

-- Learn more about the history of the maligned gold digger in my latest book, The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance --