Quick Blog #4

I can’t say that I believe Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair” video provides a good role model to young girls. While the song’s lyrics are empowering, saying ‘don’t let them haters keep me off my grind, keep my head up I know I’ll be fine’, they combine to explicate an image of confidence and power. However, although I think the lyrics are generally acceptable for young girls to attribute to, I think the ways in which Smith presents herself in this video is an unacceptable personification of character that little girls should not be looking up to, or want to be like. I don’t think anything in the video suggested anything that over generalized sexualization, at least not dramatically. She was, however, wearing little diamonds on her lips and eyelashes. Being that she is only nine years old, I don’t think she was acting very age-appropriate. I feel like this provides a bad role model for girls today, as a nine year old girl is going to watch this video and think, ‘hey, we’re the same age, I should act/be more like her.’ While nine year old girls clearly shouldn’t be dancing and carrying themselves the way Willow Smith does in this video, as Smith is acting much older than she really is. Although, I don’t really think this video suggests sexualization too extremely, I noticed that race intersected with this video also. All the people involved in the video are black, I saw maybe one or two white people. For such a young girl, she presents many different generalizations in her four minute video, perhaps without realizing it.