Okay, so Hooks article was shocking. But besides the title of the article, it wasn't exactly the language used that I found shocking - it was the realization of how sexualized black women really are. I feel so naive! While I do realize that most representations of black women are very sexual, I sort of assumed that that was the case for all women. But the difference is that while many white woman are sexualized in this way, we are also provided with many *other* images and representations of white women.

Take the music industry, for example. Sure, there are the Britney Spears' and Madonnas who many people would argue are the queens of sexploitation. But then there is a large number of (very successful) white female artists who are considered wholesome, "the girl next door," or even motherly figures - i.e. Barbara Streisand, Celine Dion, Carrie Underwood, etc. I do think that mostly all women artists are pushed at least in some point of their career to sexify themselves. But - it seems as though white women have more of a choice in the matter than black women do.

My favorite black female music artists are Rihanna, Alicia Keys, and Beyonce, all of which have either been sexualized from the start or moved towards that image as their career progressed. Beyonce was sexualized from the moment she stepped onto the scene as a member of Destiny's Child. She was in her teens at the time. Unlike Britney Spears, who went from the seemingly girl-next-door image to dressing like a dominatrix (literally), Beyonce was portrayed as a sex-symbol from the start. As I've watched her career progress, especially with her most recent performances and music videos, Beyonce's sexualized clothing and (more specifically) suggestive dance moves are certainly in line with Hooks' stance on black female representation. In fact, in the first image below, notice that the members of Destiny's Child are wearing a jungle-woman sort of costume - that exoticism that Hook often refers to.

And then there is Rihanna, who seems to have started out in a much more wholesome way than Beyonce did. If my memory serves me correctly, her first few songs released (when she looked like the first image below) were not entirely successful. However, around the time that Rihanna became more sexualized and had more edgy songs and music videos, her career took off. What is interesting about Rihanna is that her image was not just sexualized, but it was done in a very fantastical way. She became visually appealing in the sense that her sexual presence was extreme and quite bizarre. I feel like that kind of emphasizes Hook's point about the otherness and almost distorted-ness of the black female.

Although the following quote is describing black models, to me it also related to Rihanna's new image: "Reinscribed as spectacle, once again on display, the bodies of black women appearing in these magazines are not there to document the beauty of black skin, or black bodies, but rather to call attention to other concerns....their features are often distorted, their bodies contorted into strange and bizarre postures that make the images appear monstrous or grotesque. They seem to represent an anti-aesthetic, one that mocks the very notion of beauty. Often black female models appear in portraits that make them look less like humans and more like mannequins or robots."