Over the course of hip-hop history, individual female African American artists have negotiated and expressed their own identities, representation, sexualities, and autonomy in different ways, through their music, lyrics, videos, and personal style. In this blog post, I will draw upon objectification theory, scripting theory, and Black feminist epistemologies as discussed in Theresa Renee White’s article, “Missy ‘Misdemeanor’ Elliott and Nicki Minaj: Fashionistin’ Black Female Sexuality in Hip-Hop Culture—Girl Power or Overpowered?” to briefly consider some aspects of Erykah Badu’s song and music video, “Window Seat.”

In “Window Seat” – which was filmed in one take, ‘guerrilla style,’ without permission from the City*– Badu walks through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, the site of JFK’s assassination. She begins the video fully dressed, in baggy, comfortable-looking clothing and sunglasses. As she walks, ignoring everyone around her, she removes her clothing piece by piece, at her own pace, in a way that is not overtly sexual(ized). When she arrives, fully naked, at the site of Kennedy’s assassination, we hear a gunshot and she collapses onto the ground. Both her face and her genitals are blurred, and blue letters spelling “groupthink” leak from her head onto the pavement. Like Missy Elliott, Badu “[challenges] the stereotypical, sexualized image and fashion of women in hip-hop” (619). In this video, she consciously and overtly politicizes her body. She asserts her right to take up space as an autonomous subject, and to control her body and how it is viewed. In this way, she effectively resists dominant sexist and racist scripts that cast black female bodies as sexual objects; although she is naked, her body is not sexualized or objectified. She is ‘naked,’ rather than ‘nude’; the representation of her body is not shaped by heterosexual male desire (or capitalism), but by her desire to assert her right to her own identity and self-expression.

White writes that “the Black body has become a text in which all behaviors are visual and discursive representations to be read as alien, unless those bodies are complicit in almost every sense with dominant cultural norms”(610). This resonates powerfully with the conclusion of the video, when Badu states: “They play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they do not understand… They are us. This is what we have become – afraid to respect the individual. A single personal event or circumstance can move one to change. To love herself. To evolve.”

Here is a link to the music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hVp47f5YZg.

*Eric Martinez and Kevin Hayes, “Erykah Badu Window Seat Video: Is Her Stripping Illegal or Just in Poor Taste?” CBS News, accessed November 20, 2015, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/erykah-badu-window-seat-video-is-her-stripping-illegal-or-just-in-poor-taste/.