Sarah Fingerhood Prompt #6

In the late 90s, the US was experiencing both immense technological advancements, with the recent advent of the Internet, and also growing social tension regarding race, gender, and sexuality. The American LGBQT community had just experienced the tragedy of the AIDS crisis in the 80s, which severely altered societal perception of queerness. At the same time, women were in the midst of third-wave feminism, which aimed to pushback on ideals of second-wave feminism through embracing sexuality, femininity, individuality, and attempting intersexuality. However, the Clinton presidency at this time was enacting a series of policies that catalyzed mass-incarceration. The examination of popular culture from this era illuminates how the public internalized or projected these rapidly changing power dynamics. Therefore, I analyzed TLC’s “No Scrubs” (1999) music video in conversation with Britney Spears’ “Oops...I Did It Again” (2000) to explore presentations of sexuality, gender, and race. I found that themes, imagery, and narrative in these music videos exemplify women’s paradox in the early 2000s as they tried to embrace feminism whilst still operating within the parameters of consumerist and patriarchal ideologies.

TLC and Britney Spears both attempt to display feminist ideals in the visual rejection of men and empowered sexualization through dress and dance. The entirety of TLC’s music video does not incorporate any men on-camera and Spears’ has an active rejection of the man when a male astronaut presents her with the “Heart of the Ocean,” the blue diamond from Titanic (1997), saying he retrieved it from the bottom of the ocean for her and she responds, “Oh, you shouldn’t have” (Spears, 2009). However, these active and passive rejections embody feminism in a similar fashion as “Girl Power,” which “offers girls a seductive blend of indepence, choice, and fun blended with heterosexual appeal: sassy, sexy, and smart” (Jackson et al., 2012). These music videos also present a sexualized fashioning of female bodies, such as tight jumpsuits or bra-tops, and seductive dancing, like grinding and self-touching. This exemplifies how “pop musicians who prevail in everyday lives, provide a rich source of meaning around sexuality” that is inextricably linked to consumer goods, such as sexualized clothing (Jackson et al., 2012). This portrayal of sexualized women is in conversation with third-wave feminism because it attempts to empower sexuality, however it dangerously alludes to consumption as a mode of achievement for feminism. 

Despite these attempts to liberate the female body through an agentic sexualization, the directors of both music videos are both male therefore representing the ubiquitous male gaze. The male gaze “positions women as no more than objects to be looked at, sexualized, and made vulnerable [so that] the male unconscious reassures itself that really it has nothing to fear of women” (Zeisler, 2008). In the introductory scene of “Oops!... I Did It Again,” the astronaut describes a photo of Spears as “cute” therefore inflicting the power dynamic of unthreatening cuteness, which ''[blurs] the boundaries between subject and object” (Dale, 2016). The depiction of cuteness is synonymous with an infantile innocence that present in both music videos’ display of all white outfits, which traditionally symbolize purity. For instance, TLC singer Chilli is seen on a massive swing donning all-white and minimal makeup in comparison to the two other singers. Similarly, in Spears’ video is spliced with scenes of her lying on a white platform in a matching white crop-top and mini-skirt. These depictions, filmed according to a male director, cast these women as pure, innocent, and simple therefore achieving the desired effect of the male gaze: powerless. 

The lyrics of both “No Scrubs” and “Oops!...I Did It Again” narrate women’s independence and agency in their sexuality as they disregard men, however layered examples of misogyny, heterosexuality, and consumerism eventually fulfills a rival cultural narrative. These videos succumb to the dilemma of “Girl Power’s ideology of powerful, smart, and independent girls “ which is rendered problematic during a “chaining of feminist accomplishments to a hyperfeminine, hypersexualized, [commodified], version of (post)feminity” (Jackson et al., 2012). Both music videos emulate this dilemma when they depict a feminist champion of sexual autonomy through rejecting men and therefore only regard heterosexual relationships. Moreover, through hypersexualized dancing and adornament of bodies these videos are dominated by hyperfemininity and hypersexualization. 

Nevertheless, in further comparison of these two music videos the fact that TLC consists of three women of color while Britney Spears is white is incredibly relevant to the discussion. In “No Scrubs,” TLC has multiple scenes that involve growling or kicking towards the camera while dressing up in colorful, vibrant, and complete makeup, which actively contrasts scenes of white simplicity and innocence. These scenes, when interwoven with moments like when Left-Eye prays at 2:52, display the multiplicity of women in society, especially women of color who battle stereotypes of aggression (TLC, 2014). Similar to Yael Levy’s analysis of The Real Housewives’ franchise, contrasting scenes “create a chronicle of variations on feminine performance, changing in accordance to social circumstances, thus emphasizing the constructedness of feminine performance” (Levy, 2018). The TLC music video ends with the women laughing and fake fighting as if it is captured behind-the-scenes footage, which may further illuminate the constructedness of media industry and emphasize a distinction between the music video and reality. This is compared to Britney Spears’ video that avoids any allusion to violence or aggression. Therefore, these two videos communicate ideals of the early 2000s regarding an acceptable and non-threatening display of heterosexual and commodified feminism, however a subversive and intertextual reading leaves room for a hegemmonic interpretation in which the multiple and sometimes competeing demands of feminity are mocked. 

Bibliography
1.Jackson, S., Vares, T., & Gill, R. (2012). ‘The whole playboy mansion image’: Girls’
fashioning and fashioned selves within a postfeminist culture. Feminism & Psychology, 23(2), 143–162. doi: 10.1177/0959353511433790

2. Spears, B. (2009, October 25). Britney Spears- Oops!... I Did It Again (Official Video). Retrieved November 12, 2019, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CduA0TULnow.

3. Zeisler, A. (2008). Feminism and pop culture. Berkeley, Calif: Seal Press. 

4. Dale, J. P. (2016). Cute studies: An emerging field. East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 2

(1), 5–13. doi: 10.1386/eapc.2.1.5_2

5. TLC. (2014, January 31). Tlc- No Scrubs (Official Video) . Retrieved November 12, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrLequ6dUdM. 

6. Levy, Y. (2018). Serial Housewives: The Feminist Resistance of The Real Housewives’ Matrixial Structre. Continuum, 32:3, 370-380, DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2018.1450492