Heterosexual Women Asking for Pleasure: Beneath the Noise Surrounding “WAP” and “Black Man Magic”
Before launching this blog, I just want to say that I do not own the copyright to the music or the video included, I do not include it to make money or as click bait, but I include it as a teaching demonstration. Now, to the point: beneath the noise surrounding “WAP” by Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B and the lesser-known “Black Man Magic” by Stormi Maya is a discomfort with heterosexual women openly demanding sexual pleasure.
While Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” splashed onto the scene with controversy, Stormi Maya’s video caught me by surprise. Actually, my husband showed it to me. He was on Twitter and he read some very, very cruel Tweets to a young woman about a video that she’d made supporting Black men. People, Black men and women, were trashing this video she’d made. They talked about the men she’d chosen. They questioned this young woman’s “blackness,” based on her skin color. Apparently, there is some kind of Black litmus test that only certain people of a certain shade can pass?
When my husband showed the video to me, I knew exactly what the problem was: the camera gaze. Stormi Maya, who I learned is an actress, was careful with how she pointed that camera. Normally, the camera view is a male gaze. We are so accustomed to this male gaze that we accepted it without question. The male gaze is one that follows a woman’s body and her form. With this video, Stormi Maya picks out very muscular (Lordy, Lord, Lord) Black men and focuses the camera on them while off-centering herself. Though she is dressed in lingerie, the viewer is never allowed to view her body from head to toe and I imagine that that may be frustrating for those who want to view her more fully, but she is not the object of the video or song, Black men and pleasure with Black men are.
Likewise, “WAP” is about pleasure. I must admit that I resisted watching the video or listening to the song. I tend not to follow trends or popular music. Since I do teach young people, I decided to watch the video in order to at least view and hear the controversy. When I watched the video and heard the song, I can say this: I have heard and seen worse. I grew up with RAP and am a Blues enthusiast. Luke Booty Music of the 90s was so vulgar. I’m almost ashamed to say that I was 85 pounds soaking wet with a brick and I was popping my little stuff. For those of us who are a certain age, you know what I mean.
Men (and not just RAPpers), have been crafting vulgar lyrics for decades. Some of them are rather clever while some of them are cartoonish. They have no problem viewing women as sexual objects and demanding sexual pleasure. It is done so often that we have accepted this kind of lyricism and behavior as just “boys being boys.” We even see it as funny. Remember this scene from Wayne’s World?
There was no controversy here. No questions being raised. Everybody took it as a joke. “Boys will be boys,” we say.
Conversely, I have been looking at academic, feminist writing and where it has been going for about three decades. Sometimes, I feel that as a heterosexual woman, feminists assume that all heterosexual sex is wrong and oppressive. I sometimes feel, in reading feminist literature, that no heterosexual women have agency and any time we speak, we have just been “trained” and “brainwashed” by patriarchy. Well, that is not the case. Heterosexual women have agency. We feel sexual attraction for men. We want sex and we want pleasurable sex. And heterosexual women demanding attractive male bodies and pleasurable sex is causing a firestorm of controversy this summer!
