“I am not Jasmine, I am Aladdin”—finding or losing the “we” of women

We touched on this briefly in class, but I’d like to discuss in more detail what I found to be one of the most interesting observations that Simone de Beauvoir makes in “The Second Sex,” and that is the “We”—or lack thereof”—of women. Beauvoir describes how men band together under the “we” of their sect—their race, their class, etc.—and by doing this they make their counterpart, “the bourgeois, the whites, into ‘others’.” She writes, “But women do not say ‘We,’ except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say ‘women’ and women use the same word in referring to themselves.” This observation, which I believe to be true, points to so many levels of the ingrained oppression of women. By not using “We”, women do not join together to make their oppressors the “other.” By not involving themselves in the “We” of women, women are, in fact, separating themselves from “woman”—they make “women”, of which they are one, into “other.”

One of the major problems that I notice within feminism is that it is hard for women to stop this “othering” of themselves, even when they are challenging the system of dominance of men over women. I think that it is common for women to desire and work to have the same rights and opportunities as men but sometimes, if we are not careful, this turns into a struggle to join the “We” of men. If the “we” is that of all humanity, then that is okay. But it does not help the feminist cause to say, “look, I am not like ‘them,’ I’m like you, so I deserve the same.”

This is all very theoretical, so here is an example that I find distressing.

Nowhere is the oppression and mistreatment of women more apparent than in rap music. In so many examples, women are objectified and disrespected to a shocking extreme.

But there are some women within hip hop who challenge this oppression. Here they run into a difficult problem. How does a woman step into a highly-masculinized role and subvert it without joining the other side?

Look at Nicki Minaj. Nicki is one of the few female MCs ever to not only release her own successful rap album. She also has appeared alongside some of the most prominent male artists in the industry. She does not sing some flighty chorus while these men rap around her about getting girls (many female artists do this). Nicki holds her own verses with equal (and perhaps greater) skill.

See her verse in Kanye’s Monster:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ona42jz8w0k

And yet, Nicki still falls into one of the greatest traps of taking on this role. She allows herself to join the men. In her song, “Roman’s Revenge,” Nicki takes on the identity of Roman—a man. She begins the song:

I am not Jasmine, I’m Aladdin
So far ahead, these bums is laggin’
See me in that new thing, bums is gaggin’
I’m startin’ to feel like a dungeon dragon

(to hear the song, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9h_I90M8-M)

I like Nicki Minaj. I think she challenges a hyper-masculine part of our culture. Yet I am disappointed that to do this she identifies as a man. She writes, “I am not Jasmine, I am Aladdin.” She is joining the male “we” instead of asserting both her femininity—and her fundamental humanness—as deserving of equal respect.

All of this goes to demonstrate that these observations that are made by the theorists that we study are real and true. It is amazing to me that what Beauvoir noticed in 1949 is still true of pop culture today. What I admire about poetry, about Sylvia Plath, Haryette Mullen, and others, is that they assert, often through exploration, what it means to be a woman. They do not try to escape. They build up the “We” of womanhood. I wish this were true of rap, reality T.V. and the rest of mainstream pop culture.