Dr. Halliday has made some of her most cited articles available for free download! Contact her directly for other articles.
| Souls2018 w/ Nadia Brown: The Power of Black Girl Magic Anthems: Nicki Minaj, Beyoncé, and “Feeling Myself” as Political Empowerment |
ABSTRACT Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé are two of the most successful Black women artists in today’s popular culture. They occupy a hypervisible and invisible position in Black and mainstream popular culture, and therefore exist as a crucial discursive site to understand Black girls’ self-articulation as “blackgirlmagic” at this moment. Faced with the rise of public feminist and postracial discourses presented in new digital media forms, Minaj and Beyoncé’s representations of sexualized Black femininity reimagined popular notions of race, gender, sexuality, and representation. Both women navigate sexuality and play, which allows them to promote claims to sexual autonomy, consent, and empowerment for girls. Together, they articulated blackness as arrogance, femininity as sexual confidence, and friendship as powerfully seductive in the song “Feeling Myself” (2015). We argue that the song became a #blackgirlma- gic anthem for Black girls and women because of the ways Black girls and women engaged with the song on social media. They created a visual language to articulate the political stakes of #blackgirlmagic in an age of police brutality, anti-blackness, and misogyny. Through the use of focus group data with young Black women, we assess how this particular brand of “blackgirlmagic” impacts the political behavior and empowerment of Black college aged women.
KEYWORDS Beyoncé, Black Girl Magic, Nicki Minaj, political empowerment, social media
KEYWORDS Beyoncé, Black Girl Magic, Nicki Minaj, political empowerment, social media
| GirlhoodStudies2018: Miley What's Good: Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda, Instagram Reproductions, and Viral Memetic Violence |
ABSTRACT Images on popular social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter that are the most entertaining are loaded with memetic power because their value is based on cultural attitudes that already constitute our lives in the everyday. Focusing on memes appropriating the artwork from Nicki Minaj’s single, Anaconda, I explore how popular memetic culture is fueled by Black women’s creativity yet positions Black women’s bodies as the fodder for potent viral images on social media platforms and in everyday experiences; Black girlhoods, at this level of representation and in lived experiences, are rarely awarded the distinction from womanhood that many other girlhoods enjoy. Thus, Black feminist discourses of desire which speak to both girlhoods and womanhoods inform my argument that social media has become a site of reproduction and consumption—a technological auction block where Black women’s bodies, aesthetics, and experiences are vilified for viral enjoyment.
KEYWORDS appropriation, Black women, consumption, popular culture, social media, symbolic power
KEYWORDS appropriation, Black women, consumption, popular culture, social media, symbolic power
| DCQR2017: Envisioning Black Girl Futures: Nicki Minaj's Anaconda Feminism and Black Girl Sexuality |
ABSTRACT Black girlhood exists in a world that is constantly trying to negate it. Black vernacular traditions, too, allow girls to be considered “fast” or “womanish” based on their perceived desire or sexuality. However, Black girlhood studies presents a space where Black girls can claim their own experiences and futures. This essay engages how Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” is fertile ground to help demystify Black girls’ possibilities for finding sexual pleasure and self- determination. Using hip-hop feminism, I argue that “Anaconda” presents a Black feminist sex- ual politics that encourages agency for Black girls, providing a “pinkprint” for finding pleasure in their bodies.
KEYWORDS Nicki Minaj; Black feminism; Black girls; sexuality; Popular culture
KEYWORDS Nicki Minaj; Black feminism; Black girls; sexuality; Popular culture