To conclude... (For now)...

To begin, I do not want to say good- bye; more like see you later.  This project is done considering, I am about to graduate, but the analysis and critical thinking approach has just begun.  The word "bitch" hasn't gone anywhere in the past hundreds of years, and is only evolving to become more integrated into our culture and society.  The repercussions of the use of this word have only grown in depth, considering society interprets its contexts in so many different ways.  Although I do not have straightforward answers to the questions I posed at the beginning of this blog, I feel that not being able to answer some of these questions in the most important or challenging aspect about the word itself.

The word bitch is connected to a long history of demoralizing and degrading women.  Over the years the term has also began to be used toward men.  Men find this extremely degrading and confrontational when they are insulted with the word, because they are then being derogatorily equated to a woman.  Not just any woman; they are being equated to a "bitchy" woman, in which the word is transformed against them, with their very own perceptions and meanings of what a "bitch" is.  The Urban Dictionary (urbandictionary.com) is a user generated dictionary, where users are allowed to form their meaning of words, including slang terms that typically wouldn't be found in a standard dictionary.  The Urban Dictionary has hundreds of definitions for the word bitch, which can easily show the multiple roles this word plays or means within various different settings and contexts.  One user defined the word on urbandictionary.com as,

"Was once referred to a female dog, but now is used in this context.  

A woman that:

A) Will have sex with everybody, but you.
B) Won't do (what you in your feeble mind) want her to.
C) You work for, that tells you what to do, and you don't like it.
D) A successful woman.
E) A down right drama queen that makes yours, and everyones lives around her misrable.
F) A control freak that always thinks she is right, and constantly corrects everyone." (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bitch&page=2)

So the confrontation when the word bitch is being directed at a man shifts, because these are typically the form the definition takes on.  Then when it used toward a man, it not only emasculates by equating him to a woman, but also the term itself implies nothing good.  Some may argue "D. A successful woman" is good, but when the term "bitch" replaces that character trait, it then still becomes degrading because accomplishments are not directly being recognized.

Because of the long history of degradation connected to the term "bitch", it becomes difficult to fully accept the term being used loosely and taking on new meanings in a positive light.  Some people may not mind being called a bitch, if it supposedly takes on a positive connotation, and I am not phased a whole lot by the term anymore because of its consistent use throughout our American culture; however, it does phase me if it's directed toward me.  Personally I feel that this word comes with its consequences, and culminates repercussions our society internalizes when relating this word to gender. Whether it is being used towards a woman or man, the meanings we internalize associated with the word bitch still finds ways to recycle its purpose back to degradation and demoralization of human beings.  Because this word's purpose shifts meanings depending upon the context in which it is used, people are able to adapt their own meanings of this word based on their experiences.  With that being said, there are a lot of areas where this word can infringe or hurt others, especially when its context is misinterpreted.

As I mentioned earlier, the word has become common use within our culture.  The most important problem with this that is concerning, is how our future generations will internalize this word, and how their interpreted meaning of the word bitch will impact the way in which they view or even respect women.  Can this word continue being used so loosely without our society and culture suffering consequences in the ways they view women as equals?  If this word continues to expand in meaning, and society witnesses a "bitch" is associated with being submissive to a male ( or the male dominated culture), can women move forward together?  Or will this word continue to imply women being inferior to men?  Will our society grow to accept strong independent women, without labeling them as bitches?  For me I would much rather be called a strong, independent, smart, attractive, successful, etc. woman, than a strong, independent, smart, attractive, successful, etc. bitch any day.  I want no association with the term.  Personally, being called a woman, a lady, or even a chick ( which I also dislike to some extent) is a much better suited description or compliment, that I would take over being called a "bad bitch".  I can handle the other terms, but a bitch to me will always be a degrading and demoralizing term that makes women seem inferior.  We have to move above this ladies!  "Bitch" is connected to a long past discriminatory towards women, and if we continue using the word so loosely, future generations will only be able to view women in such a way.  It is nice to change bad things and make them new, but I wouldn't go as far as to saying the old meanings of the word have ever disappeared.

Hello!

Hello Everyone!  I am completing this project for a capstone  in my Media Literacy Certification at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.  Throughout this project, I will be analyzing the way the word "bitch" is used  in a number of various hip hop songs.  Hip hop music has primarily perpetuated heterosexism since its origins, and has only evolved into suggesting stronger motives.  Although African American women still grow with success within the hip-hop industry and mainframe, the gender roles they take on is either in forms of empowerment or submissiveness.  With that being said, the word "bitch" has integrated itself into the Hip Hop music world, and has evolved over time into more complex definitions to understand, internalize, and become more difficult to read the meaning or purpose of the word's usage in each song.

Simply put, when the word "Bitch" entered the Hip Hop world, it was used mainly to downgrade women, and make them more inferior to men.  It was utilized in a derogatory way, towards women that upheld bad reputations, or committed actions that were considered "un-lady like".  Over time the word has evolved into taking on many more meanings.  The word is used interchangeably with men and women  now.  With women, it can sometimes take on it more derogatory origins; however, more hip hop artists are attempting to utilize the word to suggest empowerment.  This can be controversial because, fans and audiences may choose to interpret the song and the way the word is used based on their own perceptions, and not the intentions of the artist.

Many problems are associated with this word "bitch", yet we are seeing it being used more and more whether it is in our daily lives or in the media.  When the word "bitch" originated it was simply used  to describe female dogs.  Over a hundred years ago, the word had evolved into being directed towards women in negative ways.  The Oxford Online Dictionary defines Bitch as,
bitch |bi ch |noun1 a female dog, wolf, fox, or otter.2 informal derogatory a woman whom one dislikes or considers to bemalicious or unpleasant.• [in sing. ] informal a thing or situation that is unpleasant or difficultto deal with : the stove is a bitch to fix.verb [ intrans. ] informalexpress displeasure; grumble : they bitch about everything | [as n. ] (bitching) we're tired of your bitching.ORIGIN Old English bicce, of Germanic origin 

With that being said, is it okay for this term to take on so many meanings and be used in so many ways without causing repercussions for our future society?  When it is used toward men, it is also used in a derogatory way, that is more often rejected and not accepted by society, in comparison to its use towards women.  Why is this so?  I've been coming across, that in today's society the acceptability of the word "bitch" is depending more and more on the context in which it is being used.  However, if definitions and contexts are all constructed depending upon a person's perception, this leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation.

This link is a mini-documentary conducted by Chantel van Milligen titled "Bitch: A mini-documentary on the Gender Slur".  She asks many people their perceptions of the word, and also about when and when it is not okay to use the term.  I found this very interesting, and she did a great job.  I am including this link in my project, because her research speaks profoundly to the subject of my project.
Bitch: A mini-documentary

Throughout this project, I will be analyzing three different songs, and the way the word bitch is used within them.  With that being said, I will discuss implied meanings, and what bloggers, comment contributors, and fans say about the song, as well as my own interpretation or perception of the song.  I will be looking at how others internalize its lyrics, and discussing my reactions.  In addition to taking a more critical approach to conveying how bitch is being utilized.

Is it irony or problematic that a word's meaning has shifted from derogatory to imply empowerment?  

If so, can the word "bitch" ever lose its degrading past?  

How is the term supposed to take on different meanings and become an accepted part of the American culture to use regularly, when its use in the past has been solely connected to downgrading people?

NWA: "A Bitch iz a Bitch" if they go against the male dominated culture...

This song is titled "A Bitch iz a Bitch", by N.W.A. and was released on their debut album Straight Outta Compton (1988).  Situated in the uprising of Hip Hop music, this song is one of the first songs in the Hip Hop music era to categorize "some" women as bitches.  Their album was highly controversial as they addressed many injustices and issues in the poorer, highly African American populated neighborhoods, such as corrupted police, crime, and the lifestyle of survival that took place within these boundaries.  However, this song explicitly categorizes women and labels them as being bitchy.  This song doesn't go against the grain for Hip Hop music during that time, but it does in relation to the other songs on this album.  Setting a foreground or field for the demoralization and degradation of women in the Hip Hop music industry; this song says it all.

In the opening seconds of the song N.W.A states, "Now, the title bitch don't apply to all women, but every woman has a little bitch in them."  Now this suggests that a bitch is a woman who possesses the characteristic or personality trait.  So, how does one separate a personality trait from being labeled as one?  You can't!  Once the personality or character trait is associated with a person, this can then become a label.  Resulting in men taking on a perspective of women to not only remain submissive to their will, but also that every woman that stands up for themselves or go against these assumed "feminine" characteristics is thus then categorized as a bitch.  How can a person be "bitchy", and not a bitch?  It is like saying a person is promiscuous, but doesn't have many sexual relationships.

NWA says in the song, "it's like a disease that plagues their character, takin' the women of America".  Thus implying that this personality trait is spreading across America from one woman to the other.  All of them, voicing their opinions, and becoming less "easy" to subdue to a man's will.  This song also implies that a woman who associates or acts with these attributes are bitches because they are not catering or subduing themselves to a man's will.  I say this because there is a part of the song where NWA associates a bitch with some women who "don't say hi back", and they take it as being bitchy because then they are supposedly "acting better than them".
NWA states this in the song when they say, "It makes 'em go deaf in the ear, That's why when you say hi she won't say hi, Are you the type that think you're too damn fly?"  And then they respond, "Bitch eat shit and die".

This song is very obscene, vulgar, and demeaning to women as a whole.  The lyrics take on a very scenic and story-like vulgarity, setting up a stage for the word bitch as it is used in the hip hop industry, and carrying over to listener's exposure, interpretation, and male's perspectives of women and how that or women associate to the word "bitch".  Because of this song's different role on their album, there is not a whole lot of criticism on the song itself.  There is criticism and responses to the album, as it changed society's views on criminality and corruption in both politics and the police force, speaking about crime and poverty in ghettos.  However, just by reviewing the responses to the video on youtube, many people welcome the word bitch and NWA's description of it.  Most men sympathize and say they can relate to the lyrics of the song, through their experiences.  Other men said they listen to this song on repeat after a break up.  Some female commenters agreed that they can be "bitchy" at times.  It just goes to show media's and music's impact on society and what people internalize and interpret from it, carry over to our everyday understandings of things, but the concern for how this can affect people's relationships with others is never raised.  It raises the concern for how this word impacts women, and people's understanding of the word demoralizes and degrades others.  With that being said, the word bitch is obviously an accepted word of description today, despite how it is being used, or who it is affecting.  As this word carries on, and more people internalize it through media and Hip Hop music, it's underlying or imposed suggestion that this is a "man's world" will never go away.  Thus making women seem inferior and submissive to the will of men.  As this song implies, any women who isn't is then a "bitch".  Any problems here?!

Alternative context of "Bitch" in Lupe Fiasco's "Bitch Bad" song

Lupe Fiasco's explanation, or should I say exploration of the word "bitch" in not only  how it is perpetuated through hip hop music, but also how it carries over to underdeveloped perceptions of women in our society, are very emotionally and lyrically strong in this song.  In his song titled "Bitch Bad", he challenges our society to think about the way we use the word "bitch", and the repercussions in leaves on our society, especially young under-develoed consciences of our future generations.  He examines the word's usage from a three angled storyline within his song.

The Huffington Post summarizes this music video perfectly, "The music video features the Chicago rapper describing the lives of a young girl and boy and how they use and view the word bitch. In the boy's scenario, it means hearing his mother singing along to a song and calling herself a 'bad bitch.' For girls, the video shows three young females watching a music video online -- the stereotypical rap video with a shiny car, a blinged out rapper selling a beverage and a barely-clothed woman moving her body along with the beat.

But it's the contrast between how the two children interpret the word "bitch" that delivers the true surprise -- while the boy seems to associate it with the strong role model of his mother, the girls, on the other hand, attribute the term to an overly sexualized male fantasy that they later try to emulate." (http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/08/24/lupe-fiasco-bitch-bad_n_1827932.html).

He starts the song with the empowering introduction to his lyrics with, "Bitch Bad, Woman Good, Lady Better...".  He does this to call attention and awareness to the vernacular usage of words society uses against women.  At the same time these words create stereotypes associated with them, that contribute to the differences in people's perceptions attached to the words.  Fiasco then goes into his first part of the story, raising awareness to a young boy's first interpretation or exposure of the "bad bitch" being used by his mom.  She calls herself this to associate herself as a strong independent woman; however, this leaves him with the mind frame thoughts that a strong independent women is associated with his mother's character, and also is what is truly meant when referring to a woman as a "bad bitch".  Then in his second part of the story he introduces the listener to a young preteen girl and her first exposure to the meaning of a bad bitch.  Her meaning of what a "bad bitch" was intended to be was evolved from rap and hip hop videos, where the girls being associated as bad bitches are dressed with very little clothing, hyper-sexualized, and depicted to serve to the satisfaction or the fantasy of a male.  Therefore, both the boy and girl interpret what it means to be a bad bitch in two very different ways, because their first exposure to the meanings were two very different perceptions and came from two very different sources.  With that being said, Lupe then goes into the third part of his story, where the little girl and the boy meet when they grow up.  The boy, now a young man is looking for a bad bitch, or in other words a strong independent sophisticated woman, like his mother.  The girl, now a young woman, is looking for a guy who will treat her right nonetheless, but goes about it attempting to adapt to the bad bitch persona she has learned and internalized from the women in music videos.  Ultimately it does not work, because they have two different interpretations of what a bad bitch is; however, Lupe Fiasco highlights the controversies with the usage and development of this word, both in our daily lives, and how it is perpetuated in mainstream media.

Majority of fans and people who are not fans of Lupe Fiasco, completely support his ideologies and the awareness he his attempting to highlight about the word bitch and how it is used and constructed in our society.  I personally really like what Lupe Fiasco is trying to do with his purpose in the mainstream music industry as a whole, and highlight injustices, socially, politically, economically, and worldly.

The only harsh criticism I was able to find was a blog posting, "Why must we continually endure Lupe Fiasco's half-baked conscious hip-pop?" written by Brandon Soderburg.  He states, 
"'Bitch Bad' is, to play Lupe's game and get histrionic, how you "debase" a "culture."You twist a rap song into poorly thought-out grab for attention, and give it a muddled video, all under the guise of "starting a conversation," which implicitly suggests that rap music isn't having these conversations already. The use of the word "bitch," sensitively deconstructed by Jay-Z on "99 Problems," and currently being twisted and challenged by Azealia Banks, Nicki Minaj, and many more female MCs, proves that the discussion doesn't need a backpack rap hustler selling cynicism." (http://www.spin.com/blogs/lupe-fiasco-mansplains-some-more-in-the-video-for-bitch-bad/).

I found his article thought out very vaguely, and sounded a little biased simply because he did not have any argument besides the fact he basically did not like Lupe Fiasco.  The article was very repetitive, and he kept listing more or less the ways he didn't like the song, and he felt Lupe Fiasco was attempting to get attention.  My argument to that would be that Fiasco is drawing a larger awareness to our culture and society in not only the ways boys, girls, men, women, interpret what a bitch is, but regardless of its usage it is demeaning and denouncing to women overall.  The acceptance of this term, leads to repercussions our culture and society will face, due to misunderstandings.  The scariest thing that was perpetuated in this song is how a love relationship or dating can be altered with the smallest misunderstandings.  If a woman sees herself as an independent and strong woman, and uses the word bitch to passively replace that description, it could lead to the next generations misunderstanding, or anyone who is learning what a bad bitch is.  While on the other hand, media interprets this in a similar but over-sexualized, and submissive way to fulfill a male's fantasy.  With that being said, the word bitch will always be derogatory, and the more accepted it becomes in our daily descriptions and conversations, the more worrying we have to do for the future of our society and culture, in equality and respect for women.  Bitch was once only used toward women in a derogatory way, for hundreds of years, so to change that over night and create a gender level play field, remains difficult, when demeaning words can be misinterpreted leaving women to feel inferior.

Suggestive Language in Beyonce's new song "Bow Down"

In Beyonce's newest single, she surprised many of her fans by the lyrics she used in her song.  The song is titled "Bow Down", which she explicitly states several times in the song to suggest her authority.  Now what authority she is referring to, by all means confuses me.  It could be her authority in the music industry, as she is now married to Jay-Z , long time hip hop artist and founder of Rockafeller Records; however, she has never before needed to so directly state her success within the industry as she did in this song.

Beyonce states in her song, "I know when you were little girls, you dreamt of being in my world; don't forget it, don't forget it; respect that, bow down bitches".

Unsure about who necessarily she is referring her lyrics to, many critics believe she is addressing other female music artists in the industry, to demonstrate her superiority.  At the same time, this is left very unclear, so it makes her seem as if she is generalizing her words to females overall.  This would include her female fans.  No doubt, Beyonce has been in the music industry a very long time and is very talented, which speaks for her success itself.  Recently she has expanded her successes with long time rap artist and entrepreneur Jay-Z, and they got married.  After marriage, the two of them just had a little girl and named her Blue Ivy.  With all these life changes, Beyonce has made to better herself and her career, she still feel the need to make others feel inferior to her by referring to them as "bitches"?!  This troubles and confuses me, as it does a lot of fans, because this never seemed like her character before or for the many years prior of her being in the music industry.  She has always upheld her success, status, and reputation with some decency and class up until now.  Beyonce is very successful and well known; there has never been the need for her to denounce any other female artists, or especially her fans.

"I took some time to live my life; but don't think I'm just his little wife; Don't get it twisted, get it twisted; This my shit; Bow down bitches".

Here Beyonce is mentioning or implying that her marriage to Jay-Z, does not make her any weaker of a female, or on the other hand, does not contribute to her successes.  She is implying her power both within her own family and in the music industry.  Beyonce is a musical icon and a diva, in which people do not question her talent.  However, since her marriage with Jay-Z tabloids and magazines have questioned just how much this has "changed" her and how she represents herself.  By this lyric she is suggesting that she is in full control of her life and her success, but this speaks very differently against her character that we have all grown up watching and listening to, making us all fall in love with her music.  Fans understand that she is grown up and moving onto new chapters of her life.  The humble seventeen year old Beyonce is no longer apparent in these lyrics, or this song.  With that being said, I guess there is some disappointment in her putting herself on a pedestal so explicitly, while making other women (whether it is her fans or other female artists she is talking about) seem inferior or less than she is.  We all see her accomplishments, and there isn's any question about them.  We would all be happy for her, but the way she is presenting them is through a Beyonce who is unfamiliar to the Beyonce we once knew.  Nothing about "Bow down Bitches" is humble; therefore, it surprises some of us that this would come out of one of her songs.

Wendy Williams had some discussion regarding the new release of this song on her personal talk show, and her and her colleagues shared their opinions about the lyrics Beyonce chose to use.  At the same time she shares some fans' responses about the song, while other fans tweet in their views.  With that being said, people's interpretations of this song differ quite largely.  Some fans are dissapointed in the word choice used in the song, as I am.  While other fans believe the song is about her power in the music industry as a woman, and the accomplishments she has acquired along the way.  Watch the video below.  It discusses and shows many different viewpoints surrounding the song's controversial lyrics, and how people feel about the song as a whole.