WOMEN IN NIGERIAN POPULAR MUSIC: EMPOWERED OR DEBASED? (Published)
This study using Survey and Focus Group Discussion sought to determine what the increasingly hypersexualised portrayals of women in popular music portend to the young Nigerian women through a critical analysis of Flavour’s musical lyrics. The result of the study shows the disparity and ambivalence in women’s perceptions of gender representations in popular culture. Their perceptions were diametrically polarized along the divides of healthy sexualized self-expression resulting in empowerment and co-optation to perform resulting in exploitation and debasement. We conclude by observing that women’s disposition and interpretation to popular music seems to be largely contingent upon diverse complex interacting factors hence women resentments in the face of offensive portrayals are subsumed in these ideological cultural productions thereby presenting them as accomplices in their own debasement through their relishing of the music.
Keywords: Nigerian Popular Music; Women’s Perception; Empowerment; Debasement