Producers of the above video,
If one were to hear or watch the video of “Do It Like a Dude” by Jessie J, one might automatically think that it’s objectifying women or that it’s anything but empowering. But upon truly listening to the song, you might begin to change your mind.
If one were to hear or watch the video of “Do It Like a Dude” by Jessie J, one might automatically think that it’s objectifying women or that it’s anything but empowering. But upon truly listening to the song, you might begin to change your mind.
First off, there’s the title of the whole song and the theme of the music video – “Do It Like a Dude”. This song both reinforces and breaks the stereotypes of the ideal man and women. As discussed in class, we concluded that many music videos portray the perfect woman as submissive and willing to do whatever a man wants. They are purely objects. However, it seems as if men should be strong and powerful, with his status directly related to the number of girls he can get.
This song and video breaks these stereotypes in that it shows girls wearing more masculine clothes. They are still what some might call “slutty”, but they’re designed to make the dancers in the video look macho and brawny. They’re wearing and doing almost everything that we concluded were “masculine”: wearing flashy jewelry (“bling”), making intimidating faces towards the camera, crossing their arms, shooting each other menacing looks. These are women acting just like men are “supposed to”. In this way, the music video can be empowering even though it isn’t raising money for Japan or saving orphans or anything generically empowering. I found this message particularly effective considering Jessie J is a white female.
I found that generally, the media put into the music video only helped the artist make her point – girls can do whatever boys do and just as well. One of the examples of this was that she could “grab her crotch”, which is typically regarded as a masculine action. They were also breaking out in very physical arguments, something that girls don’t typically do. While some music videos don’t tend to make much sense or send out bad messages (take Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie” featuring Rihanna). It’s making the woman seem not only submissive, but as if she actually likes this torture. Actually, Rihanna has a lot of videos and songs with this similar message… But I’m going off on a tangent. This video shows women portrayed as men so that people realize that women can, in fact, “do it like a dude”.
Something else I like about the video was how they featured homosexuality. I recognize that male homosexuality is far less accepted in pop culture and that’s what we should be focusing on right now, but I love how they used this in “Do It Like a Dude”. I may sound completely bizarre when saying this, but I’m going to reference what we’ve been learning in social studies this year and five-paragraph essays – this short clip featuring two women backed up their thesis that they can act like men if they want to and shouldn’t be thought of as pathetic or weak.
Conversely, the music video could also be regarded as only backing up this stereotype. If one says that they’re “doing it like a dude”, then this must be how guys are supposed to act, right? I suppose it may take some thought to come up with this notion, but why do we have to label things like a “dude” or like a girl? Even by fighting these stereotypes, they still manage to strengthen them anyways. So if you're saying that you're doing it like a man, then that's obviously how a man should act, right? However, for the purposes of selling a song, I completely understand and Jessie J was making a point. I didn’t have any sort of problem with the backing up the stereotype idea of the video. I found that she was disproving the stereotype rather than justifying it.
Overall, I thought this music video was both effective, and not offensive in any way (well, other than the explicit language used during various parts throughout the song). Bravo, Jessie J and crew!
