After reading the article on female sexuality, I decided to watch a video that has two female rappers with distinctly different presentations of the body. One is Missy Elliot who dons typical rap artist clothing (larger clothes, big chains, vague gender appearance (for women)) and Trina who wears much more "femininely gendered" clothes (tops that emphasize breasts, dress overall that shows more skin and emphasize the aspects of the female body). When I watched this video, I realized quickly how the two rappers not only in clothes but also in imaged presentation show themselves.
Missy (at :50) physically removes her head from her body and through this action does two symbolic things with her sexual identity. One is she plays on the idea of sexual desire as essential and two the idea of female sexuality as having to be emotional (the head). Removing her head, Missy removes the emotional attachment she would have towards the man and physicalizes herself. She rubs her body and uses her body as what identifies her sexual desire versus her head as the emotional want of having sex.
Trina, conversely, (at 3:03) actually invokes an image of sexual actions and uses her femininity to demonstrate her acknowledgment of knowing she is desired by men. The way she subverts this desiring of men is by firstly her lyrics and secondly her positioning of men in the video. Her lyrics emphasize the idea that she must be pleased by the man and if this pleasure doesn't occur she will not deem the man "man enough". Through her lyrics, she emphasizes the fact that she is the one who decides if a man is masculine versus the man using her body to demonstrate that he is a man. Her positioning of men on the walls and locked up also reflects her identity of control of the bed. She is the one that rolls around on the bed while the men are prevented from enjoyment. Standing in front of them, she invokes the idea that she has control not only of her sexuality but of the male sexuality also.
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