Nicki Minaj's Anaconda: Objectification or Female Empowerment?
Written by
Pia Bocanegra, Year 13
At first glance, both Anaconda’s music video and the lyrics seem to use conventional ways of sexualizing women. A scantily clad Minaj is seen continuously ‘twerking’ and writhing provocatively, particularly in the scene where she spreads her legs perpendicularly on a bamboo ledge. Her actions such as slapping another woman’s butt cheeks as well as giving a lap dance to Drake create images with rampant sexual connotations, give credence to the idea that women are mere objects of male pleasure.
The lyrics appear to simply reinforce these sentiments. As the song starts with the catchy phrase, “My anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns, hun”, she seems to create a ‘standard’ for women. It implies that women need big “buns” if they want a man’s “Anaconda”. This is repeatedly reinforced in the song where Minaj sings, “He says he don’t like ‘em boney, he want something he can grab”, implying that the failure to meet this standard will characterize women as unattractive. It appears as though men are dominant and have a certain powerful hold over women and their sexuality. The lyrics suggest that women should subscribe to their submissive roles and accept whatever men expect of them.
Although women are depicted as the inferior sex and portrayed as dehumanized objects with no other purpose than to please a man’s sexual desires, this superficial characterization only scratches the surface. It fails to acknowledge the subtle nuances implanted by Minaj and Anaconda’s director, Colin Tilley, in both lyrics and video.
Perhaps, it isn’t the male gaze that is the central focus of this video. Maybe, it is Minaj’s own sexual being.
For instance, when re-examining the Anaconda video, the audience see a complete lack of men (aside from Drake - but we’ll get to him later). The video revolves around Minaj and her dancers in this all-female parallel universe. At one point, Minaj makes eye contact with the camera, as she seductively downs a banana that arguably represents male genitalia but instead, chops it in half with a smirk. Is she trying to imply that women are sexually empowered and lead men on? Is there a reversal of roles?
When analyzing the Anaconda music video, one cannot miss out the most critical aspect of the video: the dance-montage, which includes Drake, Minaj’s so-called Twitter “husband”. Various opinions regard Minaj as merely a prop for Drake’s lap dance and believe that this scene isn’t empowering anyone except Drake. But if we delve deeper, Drake’s ‘hover-hand’ seems to suggest that his sexual desires are not the focus of this scene; instead, Minaj is the one in control of the dynamics of their relationship. She even ends the video by slapping Drake when he tries to touch her. The line, “Oh my God, look at her butt”, voiced from a man’s perspective, makes Drake look somewhat ridiculous as he is seduced by an attractive woman he can’t have. It could be argued that this final scene is a reflection of women - women who feel empowered by their choices, and their own sexual lives. Minaj, a self-proclaimed ‘feminist role model’, seems to redefine what female empowerment is as she creates her own spectrum of sexual expression.
Perhaps, analyzing Anaconda begs us to answer a very pressing question: If a woman objectifies herself, is that referred to as female empowerment or feminism?
On the other, maybe Minaj’s neon-bright get-up and hypersexualisation of women make us think that she is shaking her “buns” for men. Who knows? Either way, as silly as it may seem, Anaconda makes us think twice when we come across another audacious song or music video. After all, there may simply be an underlying ‘message’ that we might have missed.
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I like the complexities brought up by this seemingly "basic" video, interesting read!!
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