RACIALIZED DISGUST

Racialized Disgust

While reading the Phillips article I couldn’t help but think about the topic of my project, which is women representation in the music industry. While in my project I focus more on the lack of women representation in the music industry, it made me think of how men choose to represent themselves in the industry. Phillips talks about men and “hardness” and how the media portrays this sense of hardness and masculinity. Phillips argues that the portrayal of hardness limits the range of emotional and physical responses that males can express, especially in the media. Phillips talked about the video game that made flacid penises into weapons when they got hard, to critique masculinity and the “hardness” that is promoted about men in the media. This got me thinking about men in the music industry and how they portray the “hardness” in things such as their music videos.

I came across one of Post Malone’s music videos, where he and other men are seen standing in clips with swords in their hands. Whether intentional or not, this is an example of what Phillips was talking about when he refers to the hardness that is portrayed in the media about men and their masculinity. The quote that I chose was The fixation on hardness restricts masculine individuals to a limited range of emotional and physical responses. Anger and violence, with their obvious shows of strength and rejection of weakness, predominate. So does a toxic cocktail of oppressive behaviors: hardness must repudiate fatness, disability, femininity, transness, and, frequently, homosexuality in order to maintain its integrity.” I thought this quote accurately depicted the point Phillips is trying to emphasize through the entire article. The photo that I chose is of a mans strong and bulk back muscles with a title on top reading “Are You A Man?” I thought that this was a good example of the fact that men are supposed to be “hard” even in their body structures including muscles. My audio came from actor Justin Baldoni talking about how his roles in Hollywood were mainly “macho” men, because of his physique.