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Sexy Songs: A Study Of Gender Construction In Contemporary Music Genres, Lea Tessitore

Honors Theses

This study focuses on gender construction in contemporary music genres, including Rap/Hip-hop, Country, and Punk Rock. Although all these genres are vastly different, each genre creates unique masculinities and femininities which impact the way listeners view male/female relations in politics and their everyday lives. Rap/hip-hop creates a construct which results in the objectification of women through their “pornification” and “commodification” in the lyrics of popular songs. Country, on the other hand, has complex masculinities and femininities which create a complex network of gender characteristics which reinforce and complement each other. Lastly, this thesis looks ‘back’ to Punk Rock, whose prime …