SUZANNE SHEPPARD Sunday, May 6 2007

I WAS shocked and outraged that so many people were shocked and outraged by Akon’s dirty dance with Danah Alleyne a few weeks ago. I am really taken aback that so many of us are so still deep in denial and continue to turn a blind eye to what is widely accepted as popular entertainment these days.

Yes, what Akon did to that little girl was obscene, disrespectful and in extremely poor taste. He should not have been allowed to so flagrantly flout this country’s laws.

However, the fact is that he did it and his performance was witnessed by scores of club-goers who said and did nothing until a video of the shameful incident was released on the Internet.

What Akon did is not completely alien to this country. Unless a lot of us have been in deep hibernation for the past several years, it would be hard to ignore the extent to which sexually explicit displays have become a widely accepted part of our Carnival culture.

Akon did what a lot of hip hop artistes have been doing successfully for years - he used a popular musical genre to promote sexism and exploitation of women. The same thing has been happening in soca music which, like hip hop, promotes a lifestyle embraced by the majority of our young people in the 13 - 30 age group.

Much of the music - and their accompanying videos - transmit and encourage negative images of women, reducing them to mere sex objects. Scantily clad “winer girls” are a feature of many soca videos where the cameras focus on particular body parts as the dancers gyrate to music with suggestive lyrics.

In their live performances, few of our entertainers will even venture on stage without their sexy dancing girls.

Even female artistes feel compelled to focus on their sex appeal rather then their talents in their performances. Few, if any of our soca divas, seem able to resist the pressure to dress and move on stage in ways that amplify their sexiness.

As a result, the fact that most of them can actually sing is seriously underplayed.

It is a sad fact that in soca music, as is the case with hip hop, women are being dishonoured and disrespected and very few of us raise our voices to condemn this trend.

This is having a negative effect on male-female relations, with a lot of young women actually accepting an image of themselves as sex objects.

Sadly, many of them are prepared to accept sexual exploitation and manipulation because they believe it is the only way they can survive economically and socially.

Go backstage at any local concert or calypso tent and you will find scores of women willing to do anything sexually with a popular entertainer to get money, or just to feel wanted. It is sad that so many of our beautiful young women accept this image of themselves and actually believe that they have no control over their own bodies.

Equally dangerous is the fact that a lot of young men are walking around with the attitude that women are only good for sexual relations. A lot of people have been “running their mouths” on the unfortunate encounter between the hip hop entertainer and the pastor’s daughter.

It’s a pity that the majority of them are not as vocal in their condemnations when our local entertainers encourage sexual exploitation of other people’s daughters.

I hope that at the very least the Danah Alleyne/Akon incident serves as a wake up call and motivates more of us to speak out and exert the public pressure necessary to eliminate the ugliness and exploitation that has seeped into our culture.

It is also necessary that efforts be doubled, mainly through our education system, to promote the understanding and respect that are essential to the development of more positive gender relations in TT.



(ssheppard@newsday.co.tt)