While merrily munching on an artery-blocking medley of roast plantains, Utazi leaves and peppered oil (don’t judge me, just love me) for lunch, I got my daily dose of celeb-goss from Necole Bitchie. On the site today are excerpts from Nicki Minaj’s recent article in Gentleman’s Quarterly magazine; a largely uninteresting piece (photos included) that I would have glossed over if Nicki’s comments on her Anaconda music video and the controversy surrounding its release hadn’t given me pause. Google ‘Nicki Minaj ‘Anaconda’’ and almost all the images show you the cover art and/or stills from the video; all featuring variants of beautifully voluptuous young women, scantily dressed and contorted in a myriad of seriously provocative poses. Now we all know that as of today 22 October 2014 AD, sex sells. No wahala. So, riddle me this Batman: Why was Nicki Minaj’s answer to GQ’s inquiry “On the “Anaconda” video controversy and its message” as follows:

Nicki: …She [Nicki’s character in the video] is just talking about two guys that she dated in the past and what they’re good at and what they bought her and what they said to her. It’s just cheeky, like a funny story. [In the video] I’m chopping up the banana. Did you realize that? At first I’m being sexual with the banana, and then it’s like, ‘Ha-ha, no.’ Yeah, that was important for us to show in the kitchen scene [before the lapdance for Drake scene] because it’s always about the female taking back the power, and if you want to be flirty and funny that’s fine, but always keeping the power and the control in everything.”

Now this is something I have never understood. Why does “empowerment” for men mean an education, entrepreneurship, community service and so on…and for women, “empowerment” mean wearing less clothes and general hypersexualisation? This is an honest inquiry, I’m not even judging, I’m actually really curious. Please leave comments in the comment box below if you have some thoughts that can help me appreciate this as I’d like to understand it better.

Madonna, Britney, Christiana, Beyonce, Nicki…in entertainment it seems that as soon as you want to show yourself as a woman in charge, you take off your clothes in public. Incidentally, taking off your clothes in public is often the first sign of the manifestation of a mental illness, in Nigeria.

Jokes aside.

I remember having a discussion about this with Vanilla Aima and her stance was that sexual empowerment is indeed a form of control and it’s a powerful and fundamental way for us as women to take back the ownership of ourselves. To be honest, even after that discussion I still struggle to understand the correlation between hypersexualisation, empowerment and ownership. Especially as these concepts relate to over-gyration and scanty dressing. As I told Aima, I just don’t see how all of that is linked to female empowerment. Entertainment, yes. Empowerment, no bueno.

Despite the way the media and HIP HOP objectify and focus on sexualising females, especially black women, taking these images and acting on them only serves to confirm these stereotypes which represent what some people think of us as, i.e as creatures with limited reasoning capacity who are best for sexual activity. Beyonce who holds herself out as the poster child for 21st century feminism for instance, has this song where she is practically naked in the video. Of course every feminist mustn’t burn her La Perlas- and I know that the ‘B’ in Beyonce’s moniker, ‘Queen B’, does not stand for Booty- yet I still find it a tad contradictory that the images her more explicit videos show are comparable to those that can be seen in the music videos of the most offensive and misogynistic rappers. Butt cheeks, check. Gyration, check. Overtly sexual actions, check. Copious amounts of bare skin, check. Perhaps the question we should ask ourselves is this, “Have you really changed the story by objectifying yourself instead of waiting for a man to objectify you?” Because in the end the perception of sexiness that Beyonce, Nicki, Madonna and co show us, even at the height of their ‘empowerment’, is still what MEN TELL US IS SEXY! In taking back their power, none of these women have changed the story or created a new definition of sexiness.

I hear you ask, “Can that even be done at all?”

Yes, yes it can. In the Puritan era for instance, ankles were sexy! You could barely see skin anyway; a flash of ankle, a little neck, God help us an elbow (an elbow guys!) could be sexy…because the constitution of ‘sexiness’ is defined by the spirit of the day. The spirit of the day is defined by people; people in positions with an opportunity for mass influence. Today those people are telling us consistently, “Less is more, less is all… and too much is not enough.”

To me, the women who are actually the most in charge of their sexuality, who own their sexiness, are not the women who can dress scandalously with their beautiful bodies. It’s for me, those everyday women who actually have amazing figures …but are modest and elegant in the way they dress. Have you ever seen a woman with an enviable figure…and a well fitting, decent dress and thought, “Heyyy Godddd oh! If I had her boobs, I would only wear v-necks!” or something in that vein? I have. Lol! I think women like that are so admirable because they possess that self-awareness that comes when you own something worth showing off…yet decide who gets the privilege of seeing it. To me that’s a far more powerful statement in owning your sexuality than shaking your bits in a borderline imaginary skirt.

We should even excuse the entertainers when they do things for entertainment, as I said, sex sells and a sistah has got to eat. So go get yours girl, I ain’t mad atchu. BUT, don’t give us any story about how what you do empowers women around the world.

If anything it empowers men to continue to see us as predominantly and sometimes, solely, sexual beings. It does nothing to empower or even assist me when I walk into a meeting of young male engineers and know I am being judged using different indices; not judged in the same way a man my age, my colour, my background might be. When I worry that the determination some men may have of me is based on my waist size not my brain capacity. When I feel like I have to work a little harder to show that I am indeed as bright as the next man because because I look pretty or dress nice, they can’t be totally sure that my brain is all there. No, at those times I don’t want to thank Beyonce, Nicki, Madonna, Snoop, 50 or the entertainment industry as a whole for ‘empowering’ me. They spread stereotypes that we, regular people, must then combat.

On a bit of a related more, I recently read an article on female circumcision and I think it is perhaps in those areas that I sort of understand that basic, primal, true need to own all of ourselves, to own our sexuality for ourselves. Yet, I just can’t see how that is manifested in wearing fewer clothes or being excessively raunchy. What I can see though, is how that desire to own our sexiness and our sexuality may be expressed in what people refer to as ‘promiscuity’; the choice of picking your sexual partners can be seen as an empowerment. (Although in the end, I think most women end up with the short stick in that equation). Nevertheless, that ability to choose may be empowering to some. I can appreciate the reasoning behind that.

When I read about female genital mutilation, I began to appreciate how potent the sensousness we wield as women is! It is so powerful and frightening that some people in parts of the world are willing to cut off and tie up fundamental parts of our anatomy in an abhorrent determination to keep women from what they perceive as ‘oversexualisation’. They know women are powerful and that terrifies them.

Our sexuality and sensuousness wasn’t given to us by God to cause confusion, hurt us or harm others. Women are sexual beings despite what the world says, God happily and proudly made us so. But we are sexual beings AMONGST other things! That’s just one side of who we are; sexy, smart and sweet is not an anomaly for gossek! Lol. Our sexuality is a fundamental part of who we are, we mustn’t suppress it but it is with maturity and wisdom that we understand, value and respect it. I think what is empowering is really choosing to preserve yourself even when everything is begging for a peek, a taste, a share of you. That choice to me is incredibly empowering and we should be teaching many more young women that that power in your hand is exciting, it is powerful…and it is all yours.