Missy Elliots ' Shes A Bitch'

Missy Elliot - She's a Bitch
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Post-Feminist Reading

In Missy Elliot’s ‘She’s a Bitch’ the setting and artists clothing is consistently dark, perhaps going against the traditional stereotype of women of innocence. Missy seems to be creating a first impression of power and dominance and this too can be seen as going against traditional stereotypes of women.
This Missy Elliot song is a performance based video, which interestingly contains no males. The video begins with Missy Elliot’s name in large print in a dark grey colour. The size of the text connotes Missy Elliots massive fame at the time of the making of the video

During the video, Missy uses various methods to display that she is a strong character. She stylishly shows off a cowboy hat and also wears a cap, showing clothing that isn’t traditionally associated with women.
Lyrically, Missy’s strength is also shown and a certain masculinity is presented: ‘Give yo’ ass a black eye’ and ‘she’s a bitch’ are rude and controversial phrases that she is not afraid to use.

Throughout the video, Missy is presenting a certain role reversal as women are usually presented sex objects whilst men are presented as dominant. The backup dancers are dressed more revealingly. Missy is positioned ahead of them, further strengthening her position as a leader or someone with dominance. The girls reinforce the female stereotype but remain in the back, perhaps suggesting that it is time for old stereotypes to be left behind in the past.

Towards the end of the video, the backup dancers wear the same clothing as Missy, showing that they have begun to follow her lead. This significantly shows that Missy advocates change. She seems to have influenced these women successfully and has thus challenged traditional views of women, but the video could be seen as a message to other women out there who haven’t quite understood this yet.

Feminist Reading

On the other hand, one being the feminist approach would say that “she’s a bitch” is demeaning to the female gender and therefore representing the female gender negatively. Perhaps Missy purposely chose to use dancers dressed in revealing clothing because she knows she must also appeal to male audience.

The lyric ‘I'mma keep it hot’ can be interpreted as sexual. At one point she appears to be touching herself and this may be for the benefit of the male viewers as she still wishes to maintain their interest. Her use of earrings can also still be argued to represent certain elements of maintaining her feminism.

Overall, there is positive representations of the female gender in this music video except for in one scene which feminist would argue the female back up dancers are revealing too much of their body. It is likely that the video is aimed at woman as Missy tries to encourage female empowerment. Yet, this video still contains sex appeal and can therefore be interpreted to be aimed at males as well.