Sexism In Popular Music Analysis

As a Student Leader in the Grinnell Dining Hall, a large part of my job is to make a safe work environment for our workers. This includes monitoring the music we play in the dishroom. Oftentimes, I find myself only catching explicit, sexist, or racist lyrics as a song ended, leaving me wondering what I missed. This spurred my interest in the possibility of sexist content going unnoticed or unprocessed in music, and the possible consequences this might have. In this paper, I will seek to explore if Grinnelleans, a community highly involved with social justice, find instances of sexism in lyrics of popular songs when listening, and if reading the lyrics thereafter yields any instances of sexism they did not notice while listening. Research has …show more content…
I believed reading the lyrics of a song would give a good baseline comparison for what each subject felt was sexist in the song. To reduce possible order effects, each subject was told that the interview was about sexism in popular music when they were recruited and when the interview began. They first listened to the song, then made comments on it. Each subject rated their enjoyment of the song from 1-10, was asked to explain that rating, and if necessary, was asked to speak to the lyrical content of the song. The ratings were done because enjoyment or liking of a song could influence how much someone both listened for lyrics and was willing to criticize them. Many subjects mentioned if a song was in their preferred genre of music or outside it. Subjects were also asked if they had heard each song, to get an idea of if these songs are a frequent visitor to the ears of the average Grinnellean. After running through this process for each song they listened to, subject read the lyrics for the songs. They were asked to point out anything they missed while listening, anything that was more clear as they read, or anything that seemed more substantial or significant when reading. They were also asked to rate the song on its quality and quantity of sexist content, again a 1-10 scale, with 10 being the most sexist. This allowed me to see if I had chosen songs that subjects considered …show more content…
This was in no way a random sample, as most of these subjects were my friends or acquaintances. The subject pool consists of 5 women and 5 men, all of whom had at least 2nd year standing at Grinnell college, in order to ensure they had substantial experience in the Grinnell environment. These students were largely domestic, save for one subject who had moved to the US in elementary school, and one subject who attended US embassy schools overseas. Both of these subjects had heard at least 2 songs out of the 4. All subjects were familiar with at least 1 song. Although I have cited interviews in the references section, throughout this paper, I will refer to subjects only as subjects or they, even when referring to a single subject. Subjects were promised confidentiality in their participation and anonymity in their