I was recently on Facebook and came across a post that left me thinking. The post said “Women will talk about constantly being sexualized and then partake in all the challenges that sexualize the hell out of us.” There were a lot of comments under the post saying that they agreed with it and that women need to start respecting themselves. I have often seen these types of comments on a very popular app called TikTok. On TikTok, there are always new challenges nearly every week that many women participate in. A lot of these challenges are ones where these women are dancing. For example, when the song “WAP” by Cardi B came out, there was a dance trending on TikTok. Many women and influencers participated in this dancing challenge. “WAP” is already a very explicit song and the dance that went along with it was no exception. Many people did not like the song and thought it was very inappropriate for women to be dancing this way. The irony here is that male rappers have been making songs and sexualizing women for years and nobody has had an issue with that.
I personally do not ever participate in these dancing challenges. The only reason I do not participate is because I am a horrible dancer, to be quite honest. I find the challenges to be fun and some do require a lot of skill. I try to support other women who do choose to participate in these challenges because it must take a lot of confidence to post themselves on social media. There are so many hateful people on social media that will attack these women for what they post.
Now regarding how the Facebook post said that women sexualize themselves, I must say that I disagree to an extent. Men and others are always sexualizing women regardless of what they are doing. When women participate in these trends, I see it more as them feeling confident in themselves and their sexuality. I also believe that just because a woman participates in a trend, it does not give men or other people the right to sexualize them. One thing I must include is that I do not believe minors should be participating in these challenges or trends. When the song “WAP” came out, I saw many sixteen year old girls doing the challenge. On TikTok, there are a lot of creepy people that will save videos of these minors dancing provocatively. If you are an adult you can do whatever you want, but minors should be careful of what content they post on their pages.
The most important point made should be that women do not consent to being sexualized, but if they choose to post a video where they participate in the latest trend, that is completely up to them. As a woman, I choose to empower and support other women and not bring them down for what they choose to do or post on social media.