September 1, 2014 - Written by: Yazmin Joy

Hey, Why Doesn’t My Ass Jiggle Like That?

Someone asked us, at aliljoy, to write a piece on Nicki Minaj and her music video ‘Anaconda’. So I am going to spend a few minutes writing on Nicki Minaj and her music video ‘Anaconda’.

Now bums don’t really offend me, I mean I have one, you have one, we all have one. But what has come to my attention is that some bums jiggle more than others.

I tried shaking mine the other night in front of my full-length mirror, before hitting the sack for another early night, to see how it suited me. At the time, I noticed two things:

a) I looked looked more constipated than sexy.

b) My butt is quite flat.

I mean Minaj has started to use her ass like a piece of dance floor artillary. Bam, bam, bam! And to be honest, if one was to be confronted with such a thing on the dance floor I wouldn’t know whether to run in the other direction or attempt to reach out with a pair of elongated clippers and relieve it from that uncomfortable piece of string holding it all together, like the string around a chicken carcus at Tesco’s… wait, wait, wait… someone just told me that’s a thong and it’s supposed to be there. Apologies.

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Beyonce didn’t make me feel like this. J.Lo didn’t make me feel like this. But Nicki’s butt bouncing around is making me wince – like when I first watched The Human Centipede.

‘Anaconda’ makes me feel like I did when I first saw the music video for Sisqo’s 1999 hit ‘Thong Song’: slightly mesmerized, a bit disturbed and humoured.

And then Nicki tells me to go fuck myself.

‘Fuck those skinny bitches in the club’.

Okay, Nicki that’s not girl power now is it!? Liberation? Hmmmmm.

‘I do what I want, when I want, how I want’.

Yeaaaah. I sing-along. I don’t really know what I’m singing because it’s all about the beat really. Who listens to the words these days anyway? Until someone points out to me that Nicki is claiming feminism. She is???

You know I spend half my life trying to explain to the men in my life that this kind of fuck-everyone attitude is NOT WHAT FEMINISM is about and then ‘Anaconda comes along, which is so cryptic I really don’t know what to think any more.

Nicki has taken ownership of her own ass by using it to capitalise on her own success.

On one hand, I think to myself: good for her. You go shake what your mama gave you, girl. From Madonna to our Queen B, a sexy lady taking ownership of her body and sexuality is liberating. That being said we can only take our theory so far with the material we have been given. It’s all completely subjective depending on the viewer I’ll admit.

Nicki plays bongos on a woman’s ass cheeks in the video. Feminism? Really?! I’m not so sure. I suppose that she might argue that she was helping the woman’s ass by spanking it to get the blood circulation going.

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Along with all that fruit on the turntable, I really don’t know what all this is supposed to represent beyond what is blatantly in front of me?

Is Nicki inverting the sexualisation of women by taking ownership of her bum and turning the meaning of ‘Baby Got Back’ into a feminist anthem?

What about the other women in the video? What do they represent? Or maybe this is all down to the fact that sex just sells. Simple. Like 2 bananas on a turntable.

Who needs music industry big cheeses to exploit women when women are just doing it for themselves, hey? I mean, Drake seems to have the same bemused expression on his face that most music execs are probably having: What!? She’s playing a booty, squirting whipped cream on her tits and we didn’t even need to ask!? Bonus!

I guess, we can try and analyse the cryptic symbolism of ‘Anaconda’ until the cows come home. I’m not going to lie, I will definitely have a good dance to it if it plays in the club.

It might be surprising to know I have super respect for Nicki: her talent, her beauty (she is a hottie) and her business and creative acumen. But sober, I might ponder some of these questions because I think it’s important to not lap everything up just because it’s being served to us.

I’m sure all her thirteen year old fans (the ones that attend her concerts in their thousands, buy her merchandise and emulate her dance moves) will be thrilled for her new album. I hope they have enough people around them, in the real world, letting them know they don’t need to look like/behave like Nicki to be bad ass though.

If I was a thirteen year old boy I’d be scared – maybe all the blokes are scared and that IS the point. Or maybe the fans will just giggle, because, you know, bums are funny.

Have a great week peeps.

If you enjoyed this article, why not check out ‘Girls With Guns’?