LeVande lectures on pop culture and porn
Liz Zelinski
Issue date: 3/29/07 Section: Features
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Though the audience was small in the Student Center Ball Room, LeVande did not seem to mind. She began her almost two-hour presentation speaking with deliberate and succinct words, and soon had the audience chuckling at jokes and shaking their heads at little-known statistics.
As a singer-songwriter with two CDs herself, LeVande - who began her career in 1997 - said that she began to notice that to get songs on the radio, singers needed to add sex to their music. As an artist trying to share her art, this was a frustrating trend.
As time went on, LeVande began to realize that this is more than a trend. It is so pervasive in today's pop music culture, sex and music acting hand in hand has become an institution. It is not the exception, but the norm.
In response, LeVande began to research. She found statistics about media ownership and discovered a fast relationship between music and pornography. So she began to tour the country to educate college students about the differences between music, sex and porn.
Why does she do it?
"Because feminism has been hijacked," said LeVande.
During the lecture LeVande showed a PowerPoint slide show with pictures of women portrayed in advertisement for porn and pictures of advertisements for music or products. They were indistinguishable.
Women let themselves become objects, "because they want to prove that they are uninhibited," said LeVande.
LeVande stated that culture today tells us that a lack of sexual boundaries is a sign of sexual power. She claims that the idea that prostitution empowers women is the biggest lie that has been sold to women in this generation. But media enforces that idea.
Take the music video of Lady Marmalade for example: four well-known female singers dressing as prostitutes, telling the audience that if you sell yourself, you will be beautiful and powerful too.
"Men are not respecting you because you are a prostitute," said LeVande. "There is nothing beneficial about it. When you really look at their lives, there is nothing powerful or glamorous about them."
LeVande said that no matter what media tries to portray, women are always shown as the objects, while men are the subjects.
"Black women as an accessory is a prevalent theme in Viacom advertising," said LeVande.
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