Full disclosure: I'm no fan of Kim Kardashian anyway. I mean, seriously? She got famous from making an uninspired, yawn-of-a-p-oRn tape with Brandy's little brother. And though she lays claim to the power of the booty and her ability to fry chicken for her on again/off-again boo, Reggie Bush, I guarantee you neither her badunkadunk nor her soul food skills can compare to the most average of Shaniquas from around the way.
Just sayin'.
Anyhoo, I got a good giggle when I read THIS STORY, about how Demi Moore Twitter-checked Kim K. for tweeting that she was at the club "big pimpin'" with her girls Serena Williams, La La Vazquez and Kelly Rowland.
Demi: @KimKardashian No disrespect I love a girls night out but a pimp and pimping is nothing more than a slave owner!
Demi: if we want to end slavery we need to stop glorifying the "pimp" culture
Demi: It's not her! iwe have allowed it 2 B considered cool, but it still is what it is! RT @jaeearly: tru but she doesnt mean it quite so literally
Demi: Just so ya'll are clear I like @KimKardashian I was just making a point about how we have used a word and desensitized the real meaning.
Demi: Clearly I stirred up a s**t storm, but 2 create change U have 2 be willing 2 take a risk and be willing 2 provoke thought & conversation
I stopped laughing and really got to thinking about what Demi was saying, though, when Change.org emailed me a link to THIS STORY—a post by Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS), the nation's largest service provider to girls and young women who've been commercially sexually exploited and domestically trafficked. As Lloyd pointed out in her piece:
...the glaring omission from all the articles, blogs and commentary [about Demi vs Kim] is any real analysis of Demi's point - that we glamorize and glorify pimp culture, use terminology that seems to legitimize the practice, and in doing so ignore the fact that pimps are modern-day slave-owners.
...Kim Kardashian, like most people in this country, is probably totally unaware of the harsh reality of pimping and thinks of it in the context of a Jay-Z song, a 50 Cent video, an Oscar-winning song and movie, or a caricature from the 1970's. I'm sure if Kim knew the real stories, tears and scars behind the glorified images of pimps, she'd think differently about the language she used. I'd encourage her and anyone else who uses 'pimpin' as a verb to watch our Showtime documentary 'Very Young Girls' to learn the truth about pimp culture.
Lloyd went on to point out in the piece that more than 100,000 children in THIS country are exploited through the commercial sex industry every year, and the median age of entry into the game is between 12 and 14 years old.
I admit: I hadn't really thought of it that way.
But as much as I love me a good Jay-Z song, I sure am thinking about it differently now.
*deleting "Big Pimpin'" from my playlist AND sending a virtual fist bump to Demi and Rachel Lloyd for keeping it all-the-way-real when it comes to protecting our babies AND reminding us that words, even when used innocently and absentmindedly, have power*
Just sayin'.
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people often DO forget how much words have power....nowadays a lot of people say: oh it don't mean nothing...when something is said...but 'back in the day' you would get in big trouble if any word of the literal sense were used...nice post!
ReplyDeleteI love Demi! So Kim can fry chicken, huh? OK, that's cute. Anyhoo,just the mention of the word pimp in music makes me cringe and shiver, even when my boy Jay-Z says it.
ReplyDeleteAnd, I'm going to have to see that documentary.
Great post. At first I wanted to laugh at the fact that one can't even have a Twitter feud in one paragraph, but, well, you know.
ReplyDeleteThat word and so many others are used so freely, especially in songs. Reminds me of a song that was out a while back, by a local rapper. It was insane. You'd hear women who hold degrees walking around singing,
"I don't care about the weather/Bop go and get a rain coat/Might get wet but the money still the same tho/You still the lil same hoe runnin round rippin/Instead of just rippin you need 2 be strippin/Cause it's yo p***y giirrrrrrrl/So make that money bitch/Sell it to the world let's get rich/Yap or I can put you on craigslist..."
Wrong on a million different levels, especially considering the fact that pimps are now using craigslist to sell girls AND the fact that a woman was killed by a man who bought her "services" via craigslist.
I have been a fan of hip hop since it started, but the road it has gone down is really discouraging. I'm so tired of all the things that are being glorified in rap and R&B these days. Money, sex, pimpin', guns, etc. When this is the standard of cool, how can we expect our kids to be successful? I'm just over it. I'm ready for it to evolve to the next level already. Love the beats, but hate the message.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree with all that has been said here, my mind went to a different place when I read KK's tweet.
ReplyDeleteI automatically thought that she thought it was ok to make that statement because she was hanging with some 'sistas'.
You know how some do... when they're in our company, try to use slang that we use in order to sound 'cool'. That's not cool to me. Never has been.
After the 7-year-old was pimped out by her stepsister in NJ last week, you would think that everybody would have deleted that word from their vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteGood for Demi for bringing awareness to "Words" and how they are used and the meaning behind them. I'm impressed.
ReplyDeleteI've never liked the pimp affecionado of our current generation. I can't help but remember the pre-teen girl my family took in on weekends from a local state run children's home whose own mother pimped her out at the age of 10. As a teenager who had yet to experience a first kiss, it was unfathomable but so real. This young lady was living and breathing, a survivor.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this. Demi has girls and she's mature enough to understand that exploitive words equate an explotive culture for women and children.
I find NO humor in the word "Pimp" which we find being used all too often these days. Thanks for this post Denene.
ReplyDeleteKim and most of Hollywood women, only are interested in the money, and in the money a guy may have, such a material and superficial people.
ReplyDelete