Kanye West’s hip-hop number one single of 2005 “Gold Digger” features Jamie Foxx singing a cappella, and a sample of Ray Charles singing his original “I Got a Woman.”[i] The opening lyrics sung by Jamie Fox set the tone and subject matter of this song and the accompanying music video. It is about gold diggers, women who are only with a man to take his money. The song’s lyrics and music video perpetuate many long-standing stereotypes of women, especially black women.
The most obvious stereotype is that represented in the song’s title and is the overall theme of the song. The idea that women, and in the context of this song, black women, are interested solely in a man’s wealth is one that is discussed in Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Sexual Politics.[ii] She writes that the “theme of the materialistic, sexualized Black woman has become an icon within hip-hop culture” (126). In the second verse of the song the speaker discovers that after eighteen years the child he supported is not his biological child and while the mother was supposed to buy “ya shorty [his child] TYCO [toys] with [his] ya money,” instead got “lipo” and plastic surgery with his money. Here the father is depicted as a caregiver who provides monetary support while suffering himself because he is “drive[ing] off in a Hyundai” rather than in an expensive luxury vehicle. The image of the mother as concerned only for materialistic wealth is similar to the image of the “female hustler, a materialistic woman who is willing to sell, rent, or use her sexuality to get whatever she wants [and this] constitutes this sexualized variation of the ‘bitch.’” (Hill Collins 128).
West’s lyrics provide a specific characterization of the “bad bitch,” which Hill Collins defines as a bitch who’s “power is her manipulation of her own sexuality for her own gain” (126). West sings about a woman who carries a “Louis Vuitton” purse and who is not “messin wit no broke niggas.” A “bad bitch” will choose a wealthy man before they choose a poor man. Love is not important, but a man’s financial success is. For these women “having a relationship is out” (Hill Collins 126). The only type of relationship possible for these women is a sexual one with rich men, and this is illustrated in West’s lyrics where the woman has a reputation to have “fuck[ed] wit Usher” and “got a baby by Busta.” Hill Collins would suggest that West’s depiction of women here is that they “screw for status” (128). The significance of this is embedded within the notion that Usher, Busta, and now the singer of this song, presumably West himself, are the victims of this woman’s manipulative and conniving nature. The idea of men as not only victim, but also as sympathetic characters are emphasized when the speaker states that he “don’t care what none of y’all say [he] still love her.” He is willing to sacrifice for “love” whereas the woman is incapable of love even towards her own children as depicted in a previous quote. Her vanity, her greed supersedes even the needs of her children.
When West sings “If you fuckin with this girl then you betta be paid” his attempt at a sympathetic male character is undermined. He believes that men should protect themselves from these money hungry women on the prowl for men’s hard-earned income. He believes men should have insurance against these women and protect themselves financially.
Should of got that insured, GEICO for ya moneeey, money, money
If you aint no punk holla, “We Want Prenup.
WE WANT PRENUP!” Yeah
It's something that you need to have
Cause when she leave yo ass she gonna leave with half
Having a prenuptial agreement will prove that men are not punks. They are not “the object[s] of sexual abuse [....] weak, vulnerable, [or] ‘female’” (Human Rights Watch qtd. in Hill Collins 235).[iii] The speaker foreshadows what will happen if men do not attain a prenuptial agreement: “she gonna leave with half” of his money. Many people consider marriage to be an equal union and if there is ever a separation it seems reasonable to split the accumulated wealth; however, West’s lyrics suggest that keeping half is unfair to the man who works while the woman seems to do nothing except have plastic surgery, buy brand name purses, and go to the beauty salon. This reinforces the idea that woman who do not work and stay home are lazy. Just as “[p]oor Black women’s welfare eligibility meant that many chose to stay home and care for their children, thus emulating White middle-class mothers. But because these stay-at-home moms were African American and did not work for pay, they were deemed to be ‘lazy’” (Hill Collins 132). Although the woman in this song is not on welfare, she is living off the man’s money. The stereotype though modified in the context of this song is still essentially the same.
There is a glaring hypocrisy embedded in this song, and one that also permeates societal thought and affects women to this day. If women should not live off men, then they should work. An independent, working woman would be the solution for many of the stereotypes presented in this song; however, both Kanye West’s song and Ray Charles’s song undermine this possible solution by depicting women as static beings belonging in the home, or as objects for men.
The opening of the chorus features Kanye West singing his lyrics and an interpolation of Ray Charles’ lyrics from “I Got a Woman.” When Jaime Foxx sings his a cappella lines at the beginning of the song he modifies Ray Charles’ lyrics by singing, “She take my money, while I'm in need / Yeah she's a triflin friend indeed / Oh she's a gold digger way over town / That digs on me.” While Ray Charles’ lyrics are not as negative, “She give me money, when I’m in need / Yeah, she's a kind of friend indeed / I got a woman way over town that's good to me. Oh yeah.” At first the juxtaposition of these two lines may suggest that the songs are dissimilar and West’s lyrics are playing off of Charles’, essentially updating them, and using them to make a contemporary comment on women’s nature. However, while the two songs at first seem to be opposite, upon closer analysis some similarities and interesting stereotypes emerge.
Ray Charles’ original song reinforces the idea of static women whose “place is right there now in her home.” While Charles’ song somewhat gives praise to the women who financially support their man and portrays the man who receives this support in a positive light, when West alters the lyrics the man still remains a positive figure, but the woman is further objectified and vilified. When a woman receives the money she is a gold digger, when a man gives it to her he is a punk. A man who receives money from a woman is praised and the woman who supports a man is still subject to him and objectified by society. For example, the women who obey West’s lyrics and “stick by his [their man’s] side” will suffer one final action of the fully mobile man—he will “leave yo [her] ass for a white girl.”
The “Gold Digger” music video reinforces the idea of women as static and immobile in their depiction of women as pin-ups on the covers of imaginary magazines. In one instance, there is a woman pictured on the cover of Dish Washer magazine with a headline entitled “Roll up your” and the rest is cut off the frame. If the subtitle had included “sleeves,” it would be a joke because the woman pictured there is reclining her body and wearing nothing but lingerie. There is nothing she can “roll up.” Her place is in the home, as sung by Ray Charles, but her pseudo-role as “dishwasher” is in reality a position of objectification, an action controlled and allocated to her by men. Forced into the space of the magazine covers and forced into the space allocated to women by the songs leaves women little room for maneuvering. The “dishwasher” scene in the music video appears in conjunction to one of the following lines and correlates to their theme:
You go out to eat and he can’t pay ya’ll can’t leave
There's dishes in the back, he gotta roll up his sleeves
But why y’all washin watch him
He gone [gonna] make it to a Benz out of that Datsun
He got that ambition, baby, look in his eyes
This week he moppin floors, next week it's the fries
So, stick by his side.
Here the speaker asks women to recognize the potential of men, and stick by them because eventually they will become successful. However, while this song line suggests the upward mobility of men, the flashing images of the women in the pin-ups suggest their immobility. Their bodies are in awkward, sometimes unnatural positions. Usually, they lie supine or are upright but with their legs chopped off and left out of the frame. The images of immobile women, whose only movement is in the confines of that imaginary magazine cover space, are for men’s enjoyment. Keep in mind Ray Charles’ song lyrics where the woman who gives money to her man is a good woman—she knows her place. Her place is in the kitchen, as sex object.
A woman’s place within this video and within the context of the song lyrics is a very confined and controlled space where women are subjected to men and are the fulfillment of their sexual fantasies. For instance, the speaker explains that he has just met a girl in a beauty salon who tells him that as “far as girls [...he has] got a flock.” Here, the animal metaphor for women echoes the conception that women are like animals and associated with the earth, in short, women are lesser beings than men. This idea is one that echoes throughout history and exists in the writings of Aristotle. Nancy Tuana examines Aristotle’s “scientific” observations of women’s nature in her book The Less Noble Sex.[iv] He believed that “woman is a misbegotten man” (118) and because her different biology is closer to animals while men are closer to the image of god. West’s repetition of the line “get down girl go [a]head get down” reinforces this notion and proceeds to put women in their place below men, nearer to the ground. The first time West sings that line he points twice downward, supposedly to his crotch area, although this is not immediately apparent, he repeats the action later in the music video when he sings the chorus right after verse two. There is a full body shot of West dancing when he points to his crotch with both of his hands. Adding to the objectification of women in the music video, now she must perform sexual favors that physically and psychologically place her below men.
The music video creates a visual representation of many stereotypes associated with women. The women in the video appear on the cover of magazines simulating pin-ups. They are always in lingerie and often in sexual positions. All the women gaze back at the viewer with seductive looks. Patricia Hill Collins writes about the representation of Black women in popular culture and notes that what began as “the celebration of Black women’s bodies [...] in earlier Black cultural production [...] became increasingly replaced by the objectification of Black women’s bodies as part of a commodified Black culture” (emphasis in original; 128). In this music video the women are not only objects, but they are also on display as a consumer good to be bought and used in whatever way the male consumer wishes.
Hill Collins writes how “[c]ontemporary music videos [depict] Black women who dance, strut, and serve as visually appealing props [....] The women in these videos typically share two attributes—they are rarely acknowledged as individuals and they are scantily clad. One Black female body can easily replace another and all are reduced to their bodies” (128). In the music video “Fresh: a HOT magazine” contains the subtitle “bold beautiful bodies” and the girl in the scene is sitting, with one finger in her mouth with a coy, playful expression on her face. When referencing women here, instead of using “bold beautiful women,” the term bodies in inserted in order to reinforce women as objects. They are not individuals, they do not think, they have no feelings, and most of the women in the video do nothing more than contort their bodies into strange poses in order to appear animalistic, seductive, and attractive to the male eye.
In their book Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers [v] the Guerrilla Girls explain that the term ‘Gold Digger’ was a Flapper-era term first used in the 1920s to describe modern women who pursued a man, known as the Gold Mine, for his money. A guy who did the same with women was a Forty-Niner” (73). The Guerrilla Girls note that somehow the female term stuck while the derogative term for the male seemed to disappear although Forty-Niners most certainly still exist. It is interesting to reflect on Kanye West’s song in this context and to look at the key lines from Ray Charles’ song, which both find a way to put a woman down no matter what the situation. In West’s song women are represented as immobile, they are forced into this subjective by society, the same society that later chastises them for not being mobile, more like men. In Charles’ song women are only good if they give money to men, and “[n]ever grumbles or fusses.” In other words, women should be silent, like the women in West’s video, who never speak. Only in the final scene does a woman appear to speak, but her voice, her words are not important and are never heard. The men who are not willing to protect their assets are, according to West, punks. Why this double standard exists, and why a man’s money and financial well-being are worth more than a woman’s is unclear. What is clear is that woman are damned one way or another while man remains forever a victim of women while enjoying her objectification and subjectivity.
[i] “Gold Digger.” Wikipedia. 4 Nov. 2006 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Digger>.
[ii] Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism.
[iii] Patricia Hill Collins references a study done by the Human Rights Watch which looks at the rape culture within the prison system where “[r]ape victims become stigmatized as ‘punks’” (235). The term in West’s song is not used in the context of a prison but still represents the fagotization of men who allow women to “rape” them of their manhood and their money.
[iv] Tuana, Nancy. The Less Noble Sex: Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical Conceptions of Woman’s Nature.
[v] The Guerrilla Girls. Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls’ Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes.
