OK, so cheap attempts at a pause flow Drake would approve of aside, I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while. Women have been calling themselves “bad bitches” for years, and in the post “Ladies First” era of Hip-Hop, it became even more prevalent. It’s not that I necessarily have a problem with putting the image out there, I mean, these bitches do exist. Honestly, over the past few years, I’ve been getting pretty raw myself. My point is, with music and TV being so drenched in this image lately, are we changing what characteristics we want in a woman from reliable, trustworthy and potentially a good mother to a woman who will snatch a weave at any (inappropriate) moment just to make a point? Is that all you want? Is that all we are?
The first tape that I ever bought, ever, at nine years old, was Foxy Brown’s Ill Na Na. I snuck and listened to it with my dollar store earphones and a walkman, and memorized just about every word. At nine years old, there’s no way I understood all of what Brooklyn’s Don Diva was saying or what I was reciting. When she said “Put your face in it, you wanna taste this shit?” she could have literally been talking about peach pie for all I knew. One thing I could process though was the concept that she was a “bad bitch” with Ill Na Na (Na Na being a term my dear mother broke down for me once she realized what I was listening to). She referred to herself as this repeatedly, as did Lil Kim and other female MC’s including Trina who titled her debut album The Baddest Bitch. With a few exceptions, it seems like there’s a requirement for female rappers to label themselves as such.
While music is where it started for me, younger girls can look at almost any reality show and get a dose of bad bitches on a weekly basis. Even these wealthy basketball/football/rich man occupation wives with country club memberships are sipping Ace of Spades with one hand and trying to smack somebody with the other one, all while keeping their balance in those Louboutins. Of course, there’s the mother of all bad girl shows, “The Bad Girls Club,” which is debuting its 6th season tonight. Here you can see 7 borderline schizophrenics go shopping, get drunk, pass out, throw up, strip naked, have sex, talk shit about each other, choke each other out, make out with the bitch you just choked, and do it all again the next night. Fun is fun, and I’m not against some of the things on that list in normal doses, but for a “bad bitch” apparently, this is a lifestyle that is often portrayed as being desirable.
On Biggie’s “Me and My Bitch,” he wants “ a bitch that like to play celo, and craps/ Packin gats, in a Coach bag steamin dime bags.” Honestly, I do get the appeal of it all. I mean if the alternative is dealing with a boring chick who can’t even gut a dutch for you, I guess you would go with a bad girl, but in the words of Andre 3000, “Where do all the good girls go? What club they hang at?”
Yo' mama's old fashioned, yo' daddy don't play/ You'll always be this lovely 'cause they raised you that way/ Hallelujah! Thank ya Jesus! Thank ya Lord!- 3 Stacks
Mr. Benjamin gets it. In “Behold a Lady” off of the zillion selling album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, he basically writes a love letter to all the good girls out there who can uphold the title of being a lady. He also lets us know that even good girls “get down” for him at home (translation: the Na Na is Ill).
I guess both sides of the fence have much to offer, but I do believe that while the whole bad girl thing is getting played, it does make for good TV. All that shit I just talked about BGC 6, and I will probably still watch it tonight. For me it’s just entertainment, but there are some out there who take lessons from these shows, thinking behaving in such a manner makes you a “realer” chick. Anyone old enough to read this post who thinks like that, sorry, but I can’t help you. Go read a book or something. As for my logical people out there, it’s clear that taking a few attributes from bad girls (confidence, assertiveness, quick-wit, etc.) meshed with some good girl tendencies (trustworthy, nurturing, can maintain some decorum) will yield the kind of woman that men desire and women would like to see more of on TV and hear about in the music. As with everything in life, it’s all about balance.
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