WeTransfer supports a whole range of web browsers, but it looks like this one is too old — please update your browser. To continue, please agree to our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy. We use cookies for functional and analytical purposes and third party cookies for advertising purposes.

Hip-hop has existed as a male-dominated industry since its creation, but with the arrival of stars like Cardi B and Nicki Minaj, the playing field appears to have leveled. The emergence of newer faces like City Girls and Kash Doll have shown women in hip hop are not only bankable stars but are also some of rap’s most savvy entrepreneurs.

Dating back to slavery, Black women have been assigned masculine attributes in an effort to detach us from our feminine qualities. In many cases, both Black women and men have been "othered" to justify mistreatment, including large amounts of physical labor. This historical, systemic racism has trickled down to the modern spheres of media, film, television, and press coverage.

As in most other cultural spheres, the art world has a major inclusivity problem. Only a small amount of African Americans hold positions as art curators, while an even smaller number has their work shown with any frequency in solo exhibits. And historically, people of color have been kept on the margins of the works of art themselves, often depicted as sidekicks to white people in the foreground, with women of color, more often than not, shown under a doubly oppressed racist and sexist male gaze.

Hip-hop, a genre which bloomed out of a counter narrative in response to a system whose hands were wrapped tightly around the necks of its people, is one of counter culture's greatest byproducts. Long before the term hip-hop was coined, it was happening. And throughout the years, women in hip-hop have driven the culture forward, watering it into full bloom.

Call it whatever you want—leering, honking, whistling, sexual harassment, catcalling—it’s an all-too-common experience for women everywhere. According to a survey conducted by Stop Street Harassment, 99 percent of women said they have experienced some form of street harassment in the past, while over 85 percent of women claimed that on the street, they were the target of sexist comments.

“The picnic today was clearly forbidden and yet it was not shut down," he said. Just days after his billboard-sized photograph of Kikito (a one-year-old Mexican toddler) was removed from its position overlooking the U.S. -Mexico border in Tecate, the pseudonymous French artist JR has created another surprise for border patrol agents.

While menstruation is a normal and healthy part of almost every woman's life, 40 states across the United States have chalked it up to something as simple as a non-essential sales tax. Basic medical necessities from pads to tampons to menstrual cups all receive a high price spike in comparison to their tax-free male counterparts.

Related

Hypermasculine ideals and pressures are often pushed onto black and brown men from all angles of society, including media, inside of classrooms, and within families. We’ve long been exposed to the ongoing narrative that a man who talks about his feelings, struggles with depression or anxiety, demonstrates love to his significant other, or cries, is not a “real man” and is, instead, something less than, someone soft or weak.

Born in the late '90s, 23-year-old British model Reece King was raised by a single mother and family overflowing with aunties. While caring, King's family wasn't very well off, so he began working long retail hours for minimum wage to contribute to their expenses. Once his modeling career took off and stardom came knocking, he left his job to eventually shoot major campaigns for brands like Diesel and grace magazine covers across the globe.

Related

“It’s never about the hair. It’s about the need to disparage and control black women. So they fit neatly into a ‘box'” – Stökes, Byrön (@byst). The above is an excerpt from one of Twitter’s top required spring readings: #blackwomenatwork. The latest trending hashtag sprung up after Bill O’Reilly stated he could not focus on Congresswoman Maxine Water’s congressional floor speech, in which she called for an independent investigation into President Trump’s ties to Russia, due to her “James Brown wig”; and the revival of Eric Bolling’s 2012 Fox News segment “advising” Maxine Waters to “step away from the crack pipe.”