Why Iggy Azalea is Important for Women

Although she’s been around for a little while, I hadn’t heard of Australian rapper Iggy Azalea until early June when I was lucky enough to watch her perform live at Parklife festival in Manchester. However, late to the party though I was, I certainly spent my summer making up for what I missed with Iggy and can proudly say that I am now able to rap to a good amount of her music without looking at the lyrics, which is a success, right?

My first impression when I saw Iggy was ‘wow.’ Strutting on stage in a pair of teeny hot pants and a crop top, Iggy spent the next 30 minutes doing things to the stage that I can barely even do in the bedroom, flicking her bum-length blonde hair all over the place and tearing up the crowd with her explicit songs. Now, anyone watching Iggy’s sexual performance may wonder how it is that I am going to say what I am about to say, but I’ll say it anyway – Iggy is what women have been waiting for.

Let me explain. It is very easy to sit at home and tell everybody who will listen that Iggy is being exploited, sexualised by male superiors, that she would be nothing without her sexual image and that she is a prime example of how the sexes can never be equal, but this view is something that can’t really be supported by much evidence, and so it is something that I simply must oppose.

For those people that don’t know much about her, it may come as somewhat of a surprise that Ms Azalea isn’t just another run-of-the-mill female singer that has been snapped up by LA and moulded into the perfect product. It may seem that way at first glance, but just five minutes of research will tell you that she was actually born in a tiny Australian village and spent her early teens scrubbing floors in hotels in order to save enough money to follow her dream and move to America. Aged just 16 she took off to Miami with a friend and spent the next few years working and building up her reputation as a white female rapper in circles that  usually would have had nothing to do with her. Just reading the lyrics to her single ‘Work’ renders me awestruck by her story.

It doesn’t really sound like much when you see it written in a few lines on the blog of some nobody that you’ve stumbled upon, but just ask yourself, what were you doing age 16? I’d never even had a job at 16, let alone saved up enough money to move halfway across the world and start focusing on my career in a social scene that is notorious for being dangerous. I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes! What’s more, Iggy doesn’t give a fuck. She comes, shaking her white-girl ass, swearing like a sailor and grabbing her crotch with no apologies, and it is probably thanks to this ‘no fucks’ attitude that she has already enjoyed a massive success in an area of music usually dominated by males.

It is all very well for the ignorant among us to look at her sexualised image and the way that she dances and make assumptions about how she is a spoilt Daddy’s Princess being coerced into behaving in a certain way by management, but what we must remember is that Iggy Azalea is no Miley Cyrus. She is the real deal, and so what if she wants to dance in a sexual way? What some may call demeaning, I call empowering. Iggy is hardly being paid $10 to strip for some sleaze ball in a grimy strip joint somewhere. She is owning her sexuality, and why shouldn’t she? She’s gorgeous.

Being an empowered female shouldn’t have a direct connection with having to cover up one’s beauty and rid oneself of any sexuality. There is a difference between flaunting your body because you have been trafficked out of Eastern Europe by a criminal gang and are in fear of your life, and standing on a stage working what god gave you. Iggy is using her sexuality as a weapon, just as Delilah did, just as Jezebel did, and just as sexually manipulative women all around the world do on a daily basis. The people among us that think empowered women should not show off their bodies for fear of being raped or objectified need to take a look at countries in the Middle East, where women have to sunbathe in their burkas because their society believes that women are not to be looked at. Let’s face it, however we dress as women, there will always be something wrong with it.

It would be impossible to talk about Iggy as a sexual being without addressing her lyrics. Being branded as ‘foul-mouthed’ and ‘trashy,’ Iggy’s songs seem to precede her, and with lyrics including ‘He went down and he kissed it, this pink pussy no lipstick, more like lipgloss when it’s sticky, ain’t no bitch bossin like Iggy, I’m gettin head with my shades on,’ it’s hardly surprising.

Or is it?

When 50 Cent writes a whole song comparing his penis to a lollipop, nobody bats an eyelid. In fact, nobody bats an eyelid any time a black male rapper sings about guns, drugs, money and women, sorry, ‘hoes.’ It is easy for male rappers to stand there with their six pack’s out, surrounded by twerking women in tiny dresses, but god help us when a white woman strips off. Snoop Dogg can sing all he wants about wanting to me me ‘wet’ but the second Iggy vocalises her desires, she’s seen as a harlot.

Honestly? It’s boring. I’m bored of six packs and Lil Wayne and 50 Cent’s lollipop and I’m glad that somebody has had the balls (pardon the pun) to tell the world what women want in bed, how women like to dress, and that women can be successful all by themselves.

What do you think? Is Iggy Azalea a good role model?