New music and some of the latest reality series on television have made “bad bitches” the center of attention, but not quite the way most people would expect.
With the second season of Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta finally coming to an end with the reunion special airing on Monday, it’s no surprise that the “B word” has become quite a controversial topic.
During the Love & Hip Hop Season 1 Reunion, a verbal confrontation between Lil Scrappy’s now fiancee Erica Dixon and Shay had the women on stage calling each other a bitch before they even considered calling each other by their first names. Even throughout the regular season of the reality show, “bitch” suddenly became the most popular and frequently used word on the entire show.
With the ladies’ vulgar language filling the public airways and the use of the B word in daily language becoming increasingly more popular and acceptable, it seems as if others in the entertainment industry have decided to chime in.
Lupe Fiasco’s latest single off his album Food and Liquor II, “Bitch Bad,” addressed society’s new tendency to attempt to use the vulgar term in both a negative and positive light.
The first verse of the song refers to a young woman who associates being a “bad bitch” as a positive thing and even refers to herself as a “bad bitch.” This already being problematic, Fiasco explains how matters grow worse when this same woman raises a son who now relates the term “bitch” to his mother.
For one of the first times in hip hop, an artist blatantly criticized the use of the B word when referring to women and attempted to open the public’s eyes as to what the future may be like if we allow the use of this word to continue. Are we allowing reality television to raise a generation of children who will ultimately call their own mothers a “bad bitch?”
It seems even Kanye West may have followed suit in second guessing the use of the B word in music and daily language, saying that he believes “the words ‘bitch’ and ‘nigga’ are now neither positive or negative. They are just potent and it depends on how they are used and by whom,” he tweeted during a short rant about the use of the word.
Perhaps the real issue shouldn’t be who is or is not offended by the term, but rather why aren’t we all offended by the use of the term? Music and television may have finally made an entire generation completely insensitive to vulgar language, especially the B word.
With music artists and critics of Love and Hip Hop speaking out against the use of “bitch” to refer to women, it seems as if it will ultimately be up to women, especially those in the lime light of the media, to take the initiative to reject the use of these terms and regain respect for women, especially in the African American community.
