# Talk:Can't Hold Us Down

Balaji, M. (2008). "Vixen Resistin': Redefining Black Womanhood in Hip-Hop Music Videos". Journal of Black Studies. 41: 5. doi:10.1177/0021934708325377.
pp. 8-9
The notion of agency in hip-hop culture has long been debated among
race and media scholars, but much of the discourse has focused on repre-
sentations of Black masculinity and ownership of the message (Basu, 2005;
Negus, 1998, 2004). Female performers in hip-hop have also been accorded
a degree of agency in self-representation. As Robin Roberts (1994) and
Rana Emerson (2002) have shown, women artists have been able to define
themselves within the constructs of male domination, eschewing the ten-
dency to play an accommodating role to men. Indeed, many Black women
performers have used their Otherness as a weapon of empowerment, as
exhibited by the varying degrees of feminism used by Queen Latifah,
Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Missy Elliott, and Lil’ Kim (Emerson, 2002;
Railton & Watson, 2005; Roberts, 1994). However, Blackness and sexuality
are often presented beyond African American female performers’ ability to
self-define. For instance, in the video “Can’t Hold Us Down,” Lil’ Kim’s
presence is used as the standard of “primitive” sexuality, which Christina
Aguilera seeks to emulate. However, the video shows a striking contradic-
tion—namely, that of Black women’s perceived heterosexuality being used
not only to liberate White women but to also maintain the social hierarchies
that keep Black women oppressed. As Railton and Watson (2005) note, “the
fact of the Blackness of Lil’ Kim set against Christina Aguilera’s
performance of Blackness” addresses “the differing positions within, and possi-
bilities in relation to (re)presentation that Aguilera and Kim occupy”
(p. 62). Their textual analysis incorporates the cultural history of female
sexuality, particularly for Black women, and how such depictions of het-
erosexuality have different degrees of empowerment and, antithetically,

disenfranchisement for the female performers.
Railton, D.; Watson, P. (2005). "NAUGHTY GIRLS AND RED BLOODED WOMEN Representations of female heterosexuality in music video". Feminist Media Studies. 5: 51. doi:10.1080/14680770500058207.
p. 51
There is a moment during the video for Christina Aguilera’s “Can’t Hold Us Down” in
which she appears alongside rapper Lil’ Kim. The scene is notable for a number of reasons
which foreground a range of issues concerning the representation of gender and race, and
their relationship to sexual behaviour. Situated within a clearly codified black urban space,
the women are depicted taunting a group of predominantly black men alongside, and on
behalf of, a group of predominantly black women. Their behaviour is both assertive and
overtly sexual, and the video links both of these to a narrative of collective female action.
The lyrics of the song they perform deal explicitly with the gender politics of heterosexual
behaviour. For instance, Aguilera comments on the “common double standard of society”
whereby “the guy gets all the glory the more he can score/while the girl can do the same
and yet you call her a whore,” a sentiment immediately reinforced by Kim who questions
the hypocrisy which sees men able to “give her some head or sex her raw/but if the girl do
the same then she’s a whore” (Christina Aguilera featuring Lil’ Kim 2002). However, it is not
simply that Aguilera and Kim articulate lyrics which can be read as overtly feminist that
makes the scene interesting, nor even the obvious display of “sisterly” solidarity. Rather, the
interest lies in the complex and contradictory ways in which raced identity is represented
both lyrically and visually. For on the one hand the lyrics refer to a universal female
experience (the consistent appeal to “all my girls around the world”), while on the other
hand blackness and whiteness are clearly inscribed on and through the bodies of Aguilera
and Kim. Indeed, it is the precise nature of that inscription, a process in which Aguilera
simultaneously performs blackness and whiteness while Kim is seen to embody “essential
blackness,” that not only problematises any straightforward “message” of the video, but
more generally serves to highlight the very limited range of ways in which female
heterosexuality continues to be represented in popular culture and the way these

representations are inevitably raced.
pp. 51-2
One of the reasons that these articulations of race and sex appear complex and
contradictory is because they are already double articulations, for Aguilera’s appropriation
of tropes of blackness set in juxtaposition to Kim’s embodiment of those tropes draws
attention to and reinforces her own whiteness. Moreover, the video itself invokes and gets
its meaning from familiar patterns of representation of race characteristic of popular culture
generally and the pop music video more specifically. And it is these patterns of raced
representation that we want to address here. Indeed, it is our contention that the generic
codes of pop music videos render them particularly fertile sites for the exploration of the interdependent construction of race, sex, and gender. For race is deployed within pop
music videos to not only delimit or sanction sexual behaviour, but also sex and gender
signify race in ways which tend to reproduce and shore up existing hierarchical power

relations.
p. 62
To end, we want to return to the issue we began with: the
fact
of the blackness of Lil’
Kim set against Christina Aguilera’s
performance
of blackness. For one way to explain the
complexity of that scene—a scene in which racial difference is apparently erased yet which
is simultaneously predicated upon a sophisticated knowledge of the codes of racial
differentiation—is to address the differing positions within, and possibilities in relation to
(re)presentation that Aguilera and Kim occupy. For while Kim literally embodies black
hypersexuality, her sexuality produced and defined by the site/sight of her black body,
Aguilera is able to produce her sexuality through the selective and playful presentation of
tropes of raced identity. Put simply, while Kim can only ever be seen as a black woman,
Aguilera is allowed a far more fluid and creative engagement with both raced and sexual
identity. Indeed, in presenting an image of female sexuality predicated on representations
of raced identity, Aguilera’s whiteness and privilege is reinscribed precisely by the
possibility of such a performance in the first place, even if, in the end, that performance is

only a pale imitation of Kim.

Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Can't Hold Us Down. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.allmusic.com/album/stripped-mw0000662221/awards
Added archive http://www.webcitation.org/64u04DekU?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aria.com.au%2Fpages%2Faria-charts-end-of-year-charts-top-100-singles-2003.htm to http://www.aria.com.au/pages/aria-charts-end-of-year-charts-top-100-singles-2003.htm
Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110919203420/http://dutchcharts.nl/jaaroverzichten.asp?year=2003&cat=s to http://dutchcharts.nl/jaaroverzichten.asp?year=2003&cat=s
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).
This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 20:54, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 5 external links on Can't Hold Us Down. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160301144224/http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2002-10-23-christina-aguilera_x.htm to http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2002-10-23-christina-aguilera_x.htm
Corrected formatting/usage for http://gfa.radioandrecords.com/publishGFA/GFANextPage.asp?sDate=07%2F08%2F2003&Format=1
Corrected formatting/usage for http://gfa.radioandrecords.com/publishGFA/GFANextPage.asp?sDate=07%2F08%2F2003&Format=9
Corrected formatting/usage for https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/29/arts/music/29sann.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1381922126-nZrOMq%2F6Sv3PxUO3RhQjlw
Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.aria.com.au/pages/aria-charts-end-of-year-charts-top-100-singles-2003.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 00:05, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Can't Hold Us Down's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Vinyl":
From Tilt Ya Head Back: "Tilt Ya Head Back [12"]". Retrieved January 18, 2014.
From Can't Hold Us: "7' Vinyl Record". Macklemore LLC. Archived from the original on October 14, 2012. Retrieved June 23, 2013.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 06:58, 15 August 2021 (UTC)