Steven Greenwood
Dr. Faye Kessay
ENGL 2112
March 11, 2011
Linguistic Oppression of the Female Sex, as Represented in My Humps
Serious critical analysis of My Humps by popular music group The Black Eyed Peas is surprisingly scarce. The only criticism currently available is, unfortunately, demeaning and belittling of the song’s artistic integrity, referring to it as “Horrifically bad… objectively bad” (Hsu). However, as I will argue, My Humps presents a rather powerful theme of the way women are oppressed by men through the use of simplistic, demeaning language. This can be seen by comparing the views and statements of both the men and the women featured in the song, especially in terms of the abundant literary devices and the inconsistence with which nouns are referred to as singular or plural.
