How Hip Hop Saved Me

I am a white woman. I grew up on the dairy farm my father owned in Upstate New York. I went to school with mostly white people. I was raised listening to Tom Petty (who I still love) and Led Zeppelin — whatever my dad was into, I was into.

I became a teenager in 1999 and as some of you may have read in my previously published article, “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way,” my body was changing rapidly. Unlike most of the other girls my age, my curves made me look like a woman almost overnight. I liked the way I looked, but I came under fire by people around me for having the body that I had. As addressed in my previous article: people made judgments about me for having big boobs and wide hips, making me feel like my curves weren’t worthy of being called beautiful but worthy instead of making me a whore.

But then I discovered hip hop and oh my god — did those songs make me feel beautiful.

You might disagree with my feelings of female body positivity in hip hop and you are entitled to your opinion. But my response to anyone who feels that way is this: you obviously don’t listen to the genre. You obviously read some articles dissecting ‘WAP’ and think you can talk about an entire musical movement. Musical styles cannot be reduced to a few songs or a few artists though, and must…