Social Construction by definition, “involves the way in whichever symbols take on meaning in a social context or society as they are used over time.” A social construction I see as a problem in society today would be the perception that women with bigger breasts and thicker thighs are more attractive than the slimmer women. In previous times, that perception was flipped; women who were slim were to be seen as the more appealing type, and now it is the thicker women who are more pleasing to the eye of men because of new era hip-hop culture.

I can not sit here and blame everything on the media and hip-hop enthusiasts because I am of those groups myself. The problem comes from the fans of hip-hop who take things too literally. Women now have given themselves bigger butts with surgery just to fit in with this big butt epidemic. For example, the female rap sensation, Nicki Minaj, came out with a song last year called Anaconda in which she talks about how men don’t want a women if her butt is not big. Now Nicki Minaj is on the thick side so of course this song lifts her up and the thicker women just like her, but what about the slim, skinny women? Must we put other body types down just to glorify another? According to Miss Minaj, skinny women do not measure up to the thicker women with big butts; however, she does not go in detail as to why. Young girls who are skinny who love, admire and look up to Nicki Minaj might feel ashamed of their bodies and now want to go under the knife to modify themselves.

I can not even single out only Nicki Minaj because her rapper colleague Drake, says the same things in his songs. In Drake's verse of his Nicki Minaj song, Only, Drake says; “I like my girls ‘BBW.’ BBW if one is wondering stands for ‘Big Beautiful Women." Drake is claiming in the previous quote that he only goes for women if she is thick, imagine the young girls who love Drake and are skinny feel? The male fans that call Drake their favorite rapper are drawn to women who are thick because Drake does. Young girls tend to feel as if maybe something is wrong with them, maybe they have to eat more to gain a bigger butt, or maybe they just need implants?

It is not only them, almost every hip-hop musician claims they only like women with big butts and thick thighs. If we were to conduct a survey on how butt implant surgeries have gone up in the past 5-10 years I bet we will see a huge increase. We cannot stop musicians from saying things like that in their songs, but we can help our young girls know that no matter what is being said about their bodies they must learn to love themselves and not change themselves to measure up to anyone or anything. A bigger butt does not mean a bigger brain, a better personality or more beautiful, it just means more attention and it is sometimes negative. This might seem funny to some people but this is a serious social construction in today’s society that gets overlooked because no one feels it needs to be addressed, but I do.