In popular music today, there is a significant increase in sexualized representation of women. There are many social and political implications when listening to songs on the radio, online, on TV, etc. There is a lot of talk about whether this hyper-sexualization is empowering or exploitive. There is also conversation to be had about masculinity and how men in music have power and control over female bodies. The female body is somewhat of a performance site through which male dominance is subverted. It is a tough conversation surrounding which examples of popular culture are empowering to women in the sense that they are claiming their bodies to reconstruct gender identity and sexualization or if dominant male forces and cultural ideologies always counter this. By using textual analysis and ideology, I looked at examples of popular culture such as music videos and song lyrics. There are examples of empowering sexualization in this new feminist era such as Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj, but I will focus on exploitation of women bodies by male artists. Most representations and portrayals of women in music are sexualized and exploitive. Some music videos in popular culture featuring a male artist take advantage of women and assert power and control of their bodies. Music videos are now central to popular culture and media industries. Instead of just playing on MTV, music videos have spread to airing on multiple channels as well as across musical genres. “They have moved from the margins of the culture and relative innocence to its very center and it’s caldron of controversy around the nature of the sexual imagery that came to define it as a genre” (Sut Jhally, Dreamworlds 3). When looking at music videos, I took a textual analysis approach. I looked at how certain music videos conveyed specific ideologies of gender and sexuality. Douglas Kellner, author of “Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism and Media Culture” defines ideologies as “ideas or images that construct the superiority of one class or group over others and this reproduce and legitimate different forms of social domination” (Kellner 13). While keeping this in mind, I looked at two recent music videos. Maroon 5 released a music video to their new song “Animals” in September. The lyrics are extremely interesting and problematic in the sense that they describe a stalking situation in which Levine sings, “Baby I’m preying on you tonight / Hunt you down, eat you alive / Just like animals, animals, like animals-mals” (Maroon 5, Animals). Also in the song, Levine sings about a woman who wants to stay away from him, but can’t because her attraction is too strong for him to handle. The music video portrays Levine as a meat butche