The question is of course rhetorical. It is almost a sure bet that rappers, hip-hoppers, and most people in the entertaining bizz, hardly if ever touch a book unless it is about them, has lots and lots of pictures, and is written to smooch them or make them laugh about somebody else. Add to this the fact that in general, except for their Instagram, Americans hardly ever read anything important in their life after college. But, from what I know from her public persona, and it being the case that she’s arouses in me from little to no interest, I can assure you Cardi B typifies the kind of people for whom Nietzsche did not write and whom he expressly forbade to come near his books, for he did not want to be read by just anybody, and he refused to entertain the idiocy of those who do not have the intellectual and psychological chops to follow him into the depths he was going. He aims to convince but not to convert, and if you do not have it, he’s not going to give it to you.
Nonetheless, some small credits are due Cardi, for the heaps-ass thruster rapper has with a passing remark done something worthier than all her video paeans to prostitution and, by association, to sex-trafficking combined. Even if she didn’t intend it, and even if she was just being tarty and sassy when she quips here that “A hoe never gets cold,” she was up to something. Not that it called up for pseudo-scientific research and all that; but her facetious slogan would have reminded Nietzsche readers of one of the first psychological observations on women he published around one hundred fifty years now with hundred more to come after that; he was systematic in his probing observations. In “Maxims and Missiles,” the collection that opens The Twilight of The Idols, aphorism number 25 says:
“Contentment preserves one even from catching a cold. Has a woman who knew that she was well-dressed ever caught a cold? No, not even when she has scarcely a rag to her back.”
To be sure, unlike Nietzsche, Cardi’s quipping is about herself; but she therein portraits herself as belonging to a specific type among women judged by their occupation or profession; so, we can substitute “sex-worker” or “street walker” where she says “hoe.” Also, unlike Nietzsche, the heaps-thruster rapper is not as far-sighted as to see any physic-medical association between “getting cold” and “catching the cold,” two states that in some natures usually follow one another when cold leads to a chill, so not necessarily always. (Whereas catching the cold empirically leaves you open to “getting cold,” getting cold on the other hand does not in every case entail “catching the cold.”)
So, her observation comes short and is not as penetrating and complete as Nietzsche’s by any measurement. And yet, the reformed gang member nevertheless also manages to capture something fundamental about the female ego and its narcissistic relation to itself and how under specific situations it mediates women’s relation to the Other (the objective reality), which in both the philosopher and the rapper is represented as physical phenomenon. Thus, we relearn from the rapper what we had already forgotten we had learned from the philosopher. Namely, we relearn from Cardi B via Nietzsche that when a woman believes herself to be well-dressed, she feels so empowered that not even the inhospitable harsh weather has any claim on her health or capability for feeling. Since she doesn’t feel the cold, she is not; and because she is not, the cold is something she cannot catch; so that her empowerment, which moreover she acquires from what is not covered by her clothing, places her somehow above the powers of nature.
Ironically, what we get to relearn from the rapper/prostitution/sex-trafficker enabler, becomes somewhat more compelling than what we had already learned from the creator of Zarathustra.
Because she focused on herself for her quipping; because her quipping has validity for all other “hoes” who like herself feel much better dressed when their bodies are less covered, she literally reveals more than Nietzsche does about the narcissistic self-relation of the female ego. The narcissistic self-relation is another name for the self-sexualization that emanates from the conscious or unconscious self-desiring that is the prerequisite for being perceived by the Other (a male or female human entity) as the “sex-object” that feminism has naively or rather cynically taught women they are not, and on which term they must reject to be dealt with by their male Other.
By basing her observation on the life of the “hoe” Cardi B bares naked that sexual objectification is a byproduct of self-objectification. Or in other words, she exposes the psycho-sexual fact that the prostitute must first sexualize herself if she’s to succeed in getting sexualized by her potential patrons. If the narcissistic self-desiring explored in Freudian and Jungian psychology alike is a basic component of the psychological structure of the female archetype which, although less often so, can manifest itself also in males, then Cardi B’s jesting observation shatters the myth of sexual self-objectification as an “internalization” of her objectification by the Other. As a demonstration, mythological Narcissus never gets to “internalize” the “objectifying” gaze of the Other: he perishes on the fortuitous attempt. Discovering his much-admired beauty does not preserve him from drowning, whereas the “hoe” gets preserved from feeling the cold by her for-hire sexiness.
That suggests that the female who grew up to be a “hoe” was always self-aware of the potentialities of her body just as much as the muscularly able body of men makes them self-aware of their prowess and capabilities. That is to say that lacking self-awareness might establish the difference between the female who do not grow up to be a “hoe” and she who does.
Therefore, to the extent that she gets this right, by baring naked the way in which sexual self-objectification is linked to the endeavoring of the female ego for its self-empowering vis-à-vis the objective reality represented by her as natural phenomenon (low temperature), Cardi B points out toward a deconstruction of feminism. She helps you see where the “sexy look” originates and establishes the prostitute as an archetype of the self-empowerment of the female ego, and thus offers a rare honest look from the inside into contemporary female culture; particularly, into what the contemporary dressing fashions of women take as its archetypical model. It is all very revealing. Pun intended, maybe.
Should my reading of Cardi B’s quipping be correct, that would be the proof that it did not call up for any pseudo-scientific probing, as it has been recently done by the bevy of “feminist scientists” above, and which entails a contradiction in terms. I call pseudo-science any “scientific” probing on any subject that, regardless the probity of the method employed, a) does not uncover anything useful, b) does not correct or expand on previous investigations, and c) contributes not much or nothing at all to the development of the field on which the research has been conducted. Pseudo-science is the worst form of scientism: the unscientific believe that science has the last word on every subject and that nothing can be reliably or sufficiently understood without science’s two cents. Science as religion, that is.
However, independently of the airtightness of the method employed to find out the truth-value of “a hoe never gets cold,” from the methodology─ the set of theoretical/philosophical assumptions that guides research, we can identify the elements nudging the researchers toward rounding up their predictions, or rather expectations, which in cases like this never fail to be confirmed. It all begins by uncritically accepting that “self-objectivization” is, presumably always and in each case, the result of the “Internalization of an observer’s appearance-based perspective of one’s body, has been theorized and demonstrated to reduce body awareness among women.”
Leaving aside that the unintended implication of the statement is that only women are born with an especial capability for getting supposedly negatively affected by the gaze of the Other, by reducing “body awareness” in them, it does not answer the question concerning what is it that in the first place motivates the observer’s gaze. That is, to the extent that it is logically consistent, which it is not, “appearance-based perspective” is the only perspective allowed to an observer looking on at something that appears before his eye. And that is independently of whatever it is that appears within the field of view of the onlooker, which is what constitute the “perspective” of the seeing.
To keep it short: the woman who appears within the field of the “observer” offers herself as the “base” in which a viewing perspective materializes. Whatever the way she chooses to appear dressed cannot be decided by the observer either before or after the fact. To believe otherwise is to deflect the negativity of the “internalization” from the viewer to the viewed. That’s always been a feministic tactic. Consider the evidence. Look around you and reflect on the sea of women appearing in your field of view everywhere on their camel-toed yoga pants with the deep-dented butt-crack who however do not appear to be sex-objectifying material─ what with all the unhealthy food, lack of physical activity, and all the obesity going around. In any case, how many “appearance-based” observations by the Other are needed to produce an “internalization” strong enough in a woman, so that she can become “self-objectifying”? How many “appearance-base” observers are necessary for this task?
So, it seems that “internalization” is the exteriorization of an egotistic need of the female ego to be looked at by the “observer” with a much desire as she looks on in the mirroring images of herself. That is, a narcissistic need to be seen as the literal embodiment of her own desire for her herself, and to be thus recognized as the embodiment of erotic or sexual potentialities. This shows the claim of “self-objectification” as being capable to “reduce body awareness among women” to be a feminist lie. Are we to accept as logical that a woman is less aware of her body the more it is exposed to the elements and to the observer’s eyes? Do women become less aware of their nudity the more their body gets exhibited in the nude?
“[…] we propose self-objectification as the mechanism to explain the oft-observed phenomenon where women wearing little clothing appear unbothered by cold weather, positing that self-objectification obstructs women’s feelings of cold.”
So do feminism speaks. That is utterly nonsensical and contrary to psychological facts. A more scientific explanation for a woman not feeling the cold when her body is the most expose to the elements, is that she has achieved erotic, near-climatic exaltation when the “objectifying” look of the observer converges and even fuses into her own objectification of her body before the mirroring image, and the narcissistic self-desiring of her ego thus gets symbolically realized in the desiring of her body by the “observer.” Such fusion—of her self-desiring with the desiring of her by the Other, produces a heightened state of egotistic satisfaction, which is what her libidinal energy aimed at from the very moment she went out shopping for her clothes; was reaffirmed on trying them on; significantly increased as she took her sweet time before the mirror; reached a peak as she was confirmed by her girlfriends that she was as “hot” as her skimping skirts assured her she would be; and finally platooned to its boiling point when the anonymous looks of the Other gave her reassurance that she had all along been on the right path toward exteriorizing her ego-narcissistic impulse of self-objectification─ while refusing to be “sexualized” by the Other, mainly because that is something she prefers to do for herself.
In contemporary society, a woman feels to be “well-dressed” whenever the erotic near-climatic exaltation of her body is near-at-hand. But that cannot be had without exteriorizing her willingness for self-objectification. “Internalization” is the old tale feminism tells women for them to assume the “hoe” looks with a good conscience. The rest is hypocrisy and hogwash.
As for Cardi B, her nonchalant, passing remark-─however much it reminds us of Nietzsche’ systematic observation on women, it does not amount to a contribution to science, as the feminist researchers attribute to her. Their research is itself bad science, a genre that has been proliferating in academic departments ever since feminism took the reins there: the “hard sciences” are now considered too hard and are being watered down. That explains the glorification of a porno-promoter as a science contributor. As for the publishers of such pseudo-science: they probably wouldn’t know a hoax if they saw one.
Montaigne, Rochefoucauld, LaRoche, Lichtenberg, Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde─ these are some of the prolific, fertile sources where serious scientists and philosophers have been going for centuries to gather depths and insightful observations on social psychology and social phenomena in general, and on women. Of course, Cardi B’s ass is more tempting to kiss up; but make sure you bring your biggest lips.
Again, as for Cardi B’s quipping ─has any “hoe” ever felt cold who makes millions just shaking it off? For the real “hoe’ money too counts as erotic near-climatic exaltation of the self-objectified body, which is what she does for a living. Or just go ask any of the women who “work” the streets even in winter.