Banks is a musician known for her electronic R&B style of music as well as her pro-feminine ideologies showcased in her music, videos, and fashion. The video for her song “Gemini Feed” features only the singer herself in a few various outfits and with minimal props. All of Banks’ videos are fairly minimalistic, and “Gemini Feed” definitely uses minimalism to its advantage so that every outfit, prop, and background in the video carries meaning. Banks uses visuals of bondage and submission to illustrate her fight for independence and equality in both the physical and emotional aspects of a toxic relationship.

 

     One of the most fascinating aspects of Banks’ public image is the fact that she uses sexuality to engage her audience. Sex sells, but for Banks, and especially in the “Gemini Feed” video, it is used as a means to attract an audience in order to tell a deeper and more troubling story. For two of the three outfits Banks wears in this video, she is adorned in bondage-style clothing and accessories. Culturally bondage is sexy and in sex, fetishized, but in this case it serves the purpose of illustrating a woman’s lack of control within a heterosexual relationship. The singer is literally dragged along and constrained by ropes attached to every part of her body. This is not sexy but instead troubling to any viewer that can empathize with feelings of powerlessness, and really all women can understand such feelings. However, some women may be shocked by Banks and the way she blatantly embraces her own sexuality. Men may be offended by a confident, independent woman who intentionally puts herself in a submissive, sexy role only to completely defy everything they may assume about her. American media and culture do not support sexual women, and “shaming young woman for being sexual is nothing new” (Valenti 143). In the case of this song and video, it seems that even the man who has been in a sexual relationship with this woman shames her for her sexuality or at least does not view it as equal to his own.

 

    Banks sings, “Open up your eyes / There’s nothing on my body left to see,” a haunting line that encompasses her feelings of being diminished to a purely physical being or means of pleasure for another person (Banks). This man has seen every part of her body, physically, but she now begs for an emotional connection, one she knows she will not receive. Not only has she been diminished physically, the singer has also been made submissive and unequal in the relationship that seems to be all about power and inequality. She sings, “And to think you would get me to the altar / Like I’d follow you around like a dog that needs water / But admit it, you just wanted me smaller / If you would’ve let me grow you could’ve kept my love” (Banks). This woman recognizes that she was manipulated into being less than her partner, and she acknowledges that she has room to grow as a woman. Growth and independence are illustrated by the singer perched upon a throne, which resembles an altar more than anything else. She has taken the altar meant for her and her lover and made it into her own source of power, and this analogy encompasses the meaning of the song as well. Banks sits on her thrown, creating power for herself through independence, but the setting looks scary and witchy, perhaps because woman are not supposed to have power in this male-dominated world. Women who do have power or are fighting for power are “other-ed” and seen as a threat like Banks on her throne. She knows how to gain and maintain power, unlike the many girls who have been made to believe that there are only two kinds of female power, “the kind of power women [get] from being sexually desired, and the kind women [get] from being sexually invisible” (Senna 53). Banks is definitely not “sexually invisible”, and she has overcome the need to be “sexually desired” (Senna 53).

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     “Gemini Feed” is not about a woman wanting to be “sexually desired” but rather one who wants to be sexually free (Senna 53). Banks sings, “Ode to my two thighs / I still want you to kiss ‘em ‘cause they’re lonely” because she accepts herself as a sexual being who is allowed to have sexual desires like men. She is not asking for a commitment from a man; she is simply expressing her need to be pleased physically. Once again, this is something that may shock or offend people because gender as a social construction “depends on everyone constantly ‘doing gender’” (Lorber 68). For women, “doing gender” means falling into the binary of either being invisible or desirable (Senna 53). For men, it means “being strong, responsible, loving, weathering tough times, providing for your family, and never giving up” as well as being “a player” (Jensen 70). The options for women, even in twenty-first century American culture, are severely limited in comparison to those for men. “Gemini Feed” is a poignant criticism of the socially acceptable binaries of heterosexual relationships, and it is meant to challenge not only mean but the entire culture of female oppression as well as encourage women to embrace themselves beyond the options they have been giving by their culture.

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S O U R C E S . . .

Banks, Jillian. “BANKS – Gemini Feed.” Youtube, uploaded by banksVEVO, 16 Aug. 2016, http://youtube.com/watch?v=2IeyrEUkBSk.

 

Friedan, Betty. “The Problem That Has No Name.” Women: Images and Realities, A Multicultural Anthology, edited by Suzanne Kelly, Gowri Parameswaran, Nancy Schiedewind, McGraw-Hill, 2012, pp. 50-53.

 

Jensen, Robert. “Masculine, Feminine or Human?” Women: Images and Realities, A Multicultural Anthology, edited by Suzenne Kelly, Gowri Parameswaran, Nancy Schiedewind, McGraw-Hill, 2012, p. 70.

 

Lorber, Judith. “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender.” Women: Images and Realities, A Multicultural Anthology, edited by Suzenne Kelly, Gowri Parameswaran, Nancy Schiedewind, McGraw-Hill, 2012, pp. 68-71.

 

Senna, Danzy. “To Be Real.” Women: Images and Realities, A Multicultural Anthology, edited by Suzenne Kelly, Gowri Parameswaran, Nancy Schiedewind, McGraw-Hill, 2012, pp. 53-56.

 

Valenti, Jessica. “The Cult of Virginity.” Women: Images and Realities, A Multicultural Anthology, edited by Suzenne Kelly, Gowri Parameswaran, Nancy Schiedewind, McGraw-Hill, 2012, pp. 140-143.