ABSTRACT
Although successful female artists often dominate the pop charts, traditional gender roles still have a stronghold on the music industry. Female performers succeed primarily as singers to a far less degree than instrumentalists, and there are still very few female producers (Cohen 1997; Mayhew 2004). Record producer and artist Melissa Arnette Elliott, better known by her stage name Missy Elliott, is an exception. In this chapter, I will provide a reading of her video, ‘Work It’ (2002), with an aim to explore what happens when a female artist adopts and adapts various signifiers of masculinity, including those that are deemed as superficial, in terms of attire, and those that are considered substantive, in terms of performance style, production and musical markers.
