Topic: Don't Be a Little Bitch With Your Chit Chat

It's the end of the semester. Everyone's actually moving out today, but I'm staying until Sunday. I haven't started packing, which I told myself I would do now after I watched Californication and had a cigarette, but I've yet to have a cigarette and I don't feel like packing at all.

I thought I'd post the term paper I wrote for my Feminist Theory class in the spring (I figured I can't attend an all girls school without taking at least one class on feminism, or women, or whatever). It is the most fun term paper (or paper in general, I guess, but sometimes I do have a lot of fun writing other papers--wow, that's not dorky at all) I've ever written (can I also add that I love Lady Gaga so much more after writing this?). It's simply called,

"Pop Music and Feminism"

Pop culture is a funny thing. It is changing all the time, from year to year and decade to decade, and yet something inherent within it stays the same. Out of the Top Fifty songs (according to Billboard Music) from the week of April 11^th to the 17^th, only fourteen are by or include women; in other words, songs by women constitute 28% of the Top Fifty most popular songs for that week. Some of the songs (and videos for those songs) are what you would expect by people you would expect, and yet others are by artists out to re-define (or, in the case of Lady Gaga, revolutionize) what it means to be a woman, or at least what it means to sing songs as a woman.

The number one song for the week of the eleventh to the seventeenth was “Rude Boy,” by Rihanna. It’s a song by a woman--definitely a plus--all about wanting to have some rough sex with a man--definitely a negative. “You say you a rude boy?” she asks, then sings, “Then show me what you got now” (Metrolyrics). The term “rude boy” has all sorts of definitions, but in Rihanna’s context it implies a man willing to use force during sex, in a very subtle fashion; for example, she tells her rude boy that “I like the way you pull my hair” (Metrolyrics). However, the lyrics do reflect some kind of female agency--Rihanna is commanding that this man have sex with her, not pleading with him to do so, and certainly not pining after him.

In an ironic twist of sorts, Rihanna released this song over a year after the media frenzy over the domestic violence dispute between her and Chris Brown. One woman, Kathryn Jean Lopez, notes a poll that the Boston Globe took days after the beating that surveyed 200 teenagers aged 12 to 19. The poll reveals that “46 percent of the kids surveyed said that they thought Rihanna was to blame for the beating; 51 percent said Brown was at fault, and 52 percent said that both of them were somehow responsible. And, according to the survey, a significant number of males and females said Rihanna was now destroying Chris Brown's career” (Alphonse). “It’s just one survey,” Lopez says, “But it’s very bad news. And feminism is to blame.” This is because, claims Lopez, feminism has successfully blurred the line between genders so well that teenagers are confused as to what masculinity and femininity inherently are. She writes:

It’s natural for us to expect men to protect women, and for women to expect some level of physical protection. In postmodern America, those natural gender roles have been beaten by academics and political rhetoric and the occasional modern woman being offended by having a door opened for her … But while feminists whine about false pay gaps and oppression that doesn’t exist, we ignore the mess that we’ve created in rejecting the fact that there is good in nature and tradition. (Lopez)

If Lopez is correct, this would be a postmodern feminist’s dream. Jacques Derrida rails against binary language that insists “that the way we understand the term ‘masculine,’ for example, depends on our understanding of the term ‘feminine.’” He claims that this kind of “bipolar thought must be resisted whenever it manifests itself” because it only furthers women’s oppression through one of the most power tools available to humans--language (Tong 274). According to Lopez, this is reality--we reside in a post-feminist age where feminism has achieved what it set out to “do” and we live in a wildly androgynous liberal society, which is terrible, because it’s not natural.

Rihanna’s video for “Rude Boy,” however, proves that Lopez is completely off the mark, and it is not yet time for feminists to shrug their shoulders and move on to something else. The video shows her prancing about in tight outfits shaking her gratuitous butt, sometimes covered in animal print or sliding around on a fake lion, complete with an abundance of shots simply of her bright red lips. An ecofeminist would be quick to note the connection between women and the natural world; however, any feminist would be able to point out the effect of the seemingly constant societal refrain of women of color associated with animals. The negative impact of this association is the fact that women become nothing but something for men to control, as men control nature and, subsequently, animals. Predictably, at times, there are also several instances of Rihanna enticing men and dancing on or with men. Clearly Rihanna is--and presumably, her fans are--well-versed in the binary differences between “masculinity” and “femininity”--something that would make Derrida cry and that devalues Lopez’s argument. It is also interesting to note that the Boston Globe poll mentions only the age of those surveyed--there is no breakdown on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, class, or how many people of each age were polled (a 12-year-old would possibly have a completely different opinion than that of a 19-year-old).

While Rihanna maintains the rigid gender roles society has set out for men and women, there is one woman that is shaking the very foundations of music and society as it exists today. Lady Gaga, who has consistently topped Billboard since 2008 with her singles “Just Dance,” “Bad Romance,” “Poker Face,” and “LoveGame,” teams up with Beyonce to clock in at number five with their song “Telephone.” The song itself seems made simply to just be a catchy hit--the lyrics are repetitive, about a man who keeps calling her cell phone while she is at the club to whom she does not want to speak to because she would rather drink and dance. Even that, though, is empowering--she is telling this guy to buzz off because she is doing what she wants to. She does not feel the need to run to him simply because he is asking her to (Taylor Swift’s lyrics, for example, emit the exact opposite of this sentiment). But it’s the woman behind it all--Lady Gaga--that really has everyone in a buzz, and probably shocked the pants off Kathryn Lopez.

In an August 2009 interview for a Norwegian magazine, Gaga espoused her knowledge of the gross double standard between men and women in the music industry and how women are treated completely unfairly as a result even when they act the same as men:

You see, if I was a guy, and I was sitting here with a cigarette in my hand, grabbing my crotch and talking about how I make music 'cause I love fast cars and fucking girls, you'd call me a rock star. But when I do it in my music and in my videos, because I'm a female, because I make pop music, you're judgmental, and you say that it is distracting. I'm just a rock star. (Maloney)

Then she answered the question, “Are you also a feminist?” with the reply, “I’m not a feminist. I hail men. I love men. I celebrate American male culture: beer and bars and muscle cars” (Maloney). This was a huge slip-up for Gaga, whose popularity was skyrocketing with feminists who saw her as the changing face of female pop culture. After the video surfaced, the critics attacked. Ms. Magazine questioned whether or not she actually was a feminist, and claimed that if she did attach the word to herself, that “her immense popularity and youthful, outspoken image could be the perfect set-up for a revolution of the word” (Williams). Bitch Magazine and feministing.com were not sure whether to high five her for the former statement or turn their backs because of the second, less well-informed, completely stereotypical latter statement.

Gaga’s interview with the LA Times’ Ann Powers was published in December 2009, presumably after she had done some thinking about her feminist comment, in which she tells Powers that “I’m getting the sense that you’re a little bit of a feminist, like I am, which is good … When I say to you, there is nobody like me, and there never was, that is a statement I want every woman to feel and make about themselves," Lady Gaga says in the interview. "…I know my greatness is individual. And I want every woman to be able to say that." She says she wants to free her fans from society’s iron grip--she wants them to express the deep-down crazy, freakish part within each one of them and embrace it, just as she has. “I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans … I want to liberate them, I want to free their fears and make them feel that they can create their own space in the world” (Lady Gaga). It is this drive to blow minds wide open that Powers also comments on, calling it Gaga’s “commitment to change the changing notion of what’s ‘natural’”--something someone like Kathryn Lopez would claim is static.

It is this commitment that shines through on her nine-minute plus video for “Telephone.” It begins in the “Prison For Bitches,” where Gaga is taken, stripped, and later bailed out by Beyonce. The two embark on a quest to kill Beyonce’s chauvinistic boyfriend and instead end up poisoning a whole diner full of people in a fashion that combines Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series and Pulp Fiction. The video itself is a statement about American consumerism, littered with blatant advertisements for Virgin Mobile, Diet Coke, Miracle Whip, Wonder Bread, and Polaroid cameras, among many other things. While still in the diner, Gaga and Beyonce drive home the point about American consumerism by dancing among the dead bodies in star-spangled red, white, and blue outfits. Perhaps they are trying to say consumerism is poisonous (the diners consume the poison Gaga put in their food) in the way in which it can invade and ultimately constrict your life. Perhaps they are warning misogynists with a “Look what can happen” message. In any case, the video ends with an ominous “To Be Continued” and a fade into the symbol for women before the credits roll.

It is also a video about the consumption of the female body and femininity in general. One writer suggests that the video is “another example of how [Lady Gaga] subversively turns what [society] usually finds hot into something that leaves a nasty taste in our mouths and therefore makes a statement” (Wizzle). For example, while in the prison yard, Gaga makes out with a gender-ambiguous person (presumably a woman, if she is in the “Prison For Bitches”) while wearing sunglasses covered in burning cigarettes. Gaga knowingly pairs this racy, stereotypically attractive act with something disgusting, and therefore forces the viewer to think and re-think what sexy really is.

Gaga also forces this question with her “Let’s Make A Sandwich” interlude in the middle of the video. In a radio interview with Ryan Seacrest, she addresses it, saying, “It kind of comes in out of nowhere, but now that I watch it, in retrospect, the way that it works into the video, and the commentary on kind of being over-fed communication and advertisements and food in this country. I think it all kind of really makes sense by the end” (Littlefield). Additionally, it again poses the question of what is sexy and forces the viewer to re-think the notion of sexy. Even though Gaga spends the majority of the video scantily-clad, there is something about her that refuses to fit into the traditional notion of what is sexy.

“What sets Gaga apart from other sexpot pop stars is that I just can’t imagine men being honestly turned on by her – not because she isn’t gorgeous (she is), but because she is so avant-garde, aggressive, and self-driven which takes that arousal and turns it into something atypical, uncomfortable, and threatening” (Wizzle). Outside of the video, Gaga herself posed topless for the cover of Q Magazine with one gloved hand across her breasts and another against her crotch, and yet still manages to pervert what would be the traditional sexiness of the picture with her wild hair, long-fingered monster-like gloves, and spiked pants. Gaga herself admits, in a 20/20 interview with Barbara Walters, that “I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny” (Lady Gaga). It is those ridiculous costumes, her aggressive persona, and this self-proclaimed androgyny that challenges conventional societal notions of what is “sexy.” “This isn’t Britney [Spears] writhing on the floor in a nude suit in ‘Toxic,’ this isn’t [Christina Aguilera] mud wrestling in assless chaps in ‘Drrty,’ and this isn’t Jessica Simpson in her patriotic Daisy Dukes” (Wizzle). Gaga is forcing the world, whether they like it or not, to look at her, and reconsider.

However, Gaga makes her statement by objectifying the female body, like so many other celebrities. Wizzle notes that “if any other artist (particularly any male artist) incorporated this much objectification and violence against women [into a music video] we would be outraged.” There’s still the women making out, the barely-clothed women brawling in the prison, the violent undressing of Gaga and blurred-out frontal view of her vagina, the revealing outfits, the sexual tension between Gaga and Beyonce. Beyonce wreaks revenge on her boyfriend with violence, using the same violence he used to control her. By defying conventional societal norms, the video still feeds into them, keeping the vicious cycle going.

Gaga also claims she does not want to exploit the gay community--whom she considers her dearest fans, because they jumpstarted her music career and accept her for who she is--by playing up her bisexuality (Norris). And yet that is exactly what she does in the video for “Telephone”--a Katy Perry-style “I Kissed A Girl” nod to girl-on-girl sex and violence, all of which fall under the conventional idea of sexy. Wizzle is right--the double standard in the music industry that Gaga complained about goes both ways. Amy Littlefield sums it up when she writes, “With ‘Telephone,’ [Lady Gaga] has given us a saturated visual landscape upon which to hash out our own thoughts about gender and race. She’s also given misogynist audiences an eyeful of skinny white women dancing in g-strings. It’s a generous helping of images. But it’s up to us to decide what they will mean.”

Another woman on the pop music scene is vying with Gaga to capture the hearts of feminists: Ke$ha (referred to from here on as simply “Kesha”). Three of her songs off of her debut album “Animal,” released in 2010, made the Billboard top fifty from the eleventh to the seventeenth--“Tik Tok” (number twelve), “Blah Blah Blah” (number twenty-two), and “Your Love Is My Drug” (number thirty-two). Like Gaga, she refers to herself as a feminist, and also seems bent on bending and breaking the double standard of the music industry with her lyrics and videos, albeit in a much less revolutionary and more questionable way.

In “Tik Tok,” Kesha sings that she and her friends “kick [the dudes lining up] to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger” and “smack [the boys] if they’re gettin’ too drunk” (Metrolyrics). It is an anthem for independent women who go out to a party just for the sake of partying--they are not looking for men to hit on them or take them home, they simply (in a Cyndi Lauper-esque style) just want to have fun on their night out. The video is surprisingly tasteful--very little is choreographed (that is, there is no gratuitous rump shaking--actually, there is no rump shaking, gratuitous or otherwise) and Kesha’s outfits look relatively ordinary, like something one would be unsurprised to see on a college campus.

Likewise, Kesha’s video for “Blah Blah Blah” is similar--no racy outfits, no suggestive dancing. The song itself is about wanting a guy to simply shut up in various situations. “Don’t be a little bitch with your chit-chat, just show me where your dick’s at,” she sings--in other words, she wants him to shut up and have sex with her (Metrolyrics). Other times she is “in love with this song so just hush, baby, shut up,” and let her dance and listen (Metrolyrics). In the video she goes so far as to humiliate a man trying to chat her up by wrapping him in duct tape, laughing, and leaving him at the bar. Again, with lyrics and videos like these, she is aiming to give women agency over themselves and their bodies and the knowledge that they need not submit to men (much like the lyrics of “Telephone” and “Rude Boy”).

Kesha’s feminist agenda, however, is not the revolution that Gaga could have in store (according to Ms. Magazine) if she chose to haul out the big guns. Apparently, Kesha says in an interview with August Brown for the LA Times, her lyrics are all about “winning equal rights for women to abuse boys in songs the way dudes have done for decades.” She continues, saying, “I'm just talking about men the way they've talked about women for years. If you listen to [the band] LMFAO, it's all about how women are pieces of meat. I find that stuff funny, so I want to do it back to them.” While Kesha’s heart seems to be in the right place, her reasoning resonates with that of Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft argues that women should be educated in a way that makes them more like men; in other words, Wollstonecraft implies that women can only be equal to men if they act like men, which is the same sentiment Kesha is implying with her statements on her lyrics. This kind of reasoning only helps to further elevate men’s status in society and detrimentally (and perhaps unwittingly) makes the point that women are somehow less than men or missing something that men have.

However, Kesha seems to cast off this feminist image with her song “Your Love Is My Drug.” The title reveals the trite content of the song--she loves a boy so much it makes her dope sick when she is not with him. “What you got, boy, is hard to find. I think about it all the time. I’m all strung out, my heart is fried--I just can’t get you off of my mind,” she sings (Metrolyrics). This song goes against any agenda she may have had and against the statements on her songs she made in the LA Times. Whether or not Kesha decides to team up with Gaga and fight societal expectations of women or throws down her power as a pop star and joins the ranks of Taylor Swift remains to be seen.

Taylor Swift’s song “Today Was A Fairytale” ranks at number thirty-eight on the Billboard list. The lyrics are exactly what her listeners have come to expect from her--“You’ve got a smile that takes me to another planet. Every move you make, everything you say is right … But can you feel the magic in the air? It must’ve been the way you kissed me” (Metrolyrics). Everything about the relationship is attributed to the man--he kissed her, not the other way around. She is Kathryn Lopez’s dream, as she keeps the “natural” man / woman, masculine / feminine dichotomy upheld.

According to an interview with Rolling Stone, Taylor Swift says she “wants to help adolescent girls everywhere feel better about themselves” (Riese). It is an honest ambition that she shares with Lady Gaga and presumably many other female music producers. However, as Riese notes, “Swift’s lyrical message to teenage girls is clear: BOYS. That’s it. Just boys. Crying over boys and feeling broken and/or completed by boys.” In other words, Taylor Swift’s prescription to girls who want to feel better about themselves is not to embrace their own femininity and claim agency at all costs, but to find a boy to take refuge in that is willing to take the traditional masculine role of protector and gives the girl a reason to get up in the morning. It is why Riese blatantly calls out Swift as “a feminist’s worst nightmare.”

While Lady Gaga and Kesha fall on the left-leaning scale of female pop-culture, Taylor Swift falls on the right, and Rihanna somewhere in the between. Even though women (or groups including women) only constituted 28% of the top fifty Billboard songs from the week of the eleventh to the seventeenth, these four women that made the charts each have an agenda: empowering women. Lady Gaga has the guts to challenge and shock pop culture and force some kind of change in how women are perceived, and yet her methods only perpetuate what she is trying to fight. Rihanna and Kesha both give women agency to blow off or have casual sex with men without throwing themselves at them. Taylor Swift seems to be the lone outsider here, giving safe, traditional advice to adolescent girls. Whether the double standard is actually erased within the music industry and women can be women without being men is up to these women, and yet, it is also up to their listeners.


Works Cited:

Alphonse, Lylah M. "Boston Youths Say Rihanna Was to Blame for Her Beating." Boston Times Online. 13 Mar. 2009. Web.
Brown, August. "Faces to Watch 2010: Ke$ha." Los Angeles Times. 29 Dec. 2009. Web.
Lady Gaga - Interview With Barbara Walters on 20/20. Perf. Lady Gaga, Barbara Walters. Youtube.com. ABC News, 23 Jan. 2010. Web.
Littlefield, Amy. "Visuality and Feminism in Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” Video." Gender Across Borders. 16 Apr. 2010. Web.
Lopez, Kathryn J. "What Feminism Wrought." National Review Online. 23 Mar. 2009. Web.
Maloney, Malori. "Lady Gaga: ‘I'm Not a Feminist. I Hail Men, I Love Men.’" BitchMedia. Bitch Magazine, 5 Aug. 2009. Web.
Norris, John. "Lady Gaga Interviews." Noisevox. 2010. Web.
Powers, Ann. "Frank Talk With Lady Gaga." Los Angeles Times. 13 Dec. 2009. Web.
Riese. "Why Taylor Swift Offends Little Monsters, Feminists, and Weirdos." Autostraddle. 6 Feb. 2010. Web.
Tong, Rosemarie. Feminist Thought. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2009. Print.
Williams, Noelle. "Is Lady Gaga A Feminist Or Isn't She?" Ms. Magazine. 11 Mar. 2010. Web.
Wizzle. "Telephone: Lady Gaga’s Latest Controversy." Feministhemes.com. 14 Mar. 2010. Web. Www.metrolyrics.com. 2009. Web.