Did Women Win the War, Only to Lose It Again?
Some thoughts for Women’s History Month
If you read this column semi-regularly, you know that many of my posts have featured women who deserve greater recognition, especially in rock music and metal. It is worth mentioning, however, that in pop music, women are indisputably at the top of the heap.
If you need evidence, you need not look far — we recently drowned in media coverage of the Taylor Swift tour, which grossed over $1 billion, a new record.
Swift is not the only one. Most of the biggest, richest pop stars in the U.S. today are women. This has to be a sign of progress, don’t you think? It’s not the only one. In many walks of life, women are closing the gap with men. In academic performance (grades, graduation rates, etc.), women have overshot and now outperform men — by a wide margin. So the quest for equality has had its successes and then some.
I grew up with a mom who had immersed herself in Second-wave feminism. I learned early on that the most important cultural indicator of women’s status is whether or not they are displayed as merchandise to be consumed. In other words, women’s achievements remain precarious as long as they are packaged like meat.
The women at the top of the entertainment world today hold enormous power, which should, in theory, extend to how they market themselves.
So, would someone please explain this?
Ariana Grande, looking for all the world like goods for sale:
Beyonce, twerking like a stripper (and dressed for the part):
And just in case the message wasn’t clear, let’s remove any doubt, shall we? (I’ve blurred the image slightly to avoid getting this post blocked.)
Doja Cat, on display for a “client”:
Lady Gaga, who has made a point of her woke politics, being pawed by a crowd of men on a subway:
Gaga is the most problematic artist on this list, in part because she clearly is quite sophisticated about the socio-political implications of self-presentation. She is, moreover, LGBTQ and an advocate for sex positivity.
Yet, there are obvious ways in which sex positivity can backfire, and catering to frat-boy fantasies is not exactly sending a positive message. Here, she goes full stripper and gives the guys a lap dance, complete with some intimate viewing.
In case the message isn’t raw enough, here is Katy Perry being kneaded and spread prior to being deep-fried:
Think I was kidding? Here she is, being fed into the cauldron.
Remarkably, this is not presented as some dark, Margaret Atwood-ish dystopian nightmare. No, the title of this song is “Bon Appétit,” and one of the lines is “You’ve got me spread like a buffet” (!) Katy thinks this is sexy.
And, of course, there is WAP (If you don’t know what that stands for, look it up). The lyrics include such poetry as “There’s a Ho’ in the house”:
Some people have called this out as porn. The weird thing is, it’s not even good porn. These days porn is everywhere, and a lot of it is much more erotic than this stuff. What you have here is gratuitous exploitation, where it not only doesn’t add anything but detracts from the message.
These people are supposedly music stars. Their stuff plays in the background everywhere — shopping malls, gyms, and on the radio. They give huge concerts and sell tons of records (or streaming files). Some of them are genuinely talented musicians.
So why do they need to do this? Do you get the feeling it’s not about the music? It feels like a cheap distraction, something a con man would pull to keep you from noticing the merchandise isn’t real. Yet some people are trying to rationalize it.
People who consider themselves feminists jumped to defend WAP, even claiming that it was a statement of empowerment. The argument is that this is not exploitation because these women have artistic control.
I'm sorry, but that doesn’t pass the laugh test. This is standard jerk-off laddie magazine fare on an industrial scale. In today’s political slang, it’s a massive self-own.
That notorious progressive, Phyllis Schlafly, said that women’s ability to manipulate men through sex was their greatest power. She warned that asking for equal treatment in the workplace would require surrendering that power. She needn’t have worried.
For women, pop culture now appears to be all about the hooker esthetic. Let’s bludgeon our hormone-addled young audience with sex, the music be damned. I’m not sure this is what Schlafly had in mind. I suspect both Schlafly and the early feminists would be rolling over in their graves.
The news today is filled with stories of how social media are making our kids anxious and depressed. In the case of girls, much of the unhappiness owes itself to the relentlessly sexualized imagery they are exposed to — and that they are supposed to compete with.
Boys, too, are damaged, as they are conditioned to think women actually behave this way. No wonder there is so much online aggression, so much actual aggression, and so many girls being entrapped in revenge porn.
The conceit that our pop stars are not contributing to this, with their endless twerking and displays of their “assets,” must be called out for what it is. Given that these are our biggest cultural icons, don’t they have some responsibility to do less harm? Do we really think that our teenagers are going to pay any heed to the occasional schoolroom lecture about setting boundaries when none of their idols set any?
For those who think I’m being unfairly critical of the women, let’s be clear: The men are guilty too — but not of self-owning. Their videos and live shows are full of armies of almost-naked women displaying themselves to titillate their impressionable fans. They should be called out, too, but there is no symmetry here.
From an artistic standpoint, the men are largely irrelevant, having abandoned the field. There are no major male pop stars who merit much discussion. Yes, Justin Bieber, Drake, and Bruno Mars are minting money, but in a generation, no one will remember them. One can’t say that of Swift, Bey, or Gaga.
In pop music, women rule. They won the war, but they seem to have lost it simultaneously.
Another reason why pop and rock music from Asia is gaining popularity. Yes they have the cute image and the sometimes sexy dances. But it has excellent music to accompany it as well as not relying on the porn image many Western female singers rely on. It is a great shame that we seem to have taken a backward step. Looking cheap and strutting around is supposed to be empowering. But if everybody does it, it just looks a bit sad. I shall stick with Band Maid and Trident and the rest of Japans rock women. While feeling a bit sad that Western Rock remains dull and predictable.
Wireless Application Protocol? What's the problem?
No, seriously, thanks for writing this, Charles. This is a very important post. I think it goes hand in hand with many other things going on in American culture. If you lived outside the US for almost two decades as I did, it was shocking to come back and be hit with this and a lot of other unexpected cultural changes, as it's not like this elsewhere (as you point out).
I have some theories about what's going on, but the one thing I will say is that women have always been sexualized in one way or another in the music/entertainment business but it was kept within certain bounds. I think some of the blame goes to online porn, as you mention, and the expectations that that has created. But what's weird is that the pop audience is primarily female and gay, yet these pop stars are seemingly catering to male expectations. The question is why. Is the industry, run almost entirely by men, demanding this? Or are these women believing that it's necessary to keep their audiences?
There seems to be an inevitable backlash among the young. Hope it spreads before too much of the damage you point out is done to those generations.