POP (T)ART

Miley Cyrus: Because, frankly my dear, Miley Cyrus

Posted on June 13, 2015 by Steph McGann

I, hands down, could not write a blog about women in pop music without including Miley.

It has been almost two years since the infamous MTV VMA performance that spawned a million twerking memes. Giant foam hands were violated. Tongues hung out of mouths. Robin Thicke’s career bombed. And Miley Cyrus cleverly used the ensuing melee to her advantage; she shed the Hannah Montana cocoon she’d been swaddled in since 2006 and emerged as a not-of-this-world kaleidoscopic creature, complete with butterfly-shaped nipple pasties.

Miley Cyrus performing at the 2015 Adult Swim Upfront Party (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Tuner)

I say, not-of-this-world, and then again I think: she is actually so inherently of this earth – her finger is so deftly on the pulse of what matters most to young people today – and so unhindered, so real, that she seems other-worldly and incandescent. There’s no one like her.

I might gush now, but it hasn’t always been that way. Too old to care about her days as a Disney teen star, I approached 2013’s MTV VMA performance with mild curiosity tempered by a slew of indifference. Sitting naked atop a wrecking ball and seductively licking sledgehammers in her video clip didn’t seem all that shocking, or relevant, to me.

But over the years, my appreciation for Cyrus has grown.

Like her fellow Free The Nipple campaign supporter, Australian actress Caitlin Stasey, Cyrus has worked to change the perception of female nudity in society. For so long the female body has been framed as a commodity: to sell products and a particular image to women, and to purvey sexual fantasies for men. Cyrus (like Stasey) believes in a woman’s right to own her own body and to exhibit it on her own terms.

This is an important and powerful message for young women. Yes, second-wave feminism has been and gone, but the third wave is now, and it’s thriving. The trajectory of Cyrus’ career could have gone either way after the VMA’s, but thankfully it skyrocketed and that’s a tribute to her ability to carry a relevant and much-needed message for young people.

This month, Paper magazine featured Cyrus on its cover, and published a brilliant piece on the 22 year-old pop idol. It not only discussed her own sexuality, which she deemed to be “fluid”, but also talked about her new venture: the Happy Hippie Foundation. Inspired partly by the death of Leelah Alcorn – a transgender girl who committed suicide late last year – Cyrus launched the foundation in an attempt to raise funds and awareness for homeless and LGBT youth.

People of all ages, but especially young people, need to know that difference is something to be celebrated, sexuality is to be embraced – for both men and women – and that it’s OK to love your body because, to quote Zeitgeist Girl, Lena Dunham, your body is a “tool to do the stuff” you need to do, and not the be all and end all of your existence.

On that note, I’m out.

Thanks guys – it has been fun 🙂

Steph

Love Me Harder: The sexualisation of women in pop music

Posted on June 13, 2015 by Steph McGann

Recently, local Perth band Tired Lion was invited to perform their latest single and a cover live in studio for Triple J’s Like A Version. Lead guitarist and singer Sophie Hopes absolutely owned the performance, wielding her powerful vocals like some weapon straight out of the filthy 90s. They covered Violent Soho’s ‘Saramona Said’ and injected some sneaky Smashing Pumpkins into the mix for good measure. Hopes’ voice would slide from aching howls to guttural almost-whispers and back again. And people dug it.

But it seems there always has to be one belligerent fool out to ruin the party.

Among the love for the band and Hopes’ voice, one comment stood out like a sexist pig on heat: “This is f—ing terrible but nice tits.”

Then came this one: “She’s fat”. And another: “Her second chin gives it away”.

Fortunately, an upstanding gentleman stepped in to make a defence. His addition to the enlightening commentary? “I would take her to bed in a flash. I can’t see the attraction to girls built like greyhounds.”

And just like that, a female musician’s merit was whittled down to her sexuality, appearance, and desirability.

For the record, Hopes is anything but overweight, but that’s not the point. Here, we see, on a local scale, the kind of sexual ideals that still permeate the music industry right down to its grassroots foundation. There’s nothing overtly sexual about Hopes’ appearance or Tired Lion’s music, but so what if there was? Would it give anyone the right to appraise her on the grounds of her sexuality? Furthermore, would it then be considered appropriate to brand the male band members by similar terms?

Last year, Australian rapper Iggy Azalea was interviewed by Peter Rosenberg and Ebro Darden, of US hip-hop show Hot 97. Azalea explained that she no longer crowd surfed at shows because of the amount of times she’d been sexually assaulted while doing so. She said some people had gone so far as to direct ‘lurk tweets’ at her, describing what they planned to do. “They think I’m real slutty,” she told the hosts. “Like, ‘she’s got a song called Pussy I know what she wants.’ Why would I want a stranger to finger me? I don’t want that. Buying my album for $12 doesn’t mean you get to finger me when I come to your city.”

As if that were some sort of invitation for a line of questioning about Azalea’s sex life, Darden later asked if she was a “porn star in the bedroom” because he noted she was “a little risqué” at her concerts, wore short-shorts on stage and had a “big ass”. Needless to say, Azalea didn’t reply.

But it’s not only men who, with monotonous regularity, see fit to pedal this kind of hyper-sexualisation of female musicians. Entertainment veteran Bette Midler recently got tongues wagging when she accused 21 year-old singer Ariana Grande of looking “ridiculous” and advised: “you don’t have to make a whore out of yourself to get ahead”.

Midler’s comments were no doubt prompted by Grande’s video for her fourth single ‘Love Me Harder’. The video sees Grande donning a slinky black outfit and cat ears while she drapes her languid body over an armchair and makes bedroom eyes at the camera. It’s a sexy song because – shock horror – it’s about sex! Imagine that! A woman singing about being sexually satisfied. You never hear/see men do that (please, feel my sarcasm).

The thing is, men do sing about sex. It’s just that male sexuality is physically manifest in different ways to female sexuality.

I give you a perfect example in the form of Billboard’s latest cover:

See that tiny writing in the bottom-right corner? Blues legent B. B. King had just passed away, but that's not as important as Jason Derulo's bare abs (Image Copyright Billboard, 2015)

See that tiny writing in the bottom-right corner? Blues legend B. B. King had just passed away, but that’s not as important as Jason Derulo’s bare abs, is it? (Image Copyright Billboard, 2015)

Here, we have r ‘n’ b artist Jason Derulo poolside, and decked in gold chains because he’s wealthy and powerful and gold chains are indicative of that. Got it? Right. Meanwhile, a beautiful, topless woman leans on the pool edge because nothing attracts the ladies more than glistening abs, gold chains, and lots of money. Who is that girl? It doesn’t matter. This is Jason Derulo’s cover and we get the feeling she belongs to him because he’s wealthy and he has earned it (Ugh!).

Last week Ariana Grande posted a Twitter essay addressing the notion that women in the pop industry are framed as the possessions of men, and calling out the industry’s pervasive sexism and double standards. “I am tired of living in a world where women are mostly referred to as a man’s past, present, or future PROPERTY / POSSESSION,” she wrote to her 29.5million Twitter followers and 25million facebook fans, most of whom are bound to be teenage girls and young women.

It’s so refreshing to see someone such as Grande, who has a huge female fan-base, showing young women that it’s perfectly healthy to accept and enjoy your sexuality. And that doing so does not render you an object to be exploited. We have a long way to go, but we’re getting there thanks to strong voices that aren’t afraid to be heard.

Bye for now,

Steph

Ignorant Art: Cultural appropriation and the ‘white girls can’t rap’ argument

Posted on June 13, 2015 by Steph McGann

“First things first I’m the realest.”

It’s the first line Iggy Azalea raps on ‘Fancy feat. Charli XCX’ – a pop anthem that Rolling Stone included in its 50 Best Songs of 2014. Six words. One loaded sentence that spurred an already simmering debate about authenticity in rap music.

Iggy Azalea (Image Copyright Billboard, 2014)

That Azalea spits rhymes in a distinctly southern drawl when she, in fact, hails from rural New South Wales has incited such mounting anger that just this month, The Washington Post claimed her cancelled great Escape tour marked the beginning of the end for Iggy. Citing her inability to sell-out the stadiums for which she’d been booked, and her failure to win a Grammy despite her four nominations as indicative of demise, Soraya Nadia McDonald’s piece also errs heavily on the side that argues Azalea’s music is an offensive appropriation of black culture.

But what is the difference between exploiting a culture and being inspired by it? Where do we draw the line?

Some would say the line was probably well and truly staked out back in 2011 when Azalea rapped:

“When the relay starts I’m a runaway slave master.”

It’s an awkward, if not blatantly offensive, lyric for which Azalea later apologised. And Harlem-based rapper Azealia Banks wasn’t prepared to have any of it. In the wake of Iggy being lauded the first female rapper to appear on XXL Magazine’s Freshman List in 2012, a twitter war between herself and Banks raged.

But last year, in an interview with Hot 97, Banks voiced her frustrations with an industry that she perceives awards whiteness, commandeers black culture when it suits, and “smudges” black artists out of the picture. “…All it says to white kids is ‘You’re great, you’re amazing, you can do whatever you put your mind to’. And it says to black kids, ‘You don’t have s—, you don’t own s—, not even the s— you created for yourself’. And it makes me upset in that way,” she said.

It’s a bullet-proof sentiment I don’t feel equipped to understand fully, though I want to.

For the most part, Iggy Azalea does rap from experience and about what she knows; would her musical persona be so jarring, then, if she were to rap in her natural Australian accent?

In an interview with Noisey, leading linguist David Crystal sheds some light on the accent debate:

“It all depends on where you’re from and how strongly you’re tied to there…It’s all about who you identify with and want to be perceived to identify with…Rapping…comes from the Caribbean way of talking. Anyone who wants to rap has got to respect that. They may respect you, or just laugh in your face.”

Many singers don’t sing in their natural accent. In fact, when some Australian artists do this it can (strangely) come across to some as inauthentic (I personally don’t agree). Given Iggy Azalea grew up on a healthy dose of rap and hip-hop, and moved to Miami in her teens, is it so surprising that she has adopted and honed an American rap style? In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Azalea articulates the affinity she feels with southern rap:

“Southern rap made me realise the country is cool. Southern America reminds me more of being in Mullumbimby than coming to Sydney does. The trees, the roads, the pace, the laid-back life, everyone knowing each other’s name, corner stores being in people’s families for generations, knowing every kid at high school.”

Azalea isn’t welcome in the Aussie hip-hop scene, as The Guardian has gone to great pains to establish, but her reception in the US is a hostile one. Where, then, does her brand of artistry belong?

To me, listening to rap, as with most kinds of music, is a profoundly empathetic experience. Rapping is poetry at its essence and it has the ability to convey a gamut of emotions through the use of rhythm and inflection. When you rap you’re using your voice percussively and you’re taking it to places that speaking and singing can’t go to on their own. Listening to rap is an exchange, and at its core, it’s about story telling.

I’m not a fan of Iggy Azalea’s music, but I’m interested in our ideas about the point at which rap, as a craft, and race relations intersect. Why is it that I’d preference Kendrick Lamar over a white artist who might cite him as an inspiration? I feel there’s something jarring about a person taking on a voice that’s not their own. What do you think? Comment below and tell me what you reckon.

Until next time,

Steph

All the Right Junk in All the Right Places: The insidiousness of sugar-coated stereotypes

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Steph McGann

I’m not the first to call it; 2014 was the year of the ‘booty’. It saw Iggy Azalea’s behind forever enshrined in the pop culture institution that is South Park; J. Lo (successfully?) try to reassert her Queen of Booty-dom title; Kim Kardashian break the internet; and, Nicki Minaj make, well, this happen…

Thankfully, that tumult of big, round, highly-sexualised buttocks’ heralded a welcome breath of fresh air in the form of 21 year-old Meghan Trainor and her smash hit ‘All About That Bass’. With a well-timed pop of her hip, Trainor shimmied her way onto commercial radio stations the world over – topping charts and breaking hearts with her sassy doo wop-inspired ode to, “loving yourself, loving your body…and having fun with it” (Trainor’s Title – Track By Track Commentary via Spotify).

Meghan Trainor (Image Copyright Epic Records, 2015)

But when I say Trainor topped charts and broke hearts, I mean exactly that. This seemingly-harmless slice of sugary pop fuelled debate surrounding the differences between body pride and body shaming. It all came down to one line:

“I’m bringing booty back

Go ‘head and tell those skinny bitches that

Nah just playing”.

Now, I have to admit, as an amply-proportioned young woman who also happens to have a soft spot for three-part harmonies and a 50s groove, when I first heard this track I couldn’t help but sing and bop along. In a world where I feel bombarded by images of beautiful, thin women asking me (figuratively, or as it turns out, even literally) whether or not I’m ‘beach body ready’, Trainor’s big booty anthem was the pop breakthrough I’d been waiting for. And for good or for bad, I was more than happy to ignore the undertones perceived by some that the song glorified particular body types while shaming others. “They’re mistaken,” I told myself. “They’re just reading too far into it.”

So, with that aside, I put it to you, my friends, am I reading too far into this:

Meghan, I feel betrayed. You won me, and thousands like me, over with your unabashed body-positivity only to wreak havoc from within with this, your third single, ‘Dear Future Husband’.

In this track, Trainor, without an ounce of irony (I did have my fingers crossed) sings to her future husband:

“’Cause if you treat me right

I’ll be the perfect wife

Buyin’ groceries

Buy-buyin’ groceries”.

The accompanying video clip shows Trainor surrounded by attractive men in barbershop attire, batting her false eyelashes and cooing: “After every fight, just apologise, and maybe then I’ll let you try and rock my body right”. You see, she’ll let him try for sex if he apologises and takes the blame for every fight they ever have…That sounds like a healthy relationship to me (I sincerely hope my eye-rolling comes through sufficiently at this point).

If you can bear watching and listening past the 30-second mark you’ll also see Trainor baking pies, scrubbing floors on her knees, and dismissing her many suitors for, apparently, failing to bring the correct gifts to her door. And that’s the other thing worth noting: it’s not only women who are belittled by this song, but also men. At one point one of the attractive barbershop dancers seductively lifts his shirt to show off his impeccable abs, while another tries and tries to win at the fun fair’s High Striker, all while Meghan watches on, utterly unimpressed.

The issue, here, is that while pop stars like Meghan Trainor appeal to 1950s doo wop and rock ‘n’ roll because it is as cute and marketable as it is timeless, the gender ideals from that time have no place in today’s cultural climate. I hope I’m not being hyperbolic when I say music such as Trainor’s is insidious in the sense that it pedals well-worn, but unacceptable, notions about what it means to be a “classy” man or woman. According to ‘Dear Future Husband’ a classy man buys you diamond rings and never disagrees with you, and a classy woman wields the prospect of sex like it’s a treat for good behaviour. That message is then wrapped up in an oh-so-catchy little package that young girls will sing along and dance to. If it was meant to be ironic, then I’m afraid the execution fails big-time.

I’m sorry Meghan, you had me at that bass, but you lost me at, pretty much, everything else.

Over and out,

Steph