The Glamourous Right

This was originally written in February, then sat one for three months, hence the discussion of Trump's infomercial and Chrissy Teigan's Daily Show appearance as recent news. I still stand by 100% of it, though recent ephiphanies mean I'll be adding some thoughts about America's race to the bottom later this week:

When did the glamorous option replace the right one? This isn't a rhetorical question, for there is no denying that it has happened, and that there has always been a sense that it could happen. True democracy is at odds with the impulse to elevate beautiful people into rarefied positions, and humanity has yet to kick the habit of celebrity watching. We love shiny objects and the ones that own them, so why shouldn't a presidential candidate stage an infomercial as a victory speech?

Let's start analyzing this problem with the small, innocuous world of celebrity Twitter feeds: Chrissy Teigan appeared on The Daily Show last week, where Trevor Noah* complimented her on her political tweeting. Together they had a smug, incredulous laugh about the haters, and her adorable compulsion to speak her mind to millions of people on the internet, regardless of potential backlash.

I'm betting my political views overlap substantially more with Chrissy Teigan than with Donald Trump, but if you're wondering why Tuesday's victory speech from the Republican frontrunner looked like an infomercial, ask yourself why anyone - to be specific, 1.3 million twitter followers, cares what a supermodel thinks about politics.

I can give Chriss Teigan the benefit of a doubt and assume she's a lovely person whose political views dovetail with my own, and still say without question that she is no more qualified to dictate a political conversation than any single person I might meet on the subway. To be beautiful and well married does not make one a sociologist. But it does make you an aspirational figure. And this is the key component that analyses of Trump's popularity don't generally grasp. With the exponential rise of celebrity culture, mediated by the internet and social media, glamour has trumped reason in the eyes of a voting public who should know better.

Anyone following Chrissy Teigan, or The Daily Show on Twitter will probably agree that you're more likely to find the "right" opinion (and yes, there is such a thing) from someone like Mark Leibovitch, writer for the New York Times, whose book "This Town"  elucidates the sickly situation in Washington better than anything this author has read (In sum: Democracy isn't dead in America, but the infection is starting to smell), than from her. But those same people won't be following him on Twitter. The need to make an educated decision has been hijacked by the need to feel a connection to the people who live the lives of our dreams.

Did you ever wonder why Beyonce did ads for L'Oreal hair color? How many people ever believed Beyonce did her own roots in the kitchen sink like a mere mortal? Probably about as many people believe Chrissy Teigan is a viable political commentator. But humanity is an easy mark: we know we're not going to be movie stars, pop singers or supermodels, but if we can see ourselves as alike in small ways - be it by wearing Beats headphones, drinking Pepsi or sharing their politics, it connects us to the divine.

The chief draw of a man like Donald Trump is that he is someone who people want to be. Undereducated people, maybe, predominately white people, true. People who believes they have an easy solution to all the country's problems, incredulous that the suits in Washington haven't figured out what they've known for years: A wall will keep out Mexicans; Banning Muslims will stop terror; Anyone who doesn't agree with you is a loser; When they try to stop you, sue, sue, sue. Each tenet of his ideology is as reductive as it is easy to pitch.

Listing the ways Mr. Trump is wrong, misguided or flat out lying is missing the point. What's important to his followers is that he is saying what they think, what they believe, and in so doing connecting them with a  life they've only dreamed of. We all wish we could be like him, and if you share his beliefs, then maybe you are like him, a little. His power lies not in being able to change peoples' minds, but in validating the beliefs they already have. It's not politics, its celebrity.

This is why Beyonce got paid fifty million dollars to hawk Pepsi, though scientists have yet to link sugary cola to beauty, fitness or a lovely singing voice. It's why a supermodel's thoughts on the world are more valued than a journalist for the New York Times.

There is in fact a strong correlation between celebrity culture and poor social mobility. That is - in a country where being born poor means you'll probably die poor, with the slashing of welfare programs, a political system which favours the wealthy, and college tuitions so high you'll graduate with crushing debt if you graduate at all - people will sooner attach their aspirations to fantasies rather than practical solutions, thus creating a feedback loop where people are less engaged in politics, and politics is less engaged with the people. 

It's no longer about choosing the right or wrong president. It's about finding someone who can repeat your own thoughts back to you in a sexier voice, and the ego trip that comes from knowing you have something in common with the power class. The left is no more immune to this than the right: the Clinton's dynastic politics are also a sign voters would sooner settle for a name brand than do some digging of their own.

Ultimately, the supermodel who shares your beliefs might be as toxic as the billionaire who doesn't.

You might also like: This is Your Brain on Beyonce (Though Lemonade has made it completely obsolete)

*Sidenote, Trevor Noah's interviews with beautiful women are all strangely endearing. Remember when he told Brea Larson he knew "lots of hungry people?" Adorable.

Going Down to the River / Up to the Boss.

And lo, an overachiever spent all day making request signs for when Bruce rolls in to Toronto on February 2nd. Its not so much the artistry, as the obsessive flip-flopping on what specific songs to request: sure he'll definitely play Thunder Road, so there's no point making a sign for that...but what if he doesn't? They're playing The River in its entirety which might not leave time for more than one song per other album, and if that were the case, wouldn't it be Born to Run? Heaven forbid its Night, or She's the One. He hasn't played Jungleland all tour, and its ten minutes long, but its such a cool song, and I'd feel cool holding that sign if I were my sister...way cooler than my punning Bobby Jean pictogram, which looks like it may or may not have been drawn by a depressive child (face it - it was, but that's My Song and therefore My Sign). MVP is Tougher Than The Rest - because there's only one way to make the cheesiest song look cool, and that's with hot pink bristol board and block letters. Rock on Bruce.

And Janice, who will have to hold that for me.

Does everyone get this stressed out when attending a concert? Perhaps I need to find another outlet for my mad perfectionism.

Stamp collecting?

The Perfect Guy

 

So sick of the objectification of men in the media. Its almost like they don't even exist if they aren't jacked and eternally sexually available. Think of the young boys who will measure themselves against the "perfect guys" displayed on this poster like a peace of meat. Jackpot for the ladies, though, amirite?

This is your brain on Beyonce

Note: Lemonade has made this article obsolete. Perhaps it should be renamed, This Was Your Brain on Beyonce...until Formation.

Bey's surprise album was big news last year, and my main point of familiarity with the album was the ubiquitous, "I woke up like this" hashtags and tee shirts that followed in its wake, which I actually thought was a brilliant slice of irony, since no one in history has ever woke up looking like this:

Not even her.

So imagine my surprise when I found that the song it came from was actually a badly misjudged attempt at female empowerment, and my bewilderment that the world at large fell for it.

I'm gonna break the Beygency's gag order and lay this on the line: Beyonce is a mediocre feminist. Let's break down the song in question point by point:

I know when you were little girls
You dreamt of being in my world
Don't forget it, don't forget it
Respect that, bow down bitches (Crown!)
I took some time to live my life
But don't think I'm just his little wife
Don't get it twisted, get it twisted
This my shit, bow down bitches

An excellent point, Bey.  When we were little girls, we aspired to be as beautiful as the woman who sang Crazy in Love, Baby Boy and Deja Vu, videos that were always in heavy rotation on Much Music. She was as pretty as Britney or JLo, but with an actual voice. Apart from Gwen Stefani, the only pop singer who seemed like an actual talent and not a marketing gimmick. Bow down, indeed.

Flawless quotes Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:

We teach girls to shrink themselves
To make themselves smaller
We say to girls,
"You can have ambition
But not too much
You should aim to be successful
But not too successful
Otherwise you will threaten the man."
Because I am female
I am expected to aspire to marriage
I am expected to make my life choices
Always keeping in mind that
Marriage is the most important
Now marriage can be a source of
Joy and love and mutual support
But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage
And we don't teach boys the same?
We raise girls to see each other as competitors
Not for jobs or for accomplishments
Which I think can be a good thing
But for the attention of men
We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings
In the way that boys are
Feminist: the person who believes in the social
Political, and economic equality of the sexes

I agree with all of that, and good for Bey for putting it out there. Then she sings:

You wake up, flawless
Post up, flawless
Ridin' round in it, flawless
Flossin' on that, flawless
This diamond, flawless
My diamond, flawless
This rock, flawless
My rock, flawless
I woke up like this
I woke up like this
We flawless, ladies tell 'em
I woke up like this
I woke up like this
We flawless, ladies tell 'em
Say I look so good tonight
God damn, God damn
Say I look so good tonight
God damn, God damn, God damn

How did a song about female empowerment become a song about beauty? And why is this woman considered any kind of beacon for critical thinking? The biggest barrier to gender equality is the still persistent belief that a woman's worth is equated with her physical appearance - moreover, that a woman will never have an opportunity to prove her worth unless she is physically attractive.

And all that talk about how we make women compete against each other for men? How we should raise girls to compete for jobs and accomplishments? Could we have got another verse about that, Beyoncé?

Momma taught me good home training
My Daddy taught me how to love my haters
My sister told me I should speak my mind
My man made me feel so God damn fine, I'm flawless!

Physical beauty is the most important thing, repeated like an incantation against evil: Flawless, damn I look good tonight.

It's a bit out of balance, is what I'm saying, especially for a song that's meant to be at the vanguard of a social movement. To which you will respond: You're reading too much into it! It's just one song! To which I say:

(1) If you have a spoken passage by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, you're asking people to read into it. You can't claim to have something important to say, and then ask that no one listen to closely to it.

(2) It's not just one song.

You will never see Beyonce looking less than a 10, even in the video for "Pretty Hurts," the ugly, "no makeup" Beyonce is a knockout in a way that deflates the song somewhat. I'm not saying its a bad song, and can't hold it against her that she's beautiful. Though if this was the video, she would at least be putting her money where her mouth is, and that is something which Bey has for a decade, been categorically unwilling to do.

Recall one of Adichie's (and feminism)'s biggest grievances with patriarchy:

"We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are." This culture encourages women to fantasize about being what men want, rather than having an inner world of their own. It is acceptable to express your sexuality as long as it falls into the narrowly defined category of "attractive" and "not threatening".

And my oh my, how Beyonce's sexuality looks like a male record exec's wet dream.

Remember the video for Baby Boy, where Bey is greased up and dancing on a beach, while Sean Paul (business casual) sings on a bed of naked women?

Remember how that song was supposed to be about a sexy man?

Baby boy you stay on my mind
Fulfill my fantasies
I think about you all the time
I see you in my dreams

This woman's fantasy looks suspiciously like something a straight male record exec would dream up,

Like Where's Waldo for dirty old men

Deja Vu, same thing: She sings "Your sexiness is so appealing I can't let it go," but Beyonce is the only one working her ass off while Jay Z just hangs out like, "Yeah, I tapped that." (Full credit where credit is due, though, she was a way better dancer than Britney or Justin and I don't know why this didn't get more attention at the time)

All their collaborations in a nutshell.

More than ten years later, the videos for Partition and Drunk in Love - both meant to be about desire with the former explicitly setting itself up as a woman's fantasy - is the same old thing. Beyonce looks fabulous, works her ass off, and Jay sits around like Jabba the Hutt (at least in Drunk In Love she kind of looks likes she's having a good time). That's not equality. And it says something about the insidious power of patriarchy when women are taught to fantasize from a man's POV.

If Beyoncé's videos do represent a straight woman's desire, that desire is: "I want to be so beautiful that a famous man wants to fuck me." This is the exact opposite of empowering. It's downright regressive, a slap in the face to all those once-little girls that Beyonce compels to bow down before her, for the supposed gifts she gave to their self esteem.

When "Anacanda" came out, Nicki Minaj made this argument, to V magazine:

If a man did the same video with sexy women in it, no one would care. You’re talking about newspeople who don’t even know anything about hip-hop culture. It’s so disrespectful for them to even comment on something they have no idea about. They don’t say anything when they’re watching the Victoria’s Secret show and seeing boobs and thongs all day. Why? Shame on them. Shame on them for commenting on “Anaconda” and not commenting on the rest of the oversexualized business we’re a part of. 

 A male music video for Anaconda would feature Drake in a thong dancing with a bunch of nearly nude men, and, sorry Nicki, but people would lose their shit. Which is why we'll never see Jay Z dancing scantily clad on a beach while his wife sings about his sex appeal.

Because that would be threatening. That would actually spit in the face of gender inequality, and Beyoncé is not prepared to do that. If she did, the video for Run the World Girls would look like this*:

Yes, that's Madonna. And yes, Beyoncé's gender politics are musty and out of date compared to an act from twenty years ago.

You can't be universally beloved and a revolutionary. Really taking a stand means kissing half your fans goodbye in the hopes that twenty years from now you'll be remembered as a visionary (or, in the case of the lady above, be labelled a slut until you hit fifty and are rechristened "Slutty Granny" - because that's how much people hate women who actually challenge gender roles), and Beyoncé clearly is not ready to make that sacrifice.

Which brings me back to the first lines of "Flawless":

I know when you were little girls
You dreamt of being in my world
Don't forget it, don't forget it
Respect that, bow down bitches

When I was 13 I didn't realize how lopsided the depictions of women in the media were. It never struck me as strange that Naughty Girl and Baby Boy both starred an objectified woman and a fully clothed man. But I did feel small, and ugly, like I didn't deserve to have a voice until I was clear skinned and sexy as the women on TV, because in this culture beauty is still the qualifying step to personhood. Those without it need not apply. So imagine my disgust that a childhood has actually been playing for the other side all along, propagating and profit from the same inequality that causes young girls self esteem to plummet at adolescence, then asks me to bow down and be grateful for it. 

She's part of the problem. And the fans that see in her a beacon of hope: a shining example of how they too can have it all if they Just. Try. Harder, are kidding themselves.

On the upside, though, it's never too late to see why Madonna got excommunicated: 

*And the song would be called "Run the World (Women)" and would not have been written by a group of men.

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The Century Trend

The Public Life of a Private Doll

Ali Listens: Against Me!

"I want you to want me"

That's not a line that appears on Against Me!'s album Transgender Dysphoria Blues, but it might as well be on every record, more honest than a PARENTAL ADVISORY sticker, and practically stamped on the forehead of every person on the face of the earth. It's a universal feeling, and people do crazy things to satisfy that need.

I have a friend who feels compelled to buy a new outfit in advance of every public appearance. To that no one will notice what she's wearing, is to learn the meaning of "stink-eye". But there it is. Unless you're Beyoncé, no one cares (And if you are Beyoncé, thank you for visiting my blog).

Great music can force us to reckon with the emotions and hardships of those whose reality is radically, but not completely, different from our own. Transgender Dysphoria Blues is one of those miracles that puts you in the shoes of a person you mightn't think you had anything in common with at all, by using these universal experiences to put us in the shoes of a Trans Woman (specifically frontwoman Laura Jane Grace, who came out in 2012)


If "I want  you to want me" is the premise of life as we know it, the refrain to True Trans Soul Rebel is its natural nexus: "Who's gonna take you home tonight?"

Against Me! taps into the great fear of modern times: that you are not just unloved, but unwantable. That the things you do to distinguish yourself will never be noticed, only the ways you fall short: "You want them to notice the ragged ends of your summer dress ...they just see a faggot", and in so doing performs two miracles:

1) Helps you see eye to eye with an outsider
2) Heals that outside status. Misery loves company. Reality loves sanctification. And that's what great music is, it turns something mundane or painful into something sacred and transcended.

This my longwinded way of recommending "True Trans Soul Rebel" and "Talking Transgender Dysphoria Blues to whoever wants to listen:

Okay, if you need it poppy, here they are performing with Miley Cyrus,

 

Overlooked Gem: Here With Me

The Killers are the last Great American Rock Band. Or they were. There are no Great American Rock Bands anymore. There are bands making great rock music, but they lack the cultural cachet that for decades defined the term "Rock Star". The Killers have been the last band to enjoy this success. They were enjoying Rock's last gasp around the same time The Kings of Leon rocketed to fame, but The Kings didn't have quite the staying power, while the Killers had three mega successful albums, enough to be among the defining voices of the decade when I came of age.

And then, nothing.

Their fourth album, "Battle Born" was, by my estimation, their best, with ready made singles and eye popping videos that nonetheless failed to capture the popular imagination in the way they deserved. Was it just the decline of Rock? The Killers were pretty pop to begin with.

For whatever reason, this beautiful song, with its beautiful video directed by Tim Burton, failed to gain any traction - it didn't even make it onto their greatest hits compilation, which is a sin, because its a gorgeous song, and the video is Burton's best work in a decade. For it to have less than a tenth of the views that Katy Perry regularly merits is a sin. Watch and listen, you're welcome:

The Century Trend

The first thing I have to say is everything is going to be all right. It just might take a history lesson to convince you.

Feminists have worked themselves into a lather over the Era of the Asses - From Miley to Minaj to Kim "breaking the internet", all the way to the absolute nadir of modern pop music, Jason Derulo's rancid "Wiggle." Kim Kardashian was modelling everything but clothing in her cover story for Love Magazine's February 2015 issue. Prada sunglasses and a Miu Miu bag couldn't compete with the tits and slit in that stairwell photo, but I'm not worried.

I am, after all, a scholar of fashion, so I know that whenever women's rights take a step forward in the real world, fashion and pop culture icons tend to swing the other way, if only for a while. It's a trend that began in the 1920s after women got the right to vote. No, really. To us in the 21st century, the iconic "flapper" of the twenties looks like a glimpse of joyful rebellion - alongside the ramping up of first wave feminism, the skirts and hair for rebellious young women got shorter, who traded in their corsets for shapeless dresses that were easy to dance in.

But flappers were not vanguards of the suffrage movement. They were notoriously oblivious to social causes and mostly in it for the attention (sound familiar?). To people from that place and time, what they most resembled were little boys. To reiterate, once women were allowed to vote, fashion started dressing them as children. I'm not saying this so that we can get angry at people who lived ninety years ago, but to point out a trend that's still going on. As much as we like to think of fashion and pop culture as being cutting edge, it more often represents a refuge for old ways of thinking to act like everything is normal - are women getting uppity and demanding a vote? Don't worry, they're just rambunctious little children.

Are they demanding equal pay for equal work? Nonsense, they just want to be your little baby doll.

Do I exaggerate?

Every major social achievement for women in the last hundred years has been marked by a regression in fashion. That's twiggy up there, premiere model of the nineteen sixties, a time when Gloria Steinem and the pill gave women a freedom they'd never enjoyed before. There were feminist sit ins at Newsweek and the Ladies Home Journal. Radicals threw maxipads into a trash can at the America pageant beneath a banner proclaiming "Women's Liberation". Mad Men fans know the fights they went through in the workplace, and anyone into fashion also remembers how short the skirts got toward the end of the decade, once they started winning.

High fashion and pop culture have never been a marker for the world we live in, but the world we wished we lived in - or rather, the world that specific tastemakers wished we lived in. While second wave feminism was scaring men and women alike, grown women were once again infantilized by clothing fit for a child. We have twiggy to thank for models who today are so thin they're practically invisible, because when some women started demanding equal work opportunities, the old guard no doubt wished they would disappear altogether.

But women bought those clothes! you might exclaim. That's because feminism scared women too. Having a voice, standing up to men you had always been taught to respect - even today most of us would rather crawl back into our daddy's arms than accuse our boss of sexual harassment, even if deep inside we knew it's our right. I never saw Gloria Steinem in a miniskirt, and in the end it was women like her who made the difference.

So maybe the age of the ass isn't as bad as we think.

Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj, and the vastly out of her league Miley Cyrus are delivering a crass form of sexualisation, mistakenly labelled as feminist by people who don't know any better ("It's my body, I should be able to show it off how I like - and if 'how I like' is just a manifestation of ingrained patriarchy,--then screw you for using such big words!"), but in the real world where (most) people live and breathe, things are getting better.

Women still make less than 80 cents on the dollar compared to men, but it's something we're talking about more openly than ever before. The internet may have given a voice to both the best and worst in society, but cyber bullying and sexual abuse of young girls are now less likely to be swept under the rug, largely because of online activism. When Emma Watson made an empowering speech to the United Nations last year, some hackers may have threatened to release nude photos of the actress in retaliation, but the internet as a whole was overwhelmingly on her side. Last year, when Cee Lo Green tweeted, "women who have really been raped REMEMBER" it was met with the proper level of disgust and him being dropped from festival appearances. Twenty years ago, that would never have happened, and not just because there was no twitter - if you want proof of that, consider the decades it took the allegations against Bill Cosby to be taken seriously.

What this all means is that, by and large, women are growing their voices in the digital age, and the haters are becoming more and more of a minority. Knowing that, it was about time that our cultural icons regressed to reassure the masses who aren't quite sure about all this female empowerment going on. The popularity of the Kim Kardashian model of "fashion" - that is, less clothes more attention - is hopefully the last gasp of something ugly, rather than a marker for where society is headed. To the remaining men who live in fear of being called on their leering sexism (and the women who have yet to realize that such leering sexism is a problem), Kim's giant greased up ass, offered forth like a baboon who's presenting, is a symbol of a simpler time, of a femininity that doesn't think, doesn't demand answers, and might as well be made of porcelain, just like Twiggy and the flappers before her.

What, did you think she was a rebel?