Another Reason Why Lady Gaga Is Awesome

I love a lot of things about this picture of Lady Gaga. I love her hair, the waves, and the color. I love the dark lipstick, the open mouth. I love her crossed arms. I love the metallic contraption “top” she’s wearing, the sparks flying from her nipples. But most of all, I love the fact that Lady Gaga has arm hair.

It’s subtle. It’s noticeable in the full picture in the magazine (Time 100 Most Influential People), the faint brown hairs. I love that Lady Gaga, who is a very Italian brunette when she is/was Stefani Germanotta, did not get rid of her arm hair. I love that she didn’t feel forced to wax it off or bleach it or otherwise hide the fact that’s what her arms look like.

To me that’s what’s most remarkable about this picture, not that she has sparks flying out of her nipples or that the contraption looks cold and uncomfortable, not even wondering how in the world that thing was made or how it works. I’m not shocked by that, nor her orgasmic expression. All of these things have been seen before, whether on her or by other pop stars. It’s the fact that we see what her arms normally look like—no artifice—in a picture promoting artifice. Lady Gaga’s mode, throughout all the wacky, weird costumes, is to show off who she is, that people should uniquely be themselves, and she makes statements through her art. Having her arm hair just existing, not photoshopped out, is just another way of saying, this is who I am, and don’t try to change me. Don’t try to make me conform to unrealistic and silly and costly beauty standards. I am who I am, and I happen to have hair on my arms.

Couldn't Help Myself

Really? Glamour? Magazine of the Year?

Glamour was recently named magazine of the year.

I'm not quite sure why.

I've subscribed to Glamour for the last year. I only did so because of their 75th anniversary promotion, where I could get a year's worth for 75 cents. Yep, 12 issues for less than a dollar. What the hell? As far as women's magazines go, I actually like Glamour, detesting their nearest rival, Cosmopolitan. Glamour was more real, and I liked that they incorporated recipes and real advice, at least in the back. They had the obligatory "serious story", addiction or do-gooders, now with Katie Couric interviewing some notable female. All well and good.

But after a few months, it was wearying. The topics were the same, of course: men, relationships, food, eating, exercise, fashion, beauty. I wondered how those working at the magazine didn't get bored of the repetition. The advice was usually sound, but repetitive, and occasionally contradictory. I waded through the "girl with the belly bulge" and the Crystal Renn spreads; meh. Crystal Renn is beautiful and not plus sized in the least, as I've noted before. I no longer felt that the magazine was the exception to others in its category; maybe I just got used to it, maybe the novelty wore off. But I also wasn't looking at other young-women magazines, either, so it became just another Glamour. I knew I wasn't going to renew my subscription when I subscribed, but now I didn't care.

But besides the sameness, I was saddened to see that women's magazines "cleaned up" certain celebrities:

































Lady Gaga and Rihanna are known for dressing explicitly, in wild getups, but they are stripped of their individuality; whitewashed, you could say. There's no crazy makeup, no funky fashion choices, nothing that should be exposed covered up and nothing covered up that should be exposed. They're not even in fun colors: Lady Gaga is uncharacteristically in all white, or off-white, as if to appear pure, but she looks out of place and strangely bland, since she blends in with the background. It's the text that speaks, not her. Rihanna at least looks happy, if girlish, a woman full of spunk and personality. This might be to offset the serious interview inside, promoting her album Rated R, both which explore her dark and volatile year. But her hair is gelled back; we are not to notice her funky, unconventional style choices, just like we aren't meant to view Lady Gaga as she wants to be seen. Maybe that explains her detached look.

I see this as suppressing both women's natural personalities and style to favor a more acceptable form of female expression, both in beauty and personality. I can understand why a cover picture of Lady Gaga wouldn't have her face covered, but I don't see why she has to appear in such an awful getup, one she would never wear anywhere else. I don't see how prettifying Rihanna makes her ordeal any better, except take away her right to express herself as she chooses.

So Glamour, magazine of the year? You might talk the talk of inclusion of expression, proudly showing off your Crystal Renn glamour shots, but until you really show how real women are, capturing their life as they live it (not as you wish them to see it), you don't deserve this title.

Cross-posted at Dissection and Introspection.

Grammys!

My Grammy notes, a week later:

The Grammys weren’t too bad this year, if you don’t mind Taylor Swift. The night scored tops in the ratings, and that was due to the volume of performances. This is fine, but it was really strange to have so few awards televised, especially in hearing all the references to pre-televised wins.

• In retrospect, had to know something was up when Song of the Year was awarded first, not something like “Female Pop Vocal of the Year”.
• More awards. It’s an awards show, please remember that.
• 3D was the worst idea ever, and even Rihanna and Beyoncé looked stupid dancing in their glasses.
• Michael Jackson’s poor children.
• The bleeping—or rather, the protracted silence of the censors—just made everyone think that something was wrong with the TV.
• Timing. Make sure those likely to win an award aren’t held up by costume changes or preparations for performance, and can actually accept the award.
• They need to stop dressing Taylor Swift in white. It’s ruining her image by overemphasizing it.
• While most of the chatter circulated on Taylor Swift failing to reach the high notes in “Rihannon”, it was odd not to note how strange it was to see Stevie Nicks singing “You Belong With Me”, because the song is so juvenile. It also proves that the song will not age well once T. Swift grows out of this demographic. I really like the arrangement on “You Belong With Me”, though.
• Sasha Fierce was very much out in full force. Surprisingly, Beyoncé did a medly of “If I Were a Boy” and the thematically fitting “You Oughta Know”, which worked perfectly with the tough soldier shtick she was working. The motif was very Rihanna, and reminded me very much of a recent podcast from the Slate Culture Gabfest discussing the decade in music. Beyoncé and Rihanna have both led the way in projecting female-driven and pop music into symbols of strength. They are fighters, kicking ass and taking names in their spike heels.

I’ve criticized Beyoncé before for being such a man-hater in her songs, and this combination only furthered my bafflement. Why is Beyoncé so angry? This is a question I’d wish 60 Minutes addressed in their pre-Grammy interview, instead of the stupid and softball questions about her relationship with her rapper-mogul husband and her history—all very well-known to her fans. Even for a general audience the interview was a letdown. Yes, Beyoncé likes to speak for the ladies, and she’s become phenomenally successful doing so, but in context, her anger is unjustified and contrary to the rest of her mild, measured persona. Maybe it’s just that performing righteously angry material like “You Oughta Know” is great fun and a tension release, and that Sasha Fierce is very much her alter ego; she’s speaking out for all the wrongs she’s seen in others. Sure, not performing smashes like “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” and “Halo” were puzzling, but “If I Were a Boy” showed off her vocal skills more, and she probably has a soft spot for that song. When it was released, she gave lots of interviews focused on the song and video, proudly showing it off, downplaying “Single Ladies”, which was released at the same time.

And of course, Lady Gaga and Elton John, which just needs to be seen again (sorry, no embed capabilities).

P.S. New York Magazine’s The Cut blog has a great roundup of Lady G’s costumes, seams and all.

Wow

I am very impressed:



Pretty amazing. Not just the makeup and her technical and creative expertise, but with the camera and editing skills, how close they were filming her eyes. I also love how thorough she is.

The Grammys Are Going to Be Good This Year!

The Grammys are music’s highest honor, and they usually don’t mirror the pop charts. They have their faves—U2 comes to mind—and they love to honor older-skewing acts. But this year, the Grammys are either bowing to popular taste or are trying to reflect it: Top nominees echo the top artists of the year. Lady Gaga, the Black Eyed Peas, unstoppable Beyoncé and the country’s biggest selling artist in terms of albums for the past two years, Taylor Swift, each received multiple nominations.

MTV News reports that this has been a trend for the Grammys the past few years, wanting to appeal to a younger audience, but the 2010 nominees make the Dave Matthews Band look old. Ink was spilled on the fact that Lady Gaga would not be eligible for Best New Artist, because she had been nominated last year for “Just Dance” in the apparently overlooked category of Best Dance Recording, up against “Disturbia” (!) and Madonna, and losing to Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Stronger”. (The Recording Academy noted that at the time of the nominations, there was no album to anchor “Just Dance.”) Although Keri Hilson is a Best New Artist nominee, she has written songs for other artists like Britney Spears and Ne-Yo, and was featured prominently in Timbaland’s massive 2007 hit “The Way You Are”…so she’s not really that new. But, it looks like she’s never been nominated before, either for her songwriting skills or for her collaborations, so she’s considered “new”.

Looking at the list, there are plenty of lesser-known songs that occupy most of the nominations; there are many categories where one superstar song, like Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies”, sticks out because of sheer omnipresence. Hopefully this will mean that B will perform come January 31, along with many of those other top-tier acts. With a list this strong, you can't not have them.

Deconstructing "Bad Romance"

When Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” hit a few weeks ago, it was an event in a way that is rare nowadays. For one thing, her video not only got coverage—lots and lots of coverage—but it was actually anticipated, actually viewed, multiple, multiple times. “Bad Romance” exceeded hype, and the love for the freaky, weird, psychologically confounding, hyper-symbolic, sexy video only continued. Deconstructions of “Bad Romance” are all over the Internet, with many including a play-by-play using screen captures. “Bad Romance” has symbolism and sex written all over it, and really, the video is just incredible.



So what is Gaga saying? Like many of her other songs, the theme here is hard love—rough love, a bad romance, wanting something so badly that she’s caught up in something terrible but she doesn’t care. She’s upfront about her freaky side, and in her wanting, there is anger: “I want your everything / as long as it’s free.” The low growl of her voice, the thumping tone of the music, underscores her feelings. James Montgomery of MTV calls “Bad Romance” the bridge between the old “The Fame” Gaga and her new “The Fame Monster” Gaga, now with additional sex and spookiness. Some focus on the "sex slavery" aspect of the song and video or the occult imagery. Still other interpretations play off her quote, “That tough female spirit is something that I want to project. It's meant to be, 'This is my shield, this is my weapon, this is my inner sense of fame, this is my monster,' “in that she embodies different facets of womanhood through the stories she devises.

“Bad Romance” is practically several videos at once, and that makes it so wonderful and so difficult to deconstruct. There’s a basic narrative—in the singer’s words, she is “kidnapped by supermodels. I'm washing away my sins and they shove vodka down my throat to drug me up before they sell me off to the Russian mafia," but she escapes by blowing up the head guy in a fiery blaze—which is intercut with various other Gagas, each with its own look, every one easily a separate video. I love Gaga dressed in black, her yellow stringy hair falling down, those big black sunglasses obscuring her face. I love the babydoll Gaga, Kewpie doll eyes, innocence in a tub. I love Gaga, vulnerable, broken down, hysterical with (nearly) no makeup on, crying “I don’t wanna be friends!” There’s the alien Gagas, in Alexander McQueen ensembles, in diamonds and white latex and shiny gold, with snazzy headpieces and razor-blade sunglasses, in fabulous black lingerie and only-acceptable-in-a-music-video-this-artistic white thong underwear. Gaga, at various points, is all of many things: alone, vulnerable, innocent, dazed, wistful, childlike, terrified, satisfied, sexy, powerful, defiant, strong, beautiful.

Despite the diverse Gagas, she uses many of the same symbols and motifs as she has in earlier videos and public appearances—encasing her body in shiny orbs, spikes on her head and heels, weird lines on her body, either through clothing or through effects, faces and eyes covered, surrounded and studded in diamonds. The video itself borrows from many sources—some of her choreography, like the crawling, is directly from Madonna’s “Express Yourself” video, and in the opening there are allusions to her other videos and to “True Blood”. In the lyrics, there is a nod to Hitchcock: “I want your psycho / Your vertical stick / Want you in my rear window / Baby you’re sick”, though the whole song is about wanting in a psychologically damaging romance. She ends her performance on "Jay Leno" by grabbing her crotch, another move defiantly done in “Express Yourself”. She knows how crazy she is—she does call herself a “freak bitch” several times—and she wants all sorts of freaky things besides love, hard to quantify things, not to mention that she trills her own (stage) name in the cheers that surround the song. Then there are the animals—the dog that has appeared in all her videos, the bare cat hissing away, the goats on display over the bed, the bear peignoir she wears to present herself to her captor—and the death, violence, and alcohol that have shown up in other works.

The video moves between gray, dark lighting and bright white. The darkness finds her hidden away, in alien mode, but the blinding brightness is her exposed, in the man’s world, until she claims it. Gaga follows the same pattern, extremely pale to note her vulnerability and innocence, ending outfitted with red lace and strips of cloth, with black boots and gloves to symbolize the breaking away (Viva la Revolución!), her own power. The dancers clap around her, in celebration.

She has performed “Bad Romance” in a number of venues, and they all feature similar choreography, not only making it easier for the performers but also tightening her message. On "The Jay Leno Show", she opens dressed in a black bodysuit with huge shoulders, like a pillow growing out of her upper back. Her hands turn into claws, and her dancers, lying down, now start to claw awake and alive. Lady Gaga claws at the air, at herself, and then holds her hand out as if she wants a ring or a kiss as she sings “I want your leather-studded kiss in the sand”. “You know that I want you, and you know that I need you, I want it bad, your bad romance” she intones, and all the dancers form behind her, clawing their way forward. It’s creepy and cool. As the chorus continues, the dances go psycho, waving and clawing around. All the dancers are male, and they all are wearing masks. Even the musicians in the background are dressed this way.

She twists and stomps, and she shoots off an imaginary gun during “’Cause you’re a criminal as long as you’re mine”, just like in the video. The bridge is more clawing, baring her chest, and her dancers move closer, behind her. They dance in unison, before the lead dancer, a wire cage over his face, lifts her up through her legs, his hand on her stomach. It gives me the willies every time. His teeth are bared, his face menacing. These guys really are creeps. The final chorus, Lady Gaga’s right hand is a fist, and she pumps it up and down, determined.

The entire performance is aggressive, but it’s not just her movements that personify this, it’s her songs themselves. The French lyrics that open the second bridge don’t just rephrase the central lines of “I want your love/ I want your romance”, they demand. She is not polite, she does not use the polite form of “to want”. “I demand your love” is followed by her wailing “I don’t wanna be friends” with “caught in a bad romance” swirling in the background, building up the pain. In a sense, the main storyline and the song don’t match up, because she has no interest in the man at the center of the story. But the choreography of her movements, some of her other selves—mainly the close-up of her face, crying—do fit with the song, and the consistency of her choreography throughout multiple performances suggest something else. As in other songs, she is aggressive and shameless, and the clawing, marching, and twisting only further the interpretation that this is her definition of a “tough female spirit”.

Females Rule the Night: VMAs Wrap-Up

I didn't watch the entire show, because I wanted to catch Mad Men, and it turned out to be a good episode. Don sorta got hit on again, by his daughter's teacher, but we were treated to plot and character advancement, plus plenty of 60s life.

But the VMAs:

Preshow: WHY ARE YOU HERE??

Fefe Dobson…you had a minor “hit” in 2002, a song that I don't remember at all. You were wearing black, red, maybe a checkered shirt? White background? Rant/sing? Giant question mark.

Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony. Seriously, you passed your sell-by date in 2001. Go away.

TOO MUCH TWILIGHT OMG.

Twitter new VJs blondness teenagers and technology whoa.

Opening: Probably the first time that there wasn't a performance. Madonna gave a tribute to Michael Jackson, just as I was writing about her in my last post. I watched it, cause it was Madonna, though I had planned to skip any MJ moments.

Katy Perry: With Joe Perry. Meh. White pants, sparkles.

Russell Brand: Useless.

Taylor Swift: The subway gig was cute, and impressive in that as far as I know has never been done before. I enjoyed her freewheelin' yet professional performance.

The Kanye Showdown: Low. Beyoncé was nominated for "Video of the Year", a much bigger and enduring award than "Best Female Video", and his "excuse me" to Taylor was rude. Beyoncé and Taylor were both very embarrassed.

Lady Gaga: Anyone who doubted Lady Gaga’s talent was proved wrong when she performed a deranged version of "Paparazzi", which ended with her hanging in the air, eyes dead, blood splattered over her funky white outfit, reminiscent of Madonna’s "Like a Virgin" wedding dress, without the dress. Her voice was strong, theatrical in its wobblyness, and her typical piano playing mesmerized the audience; they were all wondering where this would lead. Gaga brought out the other things she is known for (going pantless, crazy hair), even the wheelchair and the crutches. She’s the only artist that makes that work, along with showing the lines of her stockings below her underwear.

Pink: Very fitting (you need to listen to Sober). She knows how to do it.

Beyoncé: Classy, gracious, "Single Ladies" still kicks ass. Fantastic choreography, deserves to win all-around.

Green Day: They feel too old for this crowd.

Winners: The category that stands out the most is “Video That Should Have Won a Moonman”, all videos around 20 years old, most that the average high schooler doesn’t know. Nice concept, but the nominees are retarded.

Winners should go to videos that have had an impact. Eminem did not with "We Made You", though most of the others went to the big hits--"Womanizer" (I knew Britney wouldn't show, she's done with this crowd), "Live Your Life", and of course, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)".

Not surprising to see Gaga win "Best New Artist". She clearly had the most influence in 2009, and she usually does give you a reason to watch (though "Poker Face" is not her best video). Not sure what she's doing by covering up her neck and face, besides her glamour pop thing, making a statement, the whole "Paparrazi" shtick. Whatever. Gaga is gaga. Females rule the night.

2009 Does Not Have a Summer Song

Normally, by this time of the year, I have predicted at least a few songs that could qualify as songs of the year. After all, the biggest songs of the year usually crest over the summer months, due to the nature of the summer falling at the middle of the calendar year. I would play games with myself, trying to guess it earlier and earlier, but I noticed a few years ago that the #1 song of the year—as demarked by all those radio countdowns in December—hit number one, the apex of being played out, over a very narrow timeframe, the final weeks of July, into August.

Yet, this year, there was no summer song. Not even a hint of it. Even the contenders were weak. Sure, there was Lady Gaga—the Kelly Clarkson of 2009, in terms of airplay—and Pink’s “Don’t Leave Me” never left. But despite the Black Eyed Peas dominance—as of this post, 22 weeks at number one, spread over two singles—they never got the vibe of this summer.

The Peas were resurgent, sure, but—and maybe it was just the back-to-back nature of their party anthems, “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Gotta Feeling”—they didn’t have the oomph, the love, that summer songs traditionally have. I’m not a fan of “Boom Boom Pow”, and while “I Gotta Feeling” has its moments (how many times have you heard “L’Chaim” in a pop song?), there’s nothing so outrageous or brassy or just as cool as “Umbrella” was, to give an example.

Lady Gaga would fit the bill, but her songs blur together as singles, since she is an entity onto herself. “Poker Face” was the spring, “Just Dance” the winter, and it looks like “Lovegame” and “Paparazzi” will fill up the summer and fall quarters respectively, but she is 2009, not summer 2009. I personally would have picked “Boys Boys Boys” to be her summer single, with the beach-ready chorus of “Boys boys boys/we like boys in cars/boys boys boys/buy us drinks in bars/boys boys boys/with hairspray and denim/boys boys boys/we love them!” Can’t you just see the chunks of girls in convertibles, their hair flying, singing along to this at top volume?

Now that’s a summer song.