24, blue eyes, forgetful.

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Side Ponytail (music blog)

forever defending

rgr-pop:

mootpoint:

supergalaxy:

“…as far as we understand the harshest criticism of Del Rey, it’s not that she’s “wanting and taking like a man,” it’s that she’s “wanting and taking” just like a stereotypical, anti-feminist conception of a woman: That is, she isn’t wanting at all; she’s existing only as an object of desire, completely in thrall to the male gaze.”

i really don’t expect guys to like lana. she hits on a nerve that is entirely coated in estrogen for me. the fantastical things she says make me sink into a subdued revelry that is so hard to explain.

it’s the feeling i get when i watch the hours or reread virgin suicides. they get whatever hard-to-pinpoint feminine struggle it is that sorta floats around like that cloud guy who chucks spiky turtles at you in mario games.

she’s like this odd swan that is just gooey with femininity. she’s a summation of female fantasies as well. she’s hardly racy—in fact, i find her quite elegant. and brash. i like both qualities. they make smoking and listening superbly fun.

maybe it’s just me growing into myself.

also, what wouldn’t be considered behaving in response to the male gaze? would she have to don turtlenecks, tattoos, unwashed hair? this isn’t meant to polarize, i really am sincerely asking.

i don’t know why i feel the need to constantly be on her side. mysteries!

I think it’s great that people are engaging with Liz Phair’s French Feminist WSJ editorial, but I really feel like having a dude write about it is kind of missing the point (sorry, Marc Hogan, it seems like you are engaging in good faith and whatever, but the casual way the Phair piece was framed kind of belies how complicated the conversation is about female subjectivity and desire in the heteropatriarchal world, and this is maybe something that might be hard for a lot of dudes to get, because it’s not as easy to explain as violence against women or the wage gap or even the male gaze), it’s just that I feel like the whole Lana Del Rey performance - and I’m basing this almost entirely on the epic beauty of “Video Games” which I have lived, and which I love, (I haven’t heard the rest of Born to Die yet because I’ve been traveling) - is so, so much about Being a Girl and losing. It’s basically “Why Don’t You Love Me” on downers.

Bolding mine, and goddamn. Once, I remember explaining to Matt how our relationships with feminist performance art are necessarily more mitigated by theory and criticism than our relationships with visual arts tend to be, because of the nature of transmitting performance art itself. Stills and archives are inherently curatorial, but feminist performance is more often archived only through theory and criticism. i.e., you will read about it more than you will experience it. This is maybe the first time I’ve had a similar feeling with a pop star: my feelings about Lana Del Rey are so much about the theory (not just the talk, but this kind of theorizing) she generates. Like, I am still only moderately interested in her music, but hearing people say stuff like this feels kind of like the first time I read Peggy Phelan.

Ugh, there is so much in this Hogan piece that makes me grit my teeth. Like, oh great, here’s a dude who is taking the time to mansplain to me what Liz Phair meant to say in her piece for WSJ and also to mansplain how she was wrong. And this same awesome dude wants me to know that he thinks misogyny is awful (especially when it’s in a GoDaddy.com commercial), although he’ll give Drake a pass for it because he loves Take Care, and he thinks it would be awesome if we had a “female-led society” (unless a female-led society involves having to deal with cultural products created by women like Liz Phair and Lana Del Rey!) Are you fucking kidding me?

Honestly, the thing I find most insulting about all these men writing about how Lana Del Rey traffics in misogyny is that JESUS CHRIST THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD TRAFFICS IN MISOGYNY and now (JUST LIKE A DUDE) you want to decide who gets to be allowed to do that? Like, you don’t even want women to be allowed to play with the narratives surrounding sexism and misogyny in ways that evoke the existential boredom and nausea and terror and ritual of “being a girl and losing” (which, oh my god, that phrase is my new jam) because it’s “misogynist”? I could seriously just vom.

  1. novazembla reblogged this from rgr-pop
  2. illhaveuknowthatiloveyou reblogged this from lookuplookup
  3. forgetpolitics reblogged this from lookuplookup
  4. psychotropicpolitics reblogged this from lookuplookup and added:
    EVERYTHING. I credit Lana Del Rey with making me want to write feminist critiques again.
  5. lookuplookup reblogged this from rgr-pop and added:
    Ugh, there is so much in this Hogan piece that makes me grit my teeth. Like, oh great, here’s a dude who is taking the...
  6. rgr-pop reblogged this from mootpoint and added:
    Bolding mine, and goddamn. Once, I remember explaining to Matt how our relationships with feminist performance art are...
  7. mootpoint reblogged this from supergalaxy and added:
    I think it’s great that people are engaging with Liz Phair’s French Feminist WSJ editorial, but I really feel like...
  8. gaysagainstgaga reblogged this from desnoise and added:
    The problem is “what if it’s all just performance art” functions in pop music right now as a far-too-generous catchall...
  9. desnoise reblogged this from judyxberman and added:
    reblogging for anybody who might have missed judy’s response — thank you so much! i especially like the idea that, if we...
  10. judyxberman reblogged this from desnoise and added:
    I think the idea that all women artists are, to some extent, responding to the male gaze is an important one — and one...
  11. oldtobegin reblogged this from desnoise and added:
    it would be easier. i’m not sure easy is the goal. i’m not saying the male gaze is all that matters, it isn’t. i don’t...
  12. cureforbedbugs reblogged this from desnoise and added:
    Pretty sure that Laura Mulvey, originator or at least popularizer of “male gaze” has backed away from this...