Lavender Lines

yeah so this got too long for a quote post

isabelthespy:

“The great thing about Gaga is she always want to push for the most extreme option,” Card said. “She’s brave enough to let herself be a canvas for a designer to go and really express themselves. Nothing is off limits! With Rihanna and Beyoncé there is an end result of desirability and unattainable sexiness, whereas Gaga is a really interesting bridge between the desirable and the grotesque. She’s not at all worried about looking ridiculous or hideous; actually, I think she thrives off it.”

so this is what i think that feministing commenter was getting it, and which i also have a problem taking seriously, because it’s like… i feel like there are limits, maybe, to how “hideous” an extremely skinny blonde white girl can be considered. and this isn’t a critique of gaga herself because it’s true that she for the most part can’t help these things and shouldn’t (though: she did recently say in an interview that she doesn’t eat, make of that what you will). but i see this argument thrown around a lot and i don’t buy it, because she’s still in that safety zone.

or to put it another way: picture a fat woman, or a black woman, or a Latina woman, or a fat black Latina woman, doing ANYTHING that lady gaga has ever done, and tell me people would still be talking about her as some kind of subversive artiste. tell me she would have gotten a recording contract. tell me 95% of the commentary about her outside maybe the feminist blogosphere wouldn’t be ridicule or disgust. for the exact same actions. and: please do note that in this quote, it’s two women of color set up opposite gaga; i find it very questionable that the person didn’t mention katy perry, or britney spears, or any other white female pop artists in setting up this dichotomy, especially considering that musically gaga is arguably closer to both of them than she is to rihanna or especially beyonce (IMO).

or to put it another way: white skinny bodies are allowed to be art. you see this all the fucking time in the twee/hipster zones of the world/internet, soft-focus photos in sepia tones with size 2 AT MOST people standing in for melancholy, or wistfulness, or love, or whatever. you don’t see fat girls lying in a field of daisies wearing fishnets and reading haruki murakami next to a picnic spread under a parasol. because then the viewer, it’s assumed, would get distracted by their fatness. skinny bodies (& white bodies) are allowed to turn themselves into things because they are presumed to be blank slates. they’re neutral. fatness already symbolizes things in our culture - laziness, sloth, greed - so it’s not allowed to symbolize other things.

or another way: lady gaga is allowed to play at being grotesque because it’s understood that she is making a choice to be grotesque; fat, non-white, or otherwise atypical bodies already belong to the realm of the grotesque. the choice is made for them. whether it’s as unfuckable (fat women, women with visible disabilities) or inherently sexualized (black and Latina women) or some weird combination of fuckable but not sexual (asian women) or just grotesque and unworthy (trans women).

or another way: kelly clarkson also doesn’t give a fuck if people think of her as unsexy, grotesque, ridiculous, hideous, all of which people call her all the time because of her weight. but that isn’t seen as transgressive - just a fat woman (please no arguments over whether or not kelly qualifies as fat; i think she’s beautiful, i don’t mean fat as a value judgment, and i do think by the standards of a lot of people, especially in the entertainment business, she does qualify as fat) being comfortable isn’t considered noteworthy, even though that’s also implicitly challenging cultural standards of beauty.

again, none of this is anything against gaga herself, really, and there’s a lot of stuff in the interview i liked about her. it’s just that i’m tired of hearing people talk about how subversive she is without acknowledging the rules she does play by - through admittedly no particular effort of her own - that make it possible for her to be subversive. and yeah, i guess i am saying that there’s a limit to how actually subversive a blonde skinny white pop star can be. that isn’t a reflection on gaga (or any other blonde skinny white pop star) herself at all - it’s a reflection on a culture that marks some bodies as acceptable and some bodies as inescapably transgressive. for gaga, the grotesque is a costume, an act. a fun act, one that’s interesting (…sorta) and entertaining to watch play out. but it still remains true that she’s allowed to act this way because we all know that she’s doing it on purpose, much like actresses are allowed to be “ugly” for a role but not in real life because we know that at the end of the day they go back to their acceptably pretty selves. for women who don’t have that stamp of approval, there is no backstage, there is no going home after the show, there isn’t even a fucking intermission, and they don’t get a say in whether they’re performing or not. and i really wish more people would acknowledge that in these conversations.