In Lady Gaga’s song Born This Way, the message told is how everyone is born a certain way, and everyone should be proud of it. This song can connect with queer activism since the lyrics “celebrates difference and diversity.”1 An interesting element to this song is its use of Christian themes to support its message. Usually, Christianity is used against the LGBTQ community to condemn same-sex relationships. However, in this song, Lady Gaga uses Christianity to express why it is okay to be who you are. Following the lines “No matter gay, straight, or bi’, lesbian, transgender life” and “No matter Black, white or beige, chola, or Orient’ made,” she says, “I’m beautiful in my way ’cause God makes no mistakes,” implying that God made you the way you are regarding race and sexuality, and that you should love yourself for it. This supports womanist thinking by implying that “[being] recognized as human, levelly human, is enough”.2 Born this way also possibly has hints of trans people inclusion, with the repeated lines “Don’t be a drag, just be a queen.” This is probably a play on words with drag queens, who are associated with the trans people community. While Born This Way is usually associated as an anthem for LGBTQ pride, some of Lady Gaga’s lyrics can be seen a problematic. Gaga refers to Asians as “Orient” in two of the lines of the song, appearing in “You’re Lebanese, you’re Orient’” and “No matter Black, white or beige, chola, or Orient’ made.” Even though the context of this word is meant to promote inclusivity amongst all races, the term “Orient” is outdated and can be seen as offensive. Another problem within the lyrics is when Gaga refers to God as “capital H-I-M.” This is problematic since Gaga is assuming god’s gender is a man. According to book 239 of Catechism of the Catholic Church, God has no assigned gender, stating “God is neither man nor woman: he is God.” Despite its limitations, this song displays ideas from transfeminism and queer feminism because its lyrics have themes of empowering the LGBTQ+ in addition to themes regarding racial minorities.
feminist mixtape
“You Need to Calm Down” from Lover by Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” is a blatant callout of the patriarchal institutions that have been implemented in society for centuries. First of all, the title alone reclaims the phrase so many women and gender minorities hear any time they advocate for themselves and their communities in terms of gender equality. The irony of it is that oftentimes when a man tells a woman or other gender minority group to “calm down,” he is really just communicating discomfort with their usually more progressive views. He is seeing the institution of patriarchy that inherently allows him to hold power as being threatened.
Swift also directly calls out men that have attempted to tear her down, with Donald Trump being the most notable. She sings “You say it in the street, that’s a knock-out / But you say it in a Tweet, that’s a cop-out,” which is obviously directed at Trump’s bullying messages on Twitter (before he was banned). Next, Swift asks a general question to these oppressive male listeners in the form of “Why you mad? / When you could be GLAAD?” Until reading these lyrics, I had not realized that what sounds like “glad” was actually “GLAAD,” an acronym for “Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation,” an organization founded in protest against defamatory coverage of members of the LGBTQ+ community. This lyric communicates Swift’s advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community, something that she is openly passionate about.
Furthermore, she asks her listeners to “not step on our gowns,” urging people to allow others to do as they please without unsolicited feedback or criticism. Swift even declares that some people need to “control [their] urges to scream about the people [they hate] / ‘Cause shade never made anybody less gay.” This communicates the same message of sexuality not being a choice as Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way, another LGBTQ+ anthem.
To continue, Swift also reverses the phrase “you’re being too loud” to reflect against those who tolerate members of the LBGTQ+ community but wish they weren’t so “loud.” This relates directly to Pat Parker’s “For Straight Folks Who Don’t Mind Gays But Wish They Weren’t So Blatant,” in which Parker acknowledges the hypocritical manner in which straight people speak openly about their own heterosexual relationships in detail but express discomfort when gay and lesbian folks do the same.
While “You Need to Calm Down” is a clear dig at the patriarchy and an anthem in support of oppressed communities, the singer/songwriter is a straight, white, cisgender woman. Her allyship is valuable, and she can relate first-hand to the struggles of women, but she cannot personally relate to those of the LGBTQ+ community. She features the cast of Queer Eye in the music video, putting a spotlight on LGBTQ+ popular culture icons, but Swift herself is not a member of the community.
Feminist Mixtape: The Man by Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift’s pop anthem, “The Man,” is a catchy, upbeat song aiming to address the inequality between how female artists and male artists are treated and talked about. With a driving bass line, fun and catchy melody, and easy to understand lyrics, this song is able to reach audiences young and old alike. In her song, Swift discusses how every aspect of her personality, looks, actions, and decisions would be seen in a different way if she were a man. In our society there is a double standard between what is acceptable for men to do and for women to do.
The line “They’d say I played the field before I found someone to commit to” addresses how when a woman cycles through multiple relationships before settling down with “the one,” she is judged differently than a man would be even though it is very common for both men and women to have many relationships. Swift changes this negative narrative by stating “And that would be okay for me to do” confirming to her audience that having multiple partners in life is normal and not something to be ashamed of.
Later in the song, Swift says “When everyone believes ya/ What’s that like?” This line is referring to the #MeToo movement and how women that come forward about sexual assualt, harrassment, and rape are most often doubted and questioned. Victim blaming is present in our society and is disproportionately against women more than men.
The final line that stood out to me when listening to this song was “What I was wearing, if I was rude/ Could all be separated from my good ideas and power moves.” Women’s clothing is all too often equated with their success and the quality of their work. Instead of focusing on what women actually have to say or what their ideas are, the focus is on what she is wearing. Specifically, when female artists, actresses, or celebrities are interviewed the topic is almost always about what they are wearing, or how they look. In contrast, men are typically interviewed on what their acting experience was like, or what the song is about, for example.
I connected this song to the reading by Lorber called “The Social Construction of Gender.” In the reading she argues that “it does not matter what men or women actually do; it does not matter if they do the same exact thing, the social institution of gender insists only that what they do is perceived as different” (Lorber 58). In “The Man,” Taylor is arguing that if she did not change anything about her actions but existed as a man, she would be perceived differently by society and treated better. Simply because we as a society perceive some actions to be more acceptable when done by a certain gender, it has become unacceptable to cross those made-up gender barriers. The issue is that there is no rhyme or reason for why we have these expectations for what different genders can or cannot do. The idea that what a woman is wearing determines her worth or success or how many partners a woman has had determines her value is a baseless belief that society has created. Taylor Swift is one of, if not the, biggest artist currently. She has an enormous platform and the ability to create change with the message she shares through her artistry and voice. This song is an attempt to address the disparities between how female and male artists are treated and spark discussion on how we can create change. Her feminism is not perfect and she can do a lot more to include intersectionality in her feminism and to use her priviledge uplift marginalized voices.
Feminist Mixtape: “Beautiful is Boring” by BONES UK
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” A lovely saying that we’ve all heard many times. However, society’s idea of beauty is less defined by the eye of the beholder than as a concept that changes with the typical depictions of people in media of the time. Jean Kilbourne’s TED Talk on Killing Us Softly IV: Advertising Images of Women gives a comprehensive look at and interpretation of her research on how women have been portrayed in media since the late 1960’s. When listening to the song “Beautiful is Boring” by BONES UK, the connections make themselves.
The first verse includes the lyric, “They said they did not want my face in their magazine/’Cause I’m not beautiful”. The singer doesn’t suit society’s definition of beautiful, and therefore is denied access to certain levels of visibility. In regard to societal standards of beauty, Kilbourne says, “From my perspective of over 40 years, the image of women in advertising is worse than ever. The pressure on women to be young, thin, and beautiful is more intense than ever before” (3:27-3:37). The singer doesn’t care about how society defines beautiful, young and thin and perfect. The second verse has the lyric, “It does not please me to be easy on any of your eyes”. Clearly, the singer’s priority does not fall with how others perceive her. This confidence and self-assuredness isn’t something that comes naturally however. Kilbourne points out that “the self-esteem of girls in America often plummets when they reach adolescence. Girls tend to feel fine about themselves when they are 8, 9, 10 years old, but they hit adolescence and they often hit a wall. And certainly, part of this wall is this terrible emphasis on physical perfection” (Kilbourne 6:51-7:17). Many times, as Kilbourne states, the expectations from society to look a certain way and be perfect can be crushing. It can absolutely destroy a young person’s confidence.
The singer isn’t unaware of this, despite her own confidence and self-assuredness. The third verse has a lyric that critiques society on “teaching children to be anything other than who they are”. Kilbourne has many points on the alteration of children’s perceptions of themselves in society by media, from girls being “more prone to eating disorders, depression, and low self-esteem” (13:17-13:24), boys being “encouraged to look at girls as sex objects, …encouraged to be sexually precocious” (10:17-10:33), and women of color being “considered beautiful only insofar as they resemble the white ideal: light skin, straight hair, Caucasian features, round eyes” (5:25-5:39). The whole message of the song, “beautiful is boring”, argues that people are much more interesting when they exist as themselves than conform to society. This message is inherently feminist, as it pushes against the factors in society that hold women back from being their complete selves.