#DickheadDetox : Cee Lo Green and that pesky issue of VAW

Last week, Tilly Jean wrote a fabulous critique of Cee Lo Green's Forget You  and the unrelenting misogyny in the song. I can not describe how much I loathe men who toss around the word "goldigger".  Just bleurgh.

Tilly Jean's blog fired a synapse in my brain and I thought I remembered Green recently being arrested for VAW. I was wrong. He has multiple arrests for VAW : threatening his then wife in 2001 and rearrested for skipping his court appearance two months later. He was sentenced to 12 months probation after being charged with "simple assault" (domestic violence) and disorderly conduct. He was also required to attend domestic violence counselling. She filed for divorce in 2004 citing "mental and physical cruelty". 

Green was also subject to a sexual battery investigation in 2012. And, there was this charming incident in July 2011.

I'd trawl for more but all the links keep taking me to Perez Hilton and TMZ and I'm pretty much opposed to reading their shite at the best of times. It is somewhat, erm, ironic? depressing? soul-destroyin that researching violence against women perpetrated by male celebrities gets more coverage in gossip mags than in the mainstream media. 

But, Cee Lo Green: on the #dickheaddetox list. 

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Don' cha Wish Your Girlfriend: Reinforcing the Patriarchal Fuckability Test

I loathe the PussyCat Dolls' "Dontcha Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me". Lyrically, it's a master-class in woman-blaming culture and passing the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. This just got retweeted into my TL and I love it:

Pony Pony Tangerina‏@ColeyTangerina: DONTCHA WISH YOUR GIRLFRIEND WAS uninterested in competitive beauty standards that undermine the solidarity women need to end patriarchy.

Blondie are the same. The lyrics of some of their biggest hits are about being desperate for a man; especially a man in a relationship with another woman. There is nothing powerful or liberating about hurting another woman and the lyrics in these types of songs both encourage the myth that women need a man all the time and that the only way for women to have any value is if a man wants to fuck them. 

The Patriarchal Fuckability Test is dangerous for all women. The "you need a man to be complete" is equally dangerous. We need to stop purchasing music which encourages these myths, even if they are sung by women.

The lyrics are below: 

Don't Cha"
(feat. Busta Rhymes)

[Busta Rhymes]
OK (ahh)
Yeah (ahh)
Oh, we about to get it just a lil hot and sweaty in this mu'fucka (oh, baby)
Ladies let's go (uhh)
Soldiers let's go (dolls)
Let me talk to y'all and just you know
Give you a little situation... listen (fellas)

[Buster Rhymes]
Pussycat Dolls
Ya see this shit get hot
Everytime I come through when I step up in the spot (are you ready)
Make the place sizzle like a summertime cookout
Prowl for the best chick
Yes I'm on the lookout (let's dance)
Slow banging shorty like a belly dancer with it
Smell good, pretty skin, so gangsta with it (oh, baby)
No tricks only diamonds under my sleeve
Gimme the number
But make sure you call before you leave

[Pussycat Dolls]
I know you like me (I know you like me)
I know you do (I know you do)
That's why whenever I come around
She's all over you (she's all over you)
I know you want it (I know you want it)
It's easy to see (it's easy to see)
And in the back of your mind
I know you should be on with me (babe)

[Chorus:]
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?
Don't cha?
Don't cha?
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was raw like me?
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was fun like me?
Don't cha?
Don't cha?

Fight the feeling (fight the feeling)
Leave it alone (leave it alone)
'Cause if it ain't love
It just ain't enough to leave my happy home (my happy home)
Let's keep it friendly (let's keep it friendly)
You have to play fair (you have to play fair)
See I don't care
But I know she ain't gonna wanna share

[Chorus:]
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?
Don't cha?
Don't cha?
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was raw like me?
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was fun like me?
Don't cha?
Don't cha?

[Busta Rhymes]
OK, I see how it's goin' down (ahh, don't cha)
Seems like shorty wanna little menage pop off or something (let's go)
Well let me get straight to it
Every broad wan watch a nigga when I come through it
It's the god almighty, looking all brand new
If shorty wanna jump in my ass then vanquish
Looking at me all like she really wanna do it
Tryna put it on me till my balls black an blueish
Ya wanna play wit ah playa girl then play on
Strip out the Chanel
And leave the lingerie on
Watch me and I'mma watch you at the same time
Looking at ya wan break my back
You're the very reason why I keep a pack ah the Magnum
An wit the wagon hit chu in the back of tha magnum
For the record, don't think it was something you did
Shorty all on me cause it's hard to resist the kid
I got a idea that's dope for y'all
As y'all could get so I could hit the both of y'all

[Pussycat Dolls] 

I know she loves you (I know she loves you) 

I understand (I understand) 

I'd probably be just as crazy about you 

If you were my own man 

Maybe next lifetime (maybe next lifetime) 

Possibly (possibly) 

Until then old friend 

Your secret is safe with me 

[Chorus:] 

Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me? 

Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me? 

Don't cha? 

Don't cha? 

Don't cha wish your girlfriend was raw like me? 

Don't cha wish your girlfriend was fun like me? 

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Lana Del Ray's Ride

I have only recently come across Lana Del Ray and that is only due to the Feminist backlash to her being named GQ's Woman of the Year and being the only winner to be nude on the cover. Coincidentally, she was the only woman. It's fairly obvious that her value to GQ was for her body rather than her career as a talented musician; a situation which isn't exactly abnormal in the music industry. Today, for the first time, I have actually watched one of Del Ray's music videos: Ride. I came across whilst researching the backlash to No Doubt's newest video for my piece of Victoria Secret's cultural appropriation of the Plains Indian' warbonnet which is frequently used as a cultural signifier for the entire Native Peoples, First Nations, Metis and Inuit of North America. The reductive use of the warbonnet as a cultural signifier is, simply, racist so I was disappointed to see yet another female singer using the Plains Indian warbonnet as part of their sexualised eroticisation of abuse.

Lana Del Ray's video is beautifully deconstructed here and here. There is very little I can add to these deconstructions except to say how incredibly depressing and distressing I find the eroticisation of sexual abuse and the forced prostitution of women's bodies. It is that same old "the child is responsible for their own abuse and continuing self-harm as an adult" with no contextualisation whatsoever of how the adult woman came to be in trapped in self-destructive behaviour. The video features Del Ray as a "wild child" who "believes in the country American used to be". Manifest Destiny anyone? The whole issue racism exhibited by Del Ray running about being "crazy" in a Plains Indian warbonnet aside, the video is an incredibly disturbing tribute to the sexual abuse of a young woman at the hands of many men, most of whom are old enough to be her father. It is both racist and misogynist and Del Ray is far too talented for this type of shit.

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Victoria Secrets' Annual Demonstration of Misogyny: This Time With a Side of Racism

Victoria Secret's annual Fashion Show is testimony to the mainstreaming of the pornification of women's bodies. It represents everything which is wrong in the Patriarchy rendering women not only into objects for men to wank over but commodifying their bodies with the woman given the honour of wearing a $2.5 million dollar diamond studded bra considered The Ultimate Woman. It isn't so much a fashion show as a live action soft porn show with titillating photos of the models leaked online prior to the broadcast. I won't link any here but the images are the same poses as found in Playboy or any other mainstream soft porn magazine. Victoria Secret's trades on an image of respectability despite the fact that it uses the same techniques as porn to entice men. They reinforce rape culture by parading women in their underwear for male audiences. They are not selling underwear to women but the image of fuckable women to men who then by the underwear for their partners who can not be expected to look like the models who routinely go on crash diets involving only liquids in the run-up to the show so they don't look "fat". It normalises the Patriarchal Fuckability Test on women who have no hope of passing it.

The women-hating and exploitation of Victoria Secret's has become so common place that I don't even notice them anymore but this year they added racism to their bow. One of the themes of the production this year was the calendar and November was represented by a white model wearing a fairly racist signifier of "Indian". The use of a Plains Indian Warbonnett as a signifier for all Native Americans, First Nations, Metis and Inuit people is racist because it is reductive. You can not reduce huge, disparate cultures down to one item which was worn by men who had earned the honour and pretend it isn't anything but culturally insensitive. The cultural appropriation of such item on the objectified body of a white woman is doubly insensitive.

It really isn't that hard to take ten minutes and think about cultural appropriation. It isn't that hard to think about the links of a nearly naked white woman dressed in cultural signifiers of 'Indians' when Native American women are 2.5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than any other group of women in the US. The majority of the perpetrators of this sexual violence are non-Native men. Yet, the representation of white women dressed in outfits sexualising a construction of Native Americans derived from racist discourse in 'Cowboy and Indian' films has become a trope in our visual culture, one which has been repeated multiple time in the last couple of months. Lana Del Ray's latest video is possibly the most offensive of the recent insurgence in cultural appropriation; interestingly she seems to have received far less backlash than No Doubt or Victoria Secrets. Whilst I don't think No Doubt's apology is a proper apology what with the whole we have non-white friends trope being called up, they at least seem to understand that they have caused offence. Neither Del Ray nor Victoria Secret's appears to have understood at all. No Doubt pulled the video within days of the complaints arising. It seems unbelievably arrogant for Victoria Secrets not to take 10 minutes to rethink the outfit a week later.

And, FFS, using a cultural signifier for 'Indian' in the month of year where the major American holiday is a celebration of their genocide seems, I don't know, really fucking stupid. 

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