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Miley joins the boys’ club ~ acts like a male pop star but gets criticized like a female one
Miley Cyrus joins the boys’ club
Miley Cyrus acted like a male pop star at the VMAs. But she'll get criticized like a female one
It’s hard being a living doll. Ask Miley Cyrus. The singer’s slightly bizarre, teddy-bear twerking performance at last night’s MTV’s Video Music Awards has captured the public imagination. Today’s news is littered with shock, dismay, disgust and approbation, on many different fronts. (...)
It’s impossible to consider her performance without noting the following: 1) a 36-year-old Robin Thicke, standing onstage while Cyrus gyrated around him; and 2) the use of women as props and accessories, a habit that practically defines music industry productions. Usually, though, the people using women thus are men. At the VMAs, Cyrus expressed her celebrity and power pretty much the way the most visible and prominent men in her industry do. And while she deserves some criticism for her performance, the kind she’s likely to get is deeply linked to her gender.
This summer, Thicke caused an outcry over his sexist “Blurred Lines” video, just the most recent example of women used as naked or nearly naked props. In one analysis, researchers found that women dancing in explicitly sexualized ways can be found in 84 percent of videos. In the same survey, 71 percent of women were found to be wearing revealing and suggestive clothing compared to 35 percent of men. In music videos the sexualization is often racialized. Generally speaking, men, like Thicke, sing fully clothed, while women dance around them, largely not.
But what happens when the star performer is herself a woman? Cyrus was cocky, she strutted around, she danced (really awkwardly), was brash and confident and made lewd gestures and creative use of her tongue. In addition, she, like her male peers, sexually and racially objectified other women who were onstage with her, almost all of whom were black — and she has come in for deserved criticism for this. Cyrus has recently been the topic of conversations regarding race and cultural appropriation and ratchet culture, and last night further contributed to the debate. But, Cyrus, as other women performers do, also embodies the sexualization that can be so problematic. She acted like a man, objectified herself and other women, and appropriated several racial cultural signifiers when she did. She was performing on many different levels.
~snip~
Women, we’d like everyone to keep thinking, are unworthy of too much agency, authority, power and self-expression. Otherwise, everyday people would be decrying every top-billed male performer for engaging in the exact same behavior that Cyrus did last night. It would help if we taught kids, in school, to be critical of stereotypes, to understand constructions of gender, race and ethnicity, and to appreciate the important difference between sexiness and sexualization. Miley Cyrus deserves critique for the racially objectifying elements of her performance, and even for the production of an artistically questionable, odd and distasteful set involving bears and bad dancing. But Cyrus is most likely be criticized instead for being “slutty”or ”crazy” — and those words matter and speak volumes.
Miley Cyrus acted like a male pop star at the VMAs. But she'll get criticized like a female one
It’s hard being a living doll. Ask Miley Cyrus. The singer’s slightly bizarre, teddy-bear twerking performance at last night’s MTV’s Video Music Awards has captured the public imagination. Today’s news is littered with shock, dismay, disgust and approbation, on many different fronts. (...)
It’s impossible to consider her performance without noting the following: 1) a 36-year-old Robin Thicke, standing onstage while Cyrus gyrated around him; and 2) the use of women as props and accessories, a habit that practically defines music industry productions. Usually, though, the people using women thus are men. At the VMAs, Cyrus expressed her celebrity and power pretty much the way the most visible and prominent men in her industry do. And while she deserves some criticism for her performance, the kind she’s likely to get is deeply linked to her gender.
This summer, Thicke caused an outcry over his sexist “Blurred Lines” video, just the most recent example of women used as naked or nearly naked props. In one analysis, researchers found that women dancing in explicitly sexualized ways can be found in 84 percent of videos. In the same survey, 71 percent of women were found to be wearing revealing and suggestive clothing compared to 35 percent of men. In music videos the sexualization is often racialized. Generally speaking, men, like Thicke, sing fully clothed, while women dance around them, largely not.
But what happens when the star performer is herself a woman? Cyrus was cocky, she strutted around, she danced (really awkwardly), was brash and confident and made lewd gestures and creative use of her tongue. In addition, she, like her male peers, sexually and racially objectified other women who were onstage with her, almost all of whom were black — and she has come in for deserved criticism for this. Cyrus has recently been the topic of conversations regarding race and cultural appropriation and ratchet culture, and last night further contributed to the debate. But, Cyrus, as other women performers do, also embodies the sexualization that can be so problematic. She acted like a man, objectified herself and other women, and appropriated several racial cultural signifiers when she did. She was performing on many different levels.
~snip~
Women, we’d like everyone to keep thinking, are unworthy of too much agency, authority, power and self-expression. Otherwise, everyday people would be decrying every top-billed male performer for engaging in the exact same behavior that Cyrus did last night. It would help if we taught kids, in school, to be critical of stereotypes, to understand constructions of gender, race and ethnicity, and to appreciate the important difference between sexiness and sexualization. Miley Cyrus deserves critique for the racially objectifying elements of her performance, and even for the production of an artistically questionable, odd and distasteful set involving bears and bad dancing. But Cyrus is most likely be criticized instead for being “slutty”or ”crazy” — and those words matter and speak volumes.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/26/miley_cyrus_joins_the_boys_club/
Interesting take on the matter...
15 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
