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Today I woke up, looked in the mirror and thought to myself, “is feminism officially dead?” It was a tragic question, but it had to be asked. After all, women are still beaten by partners the most, victimized the most, paid the least, and when race and class intersect with gender a whole array of terrible statistics appear. Abortion and birthrights always appear on the California ballot, catcalling occurs too often and 1 in 4 college girls will still be sexually assaulted. What is most worrisome is that not only does feminism appear to have died, but that chauvinism has replaced it, masked in blonde hair and party attire with a bottle of Jack in hand.
The turmoil began when I read Lily Rowen’s article, “GaGa and Ke$ha Champion New Feminism” in the March 19th issue of The Weekly. I can accept Lady GaGa as a hope for feminism since she stands up against beauty and behavioral social norms. But Ke$ha?
Lets start with the image because it’s so important in today’s paparazzi driven world. Ke$ha defies no beauty norms, she is the beauty norm. True there are some that wish to marry the dainty and submissive woman lost in the 1950s, but today our college age group of females is more likely to be held to new standards of being down to hook up whenever a man wants to. Always bubbly and social, Ke$ha’s persona encourages girls to be the one all the other girls in the club want to be, and all the boys want to be with. She gives the appearance of liberation, especially sexual liberation, but does so while enforcing a norm where women are objects of the male gaze. They are barely individuals until its time to get drunk and have sex.
That’s when problems with alcohol and sex come in. You may think that Ke$ha is showing her power in sexuality by choosing to have sex with guys who look like Mick Jagger, but she has to be drunk to do so. She is not claiming her sexuality, because she can not just be a sexual creature but needs alcohol as a buffer. Even more concerning is that Ke$ha must have a whole bottle of Jack (in numerous songs) for sexual experiences to begin, which is not empowering, but degrading. By California standards, the mixture of sex and alcohol is rape, the downplaying of which should get Ke$ha thrown from the feminist boat.
Ke$ha’s identity functions through men’s objectification, which does not give her the power that feminism seeks. The whole plot of “Blah blah blah” is that boys want her, but can only objectify her from afar, until alcohol consumption. Self-objectification or acknowledgment of being objectified does not make you equal to the men who are also objectifying you. It objectifies you further because now you see yourself as a piece of meat, just like the men do.
Rowen compared Ke$ha to the flappers of the 1920s, who were revolutionary. In a time of submissive femininity they drank, cursed, smoked and showed their ankles. However, that was 90 years ago. While it’s true that they opened the doors to questioning social norms, Ke$ha just enforces them. We are aware that women have sex drives and that the binary of virgin/whore exists, but representing the image of the fun loving whore created by patriarchy doesn’t make it any less of a binary. It actually enforces the binary. I dream of a feminism that says I hook up (or not) on my own sober terms. I don’t objectify men because I have the self-respect to know that I don’t want to be objectified and the power to tell men to stop, even if they hear I have swagger. I imagine a feminism that does not involve a 22 year old getting the bad end of a trade with a prepubescent boy (see Tik Tok music video). Ke$ha is not what I hope for. As long as she self objectifies and downplays serious issues like rape, she hinders rather than helps the feminist movement. If we are doing all this to ourselves, how can we ever expect men and society to stop?
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