stacie halas hot: The Post-Gender of Lady Gaga

with Kate Durbin, Lesley Kinzel, and Meghan Vicks

Gaga Stigmata has long wanted to respond to a number of articles that approach Lady Gaga from a feminist stance, or that take issue with Gaga’s work and its depictions of gender and sexuality. To this end we invited Lesley Kinzel - fellow Gaga enthusiast, and recently honored as one 40 Feminists under 40 by the Feminist Press of CUNY - to join us for a discussion regarding Gaga’s place in feminism. We took into account a number of recently published articles and talks given by established feminist scholars, including those by Nancy Bauer, Jack Halberstam, and Camille Paglia, and considered articles written on various blogs, in particular one geared toward body acceptance. We look forward to you joining our discussion in the comments.

Meghan Vicks: I agree with you, Lesley, that the contexts in which Gaga made these statements shape their implications. I also felt that in the first interview, her statement “I’m not feminist!” was supposed to be sarcastic since it followed some pretty astute remarks about how men and women are judged differently when it comes to sex. It would be as if I, a graduate student of comparative literature, after launching into an impassioned speech about the virtues of Shakespeare or the hilarity of Nabokov, confessed, “Ugh! Literature, I abhor literature!”

Finally, if you watch the full interview, it becomes apparent that Gaga is rejecting a stereotypical version of feminism: that feminists “hate” men. She assumes that the interviewer perceives feminists as men-hating, and so she pushes against that label.

Gaga at DADT rally in Maine, giving her speech “The Prime Rib of America”

In context of the desire for free individualism, Gaga’s agenda is one that promotes “being yourself.” It’s not always easy to “be yourself” when you are taking on a historically heavy mantle every day (i.e. that of the token “Feminist”). Gaga, like many of her generation (her fans), felt misunderstood and pigeonholed both in school as a kid, and also by the music industry. It seems that when she reacted to the male journalist’s dismissive remark, it was just that – a reaction to being limited as a caricature in a dismissive way, but also because this guy refused to understand, his goal was to put her down. And so she put him in his place. This of course ties in neatly to Meghan’s work on Gaga as Trickster of Pop Culture, how Gaga reflects/mimics those she comes in contact with. She can demure (Barbara Walters) or fight (Asshole Male Journalist) with the best and the worst of them.

Gaga commands the phallus; those men are drawn to her disco stick.

Most of all, (and this is really where I find her feminism, although it might not look like feminism at all), she controls her identity, gives birth to her own identity. I mean this to imply something much more complicated than just creating identity; the term “birthing identity” comes closer to what I have in mind, as it indicates a kind of oxymoron - both natural and constructed simultaneously.

Thus the tradition of feminist activism, as well as female partnerships, is very strong in her project. Gaga has spoken out against the pitting of female artists against one another, and her collaborations with Beyonce are examples of how Gaga actively works against the notion of women as cutthroat competitors in the music industry. Gaga has said that she wanted the Telephone video to be more about Beyonce than about her, and when she collaborated on Beyonce’s Videophone video, she said she wanted to honor Beyonce by dressing like her. She called herself Beyonce’s “fly girl.”

Beyonce with Gaga as fly girl in Videophone

Beyond these more traditional examples of Gaga’s feminist gestures, though, I do think Gaga problematizes traditional feminist criticisms. The way Gaga destabilizes gender identity generally is the real root of her danger. She is a threat to feminism in that her ultimate goal is to render it unnecessary, in favor of a larger global shift toward polymorphous gender and sexual identities. And so anyone who is bound up (and yes, feminism can be very binding) in ideals that truck in identifying proudly as a man or a woman (whether gay or straight, fat or thin, black or white, etc.) and promoting the rights of their “group,” well, they will feel threatened by a project such as Gaga’s, which promotes a new kind of group - a group of monsters - not entrenched in such old-fashioned binaries and identifiers. As, perhaps, they should be threatened.

What do you make of Gaga’s gender when she shows up looking like this?

Or this:

But let me go back a few steps.

You know how the paparazzi are always trying to get the million-dollar up-skirt shots of female celebrities? (And I love your discussion, Lesley, of Gaga’s crotch shot in Telephone ... Maybe we should make another discussion in which we just write about the metamorphoses and statements that Gaga’s crotch has made!) Well, check out Gaga:

When I saw this photo, I thought Gaga’s giving them her up-skirt, quite literally! Hasn’t she also turned her nether regions into a big, pink, uni-broweed, hairy monster! Or, another example:

This is a more subtle, day wear version of Gaga, but check out those hips! Definitely not “thin!”

Here is a stage version. Last time I checked it wasn’t sexy to be covered in [body] hair. Can you imagine Spears doing this? Or even Rihanna? [And, I should add, Gaga’s legs do not look stick-thin here - she looks healthy and ready to rock it].

I love this image of Gaga evoking Leigh Bowery’s pregnant belly costumes - not only is Gaga subverting the notion that a flat belly is desirable, but pregnancy itself is something that can be costumed and paraded at will, by those of either gender. Mother Monster, anyone?

Again, I’m not sure what Gaga could do to assuage Bauer besides actively trying to gain weight, to try and turn herself into a Beth Ditto figure. Beth Ditto is gorgeous and preaches that it’s good to parade your own flesh, no matter what your size. And that is how both these women preach similar messages: “it’s more than okay to be who you are.” But, for Gaga, fashion is flesh. Who you are is malleable from day to day. Through wigs, through fashion that obfuscates and warps the body. The possibilities are beautiful.

When Gaga first wore her fire bra at the Much Music Awards, she explained her costume by saying that her breasts were seen as a weapon, therefore she was going to literally turn them into that. Gaga turns herself into what men want, or more specifically what masculinists believe her to be. That’s what the gun bra, fire bra, and meat dress were all about. Masculinists see but a piece of meat, so Gaga gives them exactly what they “see” - a piece of meat. In order, of course, that the Male Gaze might “see” itself.

Did anyone else notice that Gaga’s tasty ass hung out of her meat dress? Not a fashion roadkill moment, methinks, but rather a direct reference to the ravenous attention over panty-flashing Britney and Lindsey, etc. Not to mention a gleeful, teenage, mooning-the-authorities moment!

Gaga and her gay partner in the Alejandro video

I am also thinking of course of the Telephone video, of the women’s prison yard, of Gaga kissing that hot, body-building butch Heather Cassils, about how Gaga’s goal was to celebrate her lesbian friends (and, I would assume, celebrate her own bi-sexuality). And yet there is here a certain stereotypical lesbian fantasy, perhaps even a level of objectification of Cassils, who plays no major role in the video. But because lesbian fantasies in particular have so little air time in contemporary pop culture, this could be seen as a radical and important first start - flaunting what is usually seen as non-sexy by the wider, homophobic, and even more lesbian-phobic audience. And yet we also have to realize that something men want - to go back to the original question about Gaga turning herself into what men want - is for two hot women to make out. This seems, at first glance, to be a classic, straight while male fantasy. But only if those are straight, white, femme women making out. Because straight white masculinists feel super threatened by hot butch women making out with “their” femme partners. So in that way Gaga is yet again sticking it - and I do mean sticking it - to the Male Gaze.

Gaga making out with Cassils in the Telephone video - straight and gay women across the world got wet watching this!

Lastly, I want to add that Gaga subverts the Male Gaze and the Homosexual Gaze by becoming male, in her performance as Jo Calderone. This photo below is fascinating because it plays into the gender stereotype of masculinity - the heading “Homeboys Don’t Smile” is telling. Gaga is playing with butch culture here, and also showing us that gender along with its various expectational baggage is something we can don and subvert at the same time. But the awareness of the Gaze - that we are being watched, and judged- is always present in some capacity in all that Gaga does.

Lesley Kinzel: Speaking of being “authentic in our passions,” I want to mention Gaga’s YouTube video demonstrating her (ultimately failed) attempt to reach her senator to lobby for the repeal of DADT. Gaga displays an unexpectedly intense earnestness as she reads a speech (seemingly from a laptop off-camera) and then spends the last three minutes listening to her Blackberry fruitlessly ringing Chuck Schumer’s office. When the line goes dead, unanswered, after having sat staring blankly for countless rings, Gaga smiles at the defeat.

And then she tries again.

It would have been easy, understandable even, if this video never saw the light of day, considering that even when Gaga finally reaches Schumer’s voicemail, a recording instructs her that the mailbox is full. Instead, it’s posted and we get to share this odd little experience, mundane in its familiarity and yet weighted with anticipation that we will be privy to a private conversation between Lady Gaga and her senator. It’s bizarre in its existentialism. Don’t we love it when stars are just like us.

I’m a fan, if that weren’t obvious, but even I was a little astonished by this video. In it, Gaga is eager, unsure, even awkward, and these are not sides of her we usually see. Watching Gaga make this call and put herself out there as caring deeply about this particular issue makes it accessible and real. While Gaga may be a meticulously constructed personality, that does not make her not real. The takeaway is that an obsession with the superficial does not erase an ability to care deeply about issues - to be passionate.

Paglia argues that Gaga is dispassionate, unspontaneous, and insincere; I argue that Paglia has not seen enough of Gaga to make this case. This is a woman capable of both wearing a dress too heavy to walk in, and also of emphatically pleading with the United States government to commit to social justice on DADT in a video with production values so low it was obviously something thrown together at the spur of the moment. Neither, to me, rings hollow, and the one does not cancel out the other.

Kate Durbin: Gaga’s video didn’t read hollow to me, either, Lesley. Like you, I was moved. But it did read as performative, as performative as anything I’ve seen her do. I would be surprised if she didn’t do a run-through beforehand, and didn’t know ahead of time that the senator wouldn’t answer. Gaga’s patriotic outfit with her ever-present drag makeup seemed intentional, and just goes to show how politics are a drag show. The flag in the background, even the utilizing of her full “real” name, therefore rendering all politicians’ names stage names, yes, even the awkward pauses, felt as much a performance as her TV performances, which she relentlessly scripts and practices beforehand. We associate these things with authenticity because they are American and familiar, but one of the things Gaga does so beautifully is call attention to how the characteristics of America itself are bizarre and campy. Her Telephone video is another great example of this.

Her video to the senator is also interesting because, theoretically, we should all be able to get through to our senators. If Gaga can’t, we sure can’t. Her performance is pointing to a major problem - there is, in effect, no man behind the curtain. Just as with Gaga there is no Stefani Germanotta behind the curtain. But there is the power of the performance, something Obama himself utilized in his campaign to great success.

Like you, Lesley, I think Gaga projects something that is so passionate, and more (beyond?) authentic than those who claim to be authentic, and that is what I connected to in this video as well as in her red carpet performance at this year’s VMAs, when she walked the white carpet with the four discharged gay service persons. I actually wept when I witnessed that. Perhaps by revealing the performativity of life itself, how ideals and values can be performed every minute, Gaga reveals how these things can be tools that can serve all of us in order that we can perform what really matters - compassion. And, consequently, she reveals how the old methods - whether technological (i.e. the perpetually busy telephone line vs. the viral power of youtube), political (DADT’s hypocrisy vs. “If You Don’t Like It Go Home,” Gaga’s motto from her speech “The Prime Rib of America”), or otherwise (man/woman binaries vs. Gaga-esque polymorphous sexuality) - are failing us, with their false claims to spontaneity and authenticity and even goodness. They are just as much as charade as anything else, but their evil is that they pretend they are not charades. They parade themselves as the Truth. But they ring hollow, Liberty bell, because they are.

Lesley Kinzel: The makeup and the flag in the background truly made this video for me. It’s true - Gaga doesn’t really do irony so much as she does flamboyant reproduction, much in the way that drag is an amplified performance of gender. Both require affection for their origins. I loved it. I think her performance is often confusing to many because culturally we have a predetermined idea of what “authenticity” looks like - it’s a serious face, a dark suit and a red tie. When Gaga dares to bring a Big Issue to the VMA red carpet, a space that is nearly-always lighthearted, that performance is disarming, especially when she does not “use” her dates as clever props (I’m thinking of Gwen Stefani and her abhorrent exploitation of her “Harajuku Girls” years ago) but strictly sticks to her purpose of drawing attention to the injustice of DADT.

I most love that Gaga does not seem to be at all invested in the normal signifiers of someone who wishes to be “taken seriously”. She will advocate for GLBTQ rights with a live chicken strapped to her nethers, if she gets the chance. As an activist myself, there’s a lot of grand inspiration there.

The criticism: Gaga is not sexy. “Furthermore, despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn’t sexy at all – she’s like a gangly marionette or plasticised android.” - ibid

Kate Durbin: I think that the criticism that Gaga is not sexy is actually more of a reaction to Gaga being inappropriately over-sexual, as opposed to, say, being “a-sexual” or “non-sexual” (whatever that means). Paglia critiqued her for wearing lingerie to the gym. Only a “sex addict” would wear such a thing to the gym, presumably.

What I love about Gaga and sex is that she displaces it - takes it out of familiar spheres, and parades what is normally hidden out in broad daylight. A recent tweet by Gaga would likely piss off Paglia even more. She said: “I’d wear any of my private attire for the world to see, but I’d rather have an open flesh wound than be caught with a bandaid.” This is part of her art. Her over-the-top sexual attire matches this attitude. She is different than, say, Madonna in this way. While Madonna may have pushed the boundaries of sex in her music videos and on stage, Gaga parades it on the street, at the gym. Places where her fans go, where we all go. It’s this context that rubs Paglia the wrong way, and it’s precisely this context that makes what Gaga’s doing important and dangerous to some. In part, because it is something you or I could do, if we had the guts and proclivity. To wear one’s sexuality - wounded as nature itself is wounded - out in broad daylight as a pair of hot pants is a really beautiful freedom, one that does not yet exist in our culture.

Gaga on her way to the gym

The idea of the grotesque seems relevant here as well - grotesque not as ugly, but so beautiful as to be almost too much to bear. Like the most incredibly intense orgasm! Gaga’s sexuality is so grotesquely sexual as to be “too much,” even death-driven. Think vagina dentata (and now I am thinking of Gaga’s fear that someone will take her creativity from her through her vagina, how that statement flips the whole vagina dentata notion on its head, yes, pun on head).

Gaga is not sexy in a containable feminine sense, like, say, Britney Spears or Katy Perry. She is excessively poly-sexual. See Gaga with the dildo in her pants on the cover of Q, see Gaga looking sexy as hell as Joe Calderone on the cover of Vogue Nippon, see Gaga covered in a dress of [pubic-looking] hair at a nightclub in NYC recently. Her sexuality goes beyond human sexuality to the realm of raw animal sex, which of course makes me think of Angela Carter’s feminist fairy tales, her wolf-women with voracious sexual appetites. Her sexuality goes beyond animal sex even to protean sexuality, cells merging with other cells. There are undertones of S&M and torture porn in many of her magazine shoots - “deviant” sexualities that speak to the inherent violence of sex, a violence that is a part of nature itself. There is, yes, the android sexuality, the sex doll quality of Gaga - but more in the sense of blurring the lines between the natural and the unnatural, in that nothing is natural or everything is natural, the dildo has simply become the doll. She complicates our notions of the sexuality of those with disabilities - our notion, even, of whether or not a disability is in fact a disability or rather a possibility - with her wheelchair performances and in her Paparazzi video when she dances with crutches and a helmet. Gaga’s sexuality is liquid, ever-present, never revoked to the bedroom, always evoking the ubiquitous sexuality of sheer physical existence on this planet! And frankly, I think it’s hot.