Lady Gaga - Final Blog

Pop culture is defined by Andi Zeisler to be “any cultural product that has a mass audience.” Pop culture is everywhere and consumes our lives, especially as college students. If we don’t see it on our computers, on signs as we walk to class, and on television, then we hear it in daily conversations with our peers. Due to the fact that there is no escaping the interaction we face with pop culture, it is constantly available and interesting to analyze. Furthermore, the topic of feminism in pop culture is even more interesting to analyze. Women make up a large amount of pop culture, but what is interesting is what they do to be in that position.

A prime example of the topic of feminism in pop culture is the music video to the song “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga, shown below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1FrqwZyKw&ob=av2e

Lady Gaga is promoting feminism through her lyrics in this song. With a very fast and optimistic beat, she promotes being oneself and living life to the fullest. However, when you take a closer look at the music video, Lady Gaga is wearing a very small amount of clothing, shown in the picture below. Her clothes show off her entire body, and bones. As shown in the picture, Lady Gaga is extremely and perhaps too skinny, which may make girls feel bad about themselves. By doing this Lady Gaga is lowering herself to pop culture’s standards of having women being almost naked in order to succeed. She creates a very ironic and interesting situation by promoting and putting down feminism, all in one video.

The lyrics to “Born This Way” promote loving oneself for who you are. For example, in the chorus, Lady Gaga sings “I'm beautiful in my way, 'Cause God makes no mistakes, I'm on the right track baby, I was born this way.” By saying this she means that everyone is beautiful the way they were born. She goes on to sing that as long as you keep your head up, you will go far. Another optimistic quote in her lyrics is “In the religion of the insecure, I must be myself, respect my youth.” Lady Gaga is preaching that in today’s culture, many people are very insecure, but you must rise above and respect yourself and your peers. It will only do good if everyone lets go of insecurities and becomes who they are. These lyrics promote feminism because they are uplifting to women. They don’t put anyone down, however they encourage girls to be themselves.

By listening to “Born This Way” on the radio, a girl can feel rejuvenated and have complete confidence in herself. However, if she takes a closer look at the music video, this feeling may go away. Lady Gaga becomes a subject of the “male gaze” in her video. Male gaze is defined to be the idea that when we look at videos or images, we look at them a man might, because images are constructed to be looked at by men. The “Born This Way” video portrays Lady Gaga as very sexy. During parts of the chorus, she is shown dancing in a costume that consists of a black bra and underwear. She is also wearing chains and her tattoos are revealed. As she touches herself and bends in very flexible ways, she is saying “No matter gay, straight, or bi, lesbian, transgendered life, I’m on the right track baby, I was born to survive.” First of all, men can look at this video and probably not hear a word she is saying because they are so focused on her almost naked body. In addition to this, they see the way she is bending and touching herself, and probably think that means they can touch women like that too. Then, the girls who watch the video feel bad about themselves for not looking like Lady Gaga. Suddenly, the song that these girls earlier heard and felt confidence from, just completely made them feel insecure.

Lady Gaga gives us a very ironic view on feminism in her music video, “Born This Way.” When hearing this song, a girl will feel great about herself, which allows Lady Gaga to sell the song, and make millions of dollars. But, when watching the video, a girl can feel horrible that she doesn’t look as sexy as Lady Gaga, or can move in the same way she can. Either way, Lady Gaga is selling her music and video by the millions, so it addresses the question of whether she cares that she is also revealing herself. By succumbing to pop culture and the male gaze, Lady Gaga unfortunately goes against her values of feminism. She becomes a hypocrite, yet very successful artist, by revealing her body to the world.

Citations:

"Celebrities, Sports, World News and More!" Momsworld.org. 31 Mar. 2011. Web. 20 Sept. 2011. 〈=en>.

LadyGagaVEVO. "Lady Gaga - Born This Way." Youtube-Broadcast Yourself. 27 Feb. 2011. Web. 18 Sept. 2011. .

Zeisler, Andi. Feminism and Pop Culture. Berkeley, CA: Seal, 2008. Print.