I recently came across some interesting opinion pieces by Noisey writer Kat George, each detailing her appreciation for pop stars like Taylor Swift, Adele and Grimes, who do not play up to the male gaze or conform to the adage that 'sex sells' in their efforts to further their musical careers:
"Since Madonna sang about her sexuality in pearls and pointy bustiers, we’ve come to associate “innovation” and “progress” in our female pop stars as directly correlating to how empowering their nudity is. Which is fantastic, and we can give Nicki Minaj a standing ovation for unapologetically wearing her ass on her sleeve, but that’s not the only type of empowerment for a woman. Both Adele and Grimes provide an antithetical, but equally valuable contribution to the revolutionizing of women’s bodies in pop."
If the contemporary phenomenon of the overtly sexualized female pop star begins with Madonna (and persists via the bodies of Cher, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Rihanna, Janet Jackson, Kylie Minogue, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Iggy Azalea and Ariana Grande), then it can be traced back to her primary inspiration: 1950s film star Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), who is perhaps best known for 're-sexualizing' the female body in popular culture. While Taylor Swift, Adele and Grimes can be credited for 'opting out' of sexualizing their image (so can Lorde), none of them have actually questioned the sexualization of the female musician in their music.
It would seem that their British counterparts have been the ones to explicitly tackle the thorny question of whether public sexualization amounts to empowerment or exploitation. Lily Allen's "The Fear" and "Hard Out Here" readily comes to mind, as does M.I.A.'s "XXXO", a single from her third studio album Maya (2010). The title combines the pornographic connotations of 'XXX' and the juvenile flirtations of 'XOXO', and M.I.A. discreetly alternates between singing 'XXXO' and 'Excess Sex Oh' to foreground her ambivalence about being a sex symbol:
'Upload a photoSee belowIf you like what you seeYou can download and storeWe can find waysTo expand what you knowI can be that actress you be Tarantino'
M.I.A. can be the actress to the pop culture consumer's Tarantino, but she won't. As she declares during the chorus, there is a gap that will remain between what people expect from her and what she will deliver: 'You want me be somebody who I'm really not'. LATimes' Ann Powers notes that Maya departs from M.I.A.'s previous agitprop focus by examining the relationship between her political commentary and her personal sentiments towards sex and romance:
""XXXO" is actually not about sex, but about the making of a sex symbol, the other matter preoccupying M.I.A. these days. Against a chirpy background of "you want me," she sings in a style not unlike the consciously girlish coo of early 1980s New Wavers, about a seduction that turns out to be artistic, not sensual. The male in the picture is her "Tarantino," less likely a lover than a producer trying to turn her big ideas into something more containable, like a come-on. "I can be that actress," she murmurs. But she really can't. She's all push and pull; like her fellow "post-feminist" art star Karen O, she understands that something's gotta break -- either the role designed for her, or herself."
And as if the song wasn't already enough food for thought, M.I.A. went on to push the envelope further when she appeared on a red carpet in a colorful burqa, adorned with pink hearts, mushroom clouds and some of the lyrics from "XXXO". TIME ranked it No. 2 on their Top 10 Fashion Statements of 2010, noting that the burqa (like the sexualized pop star's body) could be interpreted in two ways: "For many, it's a symbol of oppression, representing the systematic silencing of female voices. For others, it's a symbol of liberation, freeing the women who wear it from oversexualization or objectification of the female form."
