Lady Gaga: Hope for the Homely

All they need is a brilliantly creative mind. Most of us would be happy to create one song, dance one of her dances.A major reason I am in academia is to escape the snippy girlish comments so prevalent in almost every other sphere. I read this column because I kept hoping it must be about something more than trashing a woman on her looks. It wasn’t.

NordicExpat, this isn’t feminism (middle-aged or other.) Mocking a female public figure for her looks does not count as “feminist criticism” no matter how much you try to stretch the definition of either term. Feminism means varied and sometimes mutually contradictory things nowadays, but gratuitously objectifying and degrading human beings is not one of them.This type of commentary wouldn’t be out of place in the New York Post, though!

@wendypiquemal,I’m sorry if I did not express myself well. I thought Laurie Fendrich was a self-identified feminist (which is why I said “middle-age feminists”). I did not mean to suggest that this is an example of feminism.

I’m not sure what feminism is, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t what Laurie Fendrich is doing here.

While I am not a major Lady GaGa fan, I hardly think she is homely. She has a very unique look, even without makeup. What she IS is a woman in charge of her life and what Laurie Fendrich appears to be is a jealous biddy. Every generation has its people who set society on its ear and Lady GaGa is one of those people…Madonna, Elvis, Richard Pryor…they are and were blatantly sexual in nature, whether verbally or physically (or both).That said, I found it rather disconcerting that this article, blog or otherwise, is in the Chronicle. It definitely is not top notch writing.

This article misses the point of Gaga’s outrageous clothing and acts. Yes, there is an overtly sexual element to her persona, and that is certainly no accident. But what makes her so compulsively popular is the way she manipulates that element into something entirely different than the average pop starlet (who, by the way, are often just as “homely” as Gaga, but have been packaged in a very different way). Hers is not the passivity of the desired woman, nor the false aggressiveness of scantily-clad “empowerment,” but something truly unique. Rather than be successful because she has raunched herself out, she has surpassed many more conventionally attractive singers precisely because the performance aspect of her persona is more complex than simple raunch. The result is that she is rarely regarded as “sexy” per se, but she is far more interesting to watch. Her songs, while addictive, are not necessarily “better” than anything else on the radio, but she performs herself, quite literally, in a way that appears to lend them depth. I’m not saying that this makes for high art – in fact, many of the “messages” of her work can be quite questionable – but suggesting that she is an unattractive woman who has become successful by raunching it up (especially when there are so many others who have) is simplistic and inaccurate.

Perhaps she can inspire other non-beauties to transcend their average appearance. Although I’m not into her inyourface performance strategies, I like working out to her inane diddies.I don’t know about Liz, but Halle had a little help with her appearance.

To contextualize Ms. Fendrich’s aesthetic, let’s not forget that Hilton Kramer (of the less than progressive New Criterion) praised her “allegiance to high modernism” in his review “Laurie Fendrich May Be Harbinger of New Movement” (NY Observer, 2003).To use the term “homely” reflects an aesthetic hegemony that I thought we’d left in the last millennium, or is there a modernist revival tea party being fomented?

There is nothing so beautiful as the homeliness of a beautiful woman.

There is “a standard of [female] beauty that society can agree upon.” It’s why Julia Roberts gets $20M a picture and Linda Hunt something less.* Rough around the edges, but it’s there. Women buy 55 percent of movie tickets, and go to the movies more frequently, so we’re not talking patriarchal box office receipts. * George Clooney gets more than Danny DeVito, too.

Re #21:1. “All of society” never agrees on anything.2. There are studies (whatever studies are worth) showing a remarkable consistency across cultures in what is considered female beauty. Variances and evolution, sure, but one culture’s Julia Roberts is not Linda Hunt to me, nor vice-versa. 3. True, Lady Gaga ought not to be judged entirely, or even majorly, on her non-showbiz physical appearance. She is, essentially, a pop singer. Quarter-finalist on “Idol” in an off year is my estimate. But she’s marketed and publicity-stunted herself quite cleverly into something more than that, credit where due.4. Lady Gaga, however, not entirely ironically judges herself by somewhat conventional standards of female beauty (blonde hair, red lips, a “sexy” figure) and goes to a lot of effort to approximate it.5. Tricky thing, this latter-day feminism. It used to be pretty clear: feminists refused to tart themselves up in low-cut dresses, podiatrically challenging shoes, make-up, and high-maintenance hair to conform to male standards of sexual attractiveness. Now, younger feminists say, “Well, that’s a form of power available to me, and I’m not going to deprive myself of it.” Who knows whether they’ve turned being a sex object into a weapon, or whether they’re deluding themselves. For many of us males, it’s certainly more fun to watch than the old kind of feminism.6. One of Gender Studies’ problems is that it has to negotiate a very tricky line between studying what is and agitating for what it thinks ought to be. Some economics departments are Keynesian, some are Friedmanite. But I doubt there’s a gender studies department out there whose thrust is in favor of what–for lack of a better term–might be called a “traditional” view of gender roles.

Re #23:* #20 quoted #19′s “a standard of beauty that society can agree upon.” Note qualifying word “can.” To bring up a fuzzy-around-the-edges term such as “society” and then insist that anything attributed to it must include ever last single member of the society is evasive nitpicking. If somebody says, “One of the things our society holds dear is personal freedom,” I could find a few thousand Maoists and Fascists in this country who don’t hold it so dear. But personal freedom would still remain something that our society holds dear.* “American Idol” contestants not having gone to Julliard might say more about the efficacy of Julliard in the pop music sweepstakes than it does about the talent of “Idol” contestants. * Sure, it’s possible Lady Gaga is parodying the appeal of makeup and boobs and that going semi-naked into the Yankees’ clubhouse was only a lampoon of a publicity stunt. a) Weak; the equivalent of “Hey, it was only a joke”; and b) Lady Gaga might intend it that way, but her audience, particularly the younger members of it, probably don’t take it that way.* The “watching” remark was a facetious goad. But one reason why a certain brand of feminism might not be taken seriously is the hyper thin-skinnedness that regards the word “homely” as an “attack.”* Read a little “Judy” Butler, but no Dr. Nels. One of the nice things about pseudononymous comments is that they’re judged as themselves, with no awe of a c.v. or “Well, if you’d have read my book…” operative.