While neither Taylor Swift nor Miley Cyrus can really be said to have anything resembling talent (Taylor repeats the same stories over and over and recycle chords while Miley...well, she's just bein' Miley), I decidedly fall on Team Miley. Influence-wise (did I just make that up? whatever, let's roll with it), I think Miley is much better than Taylor.
Taylor is purity embodied. Her songs and her interviews are devoid of any sense of sexuality or development; despite the fact that she was banging one of the hottest males ever to grace this earth (click here for evidence!), she never gave off a hint of sexual heat or of normal teen growth. She was the born the same year as myself and most of the other bloggers here at FF, yet she seems to be stuck in this false nostalgic idea of what high school love is like: handholding and football games and dances. She's innocent. We're, as a culture, comforted by this.
But this is all bullshit--she didn't even go to high school (and if she had, given her hometown's proximity to Reading, PA, it would NOT have been an experience of hand holding, it would've been about drug dealing)! Her ideas about high school and boys and dating are based on a myth of cultural milieu and images that she's absorbed and now spits back out to young girls in the form of repetitive songs. Her lyrics are bone-chilling sometimes in their capacity to ignore sexuality or to treat it with a negative glance. Consider the song "Fifteen," which chronicles a girl's freshmen year of high school. One line in particular drives me nuts: "Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind and we both cried." What was Abigail's everything? Her hymen. Can having your first time with someone who doesn't care about you with mutuality be awful? Of course. But is your virginity your "everything?" I can't speak for this Abigail character or Taylor, but for me, there's a hell of a lot more to me than the status of my hymen (perhaps my sparkling wit, my intelligence, my personality...hell, even just my tits?).
Taylor also perfectly illustrates what Jessica Valenti (founder and editor of Feministing) talks about in "Purely Rape" from Yes Means Yes when she says, "At the heart of the purity myth is who gets to be positioned as 'pure.' The perfect virgin as imagined in US culture is sexy but not sexual. She's young, white, and skinny. She's accessible and eager to please. 'Virgin' is a designation for those who fit into what a certain standard of women are supposed to look like. The positioning of a kind of girl as good and 'clean,' of course, implies that the rest of us are dirty," (page 300, for those source maniacs).
And what does this make Miley? Dirty (virgin/whore dichotomy? My favorite!).
I give Miley a scrap of credit: I can't imagine how awkward it is to come of age under the spotlight of Disney-related fame, and you can tell she's reveling in it now (her latest single's title, "Can't be tamed," tells you all you need to know). While I don't think pole dancing at the Teen Choice Awards was necessarily appropriate, sexy, or an especially "feminist" thing to do, she at least is acknowledging the flourishing to sexuality and sexual feelings that she's experiencing, while Taylor brushes them under the rug and cries some more tears on her guitar while wearing a white sundress.
I think Miley makes people uncomfortable because she's so uncouth about her sexual development. Her family has the trappings of a white trash family that stumbled accidentally into money. They are tasteless (her mother showed off her angel wing back tattoos that were exposed by her absurdly expensive gown at some awards show, and the red carpet host even joked that she might be a bad influenced on the newly-tatted Miley), they are in your face with it. Miley can't just blossom into a woman; she grinds on a pole to show us she's growing up. I don't particularly endorse this form of sexual expression (it's exactly what we get from every other source for young girls), but at least she is acknowledging this piece of herself.
Taylor, on the other hand, refuses to envelope that piece into her identity, to the point where she hasn't even said she's pro- or anti-abstinence. She just ignores it entirely. It seems to be a recipe for financial success (girlfriend must be ballin' outrageous), but she's giving her fans only a small portrait of what growing up is really like. She's selling them short.
Much love,
Sheriff
Here's the thing. I think you have two extremes represented in these two young women, or at least their public personas. Miley is trying to grow up in the spotlight of the media and taking the Christina Aguilera route, i.e. publicly asserting and claiming her sexuality and telling people to stop thinking of her as a kid or a tween because she's growing up. Jezebel actually wrote a great piece about her that if you haven't seen I highly recommend: http://jezebel.com/5569967/leave-mileys-crotch-alone
ReplyDeleteTaylor Swift on the other hand has gone to the opposite extreme of playing the innocent virgin route. I think both of these things are problematic; however, I take issue with your criticism of Taylor Swift's decision to not publicly take any stance on her own sexuality. I agree her songs/lyrics are problematic, the entire image that she or her record company is having her play feeds into an unhealthy purity ideal, but at the same time do you really think it necessary for her to publicly claim her sexuality or her views on abstinence? Just because she doesn't wear an abstinence ring or grind on a pole doesn't mean that she is not aware of or in command of her sexuality in her private life.
They're absolutely two extreme public personas, and that's why they're pitted against each other constantly: because they perfectly bring to light the virgin/whore dichotomy. There's little nuance to sexuality in the public light.
ReplyDeleteAnd I do agree that she doesn't need to proclaim her views on sex and sexuality publicly, but given the content of her songs and the image she seeks to portray, I wouldn't mind seeing it and definitely think it would better serve her younger fans by giving a more realistic image of what being a growing women looks like. That's all I'm saying.
-Jackie
Even though they're pitted against each other by the media, that doesn't mean we have to participate. It's fine to identify with one more than the other, but I don't think that means we have to promote one over the other.
ReplyDeleteSexuality is complicated and varied. While I'm not in favor of teaching abstinence as the best option for everyone, it really is the best option for some young people (and some adults). I find Swift's message (whether it's her own design or that of her label and handlers) refreshingly honest about the experience many young girls have. There is no singular "realistic image of what being a growing women looks like."
Since you mentioned "Fifteen" specifically, I think it's worth looking at more of the lyrics. The song to me is about not taking young boys too seriously: 'Cause when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you
You're gonna believe them...But in your life you'll do things greater than
Dating the boy on the football team
But I didn't know it at fifteen...When all you wanted was to be wanted
Wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now...Back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday
But I realized some bigger dreams of mine
To me this all says don't get too hung up on boys when you're young because there are way more important things than what some guy thinks of you. That last line directly proceeds the one you quoted about Abigail. I would argue that Abigail's "everything" is not necessarily her hymen. To me, giving someone your "everything" means being totally dependent and emotionally invested in them, not necessarily having sex. Given the rest of the lyrics, I think this is a totally plausible explanation.
I think it's great that someone's out there telling girls they don't have to have sex if they don't want to. That message is just as important as telling them to have all the sex they want.
I do agree that her song could be interpreted that way. Given a lot of the content of her other songs, in which she asks for Romeo to save her, it's hard to reconcile the idea that she might be making a plea for some sort of independence and to not get hung up on boys.
ReplyDeleteAnd unfortunately, she doesn't say a word about whether girls don't have to have sex. She specifically stays mum on the topic http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1607062/20090316/swift__taylor.jhtml
Her stated reason for keeping her virginity status private, according to that article, is that she doesn't want people to picture her naked, which is to say, I suppose, to think of her in a sexual context. What's wrong with that, exactly? I don't see why she can't sing about romance and still keep her own sex life private. I can't imagine what it would be like to be 20 and have interviewers ask me if I had had sex yet. I'd probably tell them it's none of their business. What is she supposed to say? "Oh, yeah, I have sex all the time" "Yeah, I totally boned Taylor Lautner." Is Taylor Lautner a virgin? Does anyone care? Where are all the young male celebrities giving sex advice to teen boys?
ReplyDeleteI don't like the level of secrecy that people in the US generally have about their sex lives, but it's any individual person's right to keep that part of themselves private. I don't think the standards for celebrities should be any different than the rest of us in this regard. It is helpful when some spread a positive message (I think it's cool that Lady Gaga talks about being celibate, for example) but I don't expect any particular one to take a stand.
The song about Romeo you referenced ("Love Story" I believe, unless there's another) could also be read a number of ways. Yes, the boyfriend-as-savior theme is tired and problematic, but there's more going on in that song. Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone could be interpreted as exercising sexual agency. I don't really know what to make of this line: 'Cause you were Romeo,
I was a scarlet letter but in light of the hints at an overbearing and perhaps abusive father (We keep quiet, 'cause we're dead if he knew) perhaps the narrator's been caught in a sexual transgression before? Is there another way to interpret one identifying as a "scarlet letter"?
I guess Swift is not specifically telling girls they don't have to have sex, as I implied she was, but the fact that she presents herself as, essentially, non-sexual (or something close to it) has pretty much the same effect. At least she's not playing up her virginity for sexual titillation like Britney did.
I'm probably reading too much into the line (I was the only one in my English class who actually liked The Scarlet Letter when we read it, and then I did costumes for my school's production two years later), but the fact that she's saying "I was a scarlet letter" rather than "wore" or something like that made me think of Pearl. She's the child that results from the adultery, and she's wearing a red dress at one point and the townsfolk whisper 'there goes the woman of the scarlet letter, with the letter's living likeness by her side' (or some such, singlequotes are because I'm too lazy to look it up). So the idea of being the scarlet letter implies to me that she's more Pearl than Hester- expected to be the one who's transgressing because of something outside her control shaping everyone else's perceptions of her.
ReplyDeleteWow! Innnnnteresting. I made a comic book of The Scarlet Letter for a project in English class but I don't remember it as well as you. I like that Swift obviously had the same required reading list we did.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Adrienne. Both of these girls have very intentional images, created both by them and by the people they work for. Also, Taylor may recycle stories and chords in her songs, but she writes them. This has been her experience. And like Adrienne mentioned, that experience could feel totally different than that of another girl, and that's ok. Who knows if Miley won't look back on her drastic transformation from cute child star to pole-dancing pop star with a bit of regret? Same goes for Taylor. Both public personas are a reflection of whatever is going on individually, for each of them, (and for their record labels, managers and stylists) right now.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing: these girls are performers. They have both obviously wanted to be onstage singing for all or most of their lives. Look at it from their perspective--yes there is a certain accountability to being in the public eye, especially when your audience consists mostly of young girls, but they didn't sign up to be spokespeople--they signed up to be performers. Their careers aren't just about their fans, they're also about the artists' own desires, dreams and goals. Speaking publicly and singing about sexuality is a choice for each of them--I think there are positive and negative ramifications for their young female audiences in both of their cases.
oh and tag this on too.... Taylor doesn't seem to be using her "pure" quality as a means to be perceived as sexy by male fans. To me it just looks like that's who she is. Honestly, it's kind of refreshing...Miley's sexual expression (though I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing) is just more of the same, what girls get fed by pop stars and the media every day about what their sexuality should look like.
ReplyDelete