for GDSP#13. Had a couple of ideas for this, of course, but nothing says devotion like collecting stray pieces of LEGO you find on the sidewalk.
oh, now you ask.
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrYS9FW73EA )
When I think of being sexy, in a traditional naked-chick-writhing kind of way, I think of “Taste” by the Magik Markers. It sounds angry and gritty, and the lyrics are about devouring someone, wasting them, destroying them with desire and drugs and desperation. Maybe that sums up “sexy” in a historically feminine way — over-made-up porn stars being abused and tossed aside, female celebrities relegated to obscurity when they pass their prime. But I’ve never really thought of it negatively, other than rejecting it as a personal taste. It’s just a mode to me, a form of rhetoric that still appeals to many men and women. I mean, maybe it doesn’t *appeal* to women aesthetically as much as it simply seems the easiest way to make a buck, or an unchallenging mode of operation, or easier than having to go out and date smart guys. And yeah, there’s probably a lot of exploitation still involved, as a lifestyle that hasn’t yet made it to any point on the feminism scale, other than a few recent “I chose this lifestyle, bitches” editorials. (But I generally afford too much respect to people’s lifestyle choices, and only attack people for being unimaginative or falling into easy stereotypes on an individual basis.)
But where I was going with this is that “Taste” is actually sexy. Genuinely so. While I could attack that lifestyle on an ideological basis, the fact is that a denigrated object of beauty in this instance is viscerally affective. The negativity, the hate, the spit and grime, it’s all coming from a woman: is this the appeal of the song, that sense of self-awareness that’s so rare? Were this song Britney-Spears-ized into a cheery pop tune, it’d be a gloss-over, a denial of the seedy underbelly of heteronormative sex appeal. “Taste” is maybe the only acceptable format in which to sing about a woman’s body being glorified as it’s defiled, because it shows that abusive male instinct for what it is — not a top-40 norm but a shameful fetish, one that’s therefore taboo enough to be a huge turn-on.
