She took the world by storm in 2008 with the release of her first studio album The Fame and shows no signs of slowing down. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, formally known as Lady Gaga, has an overly exaggerated on-stage persona, and is an artist that is like no other, attracting the attention of the media and scholars ever since. She has built an empire based on self-love – a song, album, and nonprofit foundation based on "empowering youth" and "inspring bravery" (Lady Gaga, 2017). Through both her music and her eccentric appearance in the media, Lady Gaga has been able to challenge dominant gender roles publicly, and often in over-dramatic ways (Musulin, 2012). Everything about her from the way she dresses to the lyrics of her songs, …show more content…
This paper will argue that Lady Gaga 's "Born this Way" speaks to gender performativity by highlighting individual empowerment, and the need to put an end to stereotypes and stigma surrounding minority groups, while using Gaga Feminism as an illustration of …show more content…
Within his article, "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal" Jack Halberstam states that "… instead of pitting bodies with vaginas against bodies with penises, I argue that we are living in a new world where the categories of male and female are rapidly being updated all around us" (Halberstam, 2012). In saying this, Halberstam is offering Gaga up as a symbol of a new form of feminism, known as Gaga Feminism; here, Halberstam "makes sense of the tectonic cultural shifts that have transformed gender and sexual politics in the alst few decades" (Halberstam, 2012). He explains Gaga feminism as rejecting the fixed roles of males and females, while celebrating the dissemination of old social models of desire, gender and sexuality (Halberstam, 2012). Instead, it recognizes multiple genders, that contribute to the collapse of our current sex-gender systems, offering up new forms of relation, intimacy, and technology (Halberstam, 2012). Gaga Feminism is further described as "the phony, the unreal, and the speculative," coming from the destabilization of the gender system apparent by the visibility of trans people, the economic collapse, and alternate family structures (Kustritz, 2014). In saying this, Halberstam makes mention that Gaga Feminism derives from the performer, and encapsulates everything she stands for, but it is not limited to the artist herself (Halberstam,
The overall tone she uses towards the notion is somewhat disgust and contempt. She describes the matter as “there are worrying signs that battle to put gender and sexuality at the forefront of all teaching and learning is going too far.” The use of scare quotes throughout the piece suggest that the words should not be taken at face value. It is often used to suggest disbelief or actual disagreement with the words as they are being used, as if the words don’t actually exist. Examples comprise “cisgenderism”, “heterosexism”, “transgender” and “gender dysphoria”, all of which are genuine words in the oxford dictionary.
Alanis Morissette is a well known name in the musical industry. She has brought a passion for self expression into every song that she produces. Her musical career began in Canada in the early 90s and with a two-album recording contract with MCA Records; she released two successful dance pop albums Alanis and Now Is the Time. After producing these two albums she wanted to take her career to the next level but that was not the direction of the recording company. So they parted ways, and Morissette was introduced to Scott Welch.
Divisions within feminism through differences are demobilizing the necessary movement required to create change. In Audre Lorde’s piece, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”, Lorde uses her experience at NYU’s Humanities conference to address how racism and homophobia are present in feminism. Furthermore, she believes not all women of a particular identity share the same experiences, so to change the patriarchy, feminists must work together and use their differences as a uniting factor rather than something to categorize and separate women. Through the reference to metaphor- the master house and the master’s tools- and the use of pathos, Lorde ensures to stress that differences between people need to be used as empowerment
Feminism is the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes. Throughout history, many very influential women have contributed to the rise of the feminist movement and distinguished what it meant to be a feminist. It is very important to recognize that the goals of feminism have changed vastly over time. We see this in the documents written by Olympe de Gouges in France, 1791, who some recognize as the world’s first feminist, and bell hooks in the United States in 2000, who is known for her feminist theory focused on intersectionality. The goals of feminism have changed over time, which can be seen in Olympe de Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman, and bell hook’s Sisterhood is Still Powerful.
An article we read this semester, Girls Gone Anti-Feminist highlights the disconnect between feminism in the 70s to feminism by millennials today. One interesting thing I found in this article was the way the author compared Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin to the Spice Girls and Lady Gaga as representing feminism. Normally, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin are not mentioned in the same sentence as the Spice Girls and Lady Gaga as they are in completely different professions and have different fan basses and followers. However, all of them embody the idea that a woman can be anything she wants to be from a singer to President of the United States. The way the author compares these women points out the differences in the broad ways feminism can be represented.
She points to the deficiency of the Bakhtinian theory that fails to establish dialogism between the grotesque body and the female one. While explaining that although he relates the grotesque body to the images of womb, pregnancy and childbirth, he fails to recognize their close affinity to “to social relations of gender” (The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity 63). She condemns the Bakhtinian contradictory treatment of the female body, which simultaneously celebrates its generative and subversively debasing potential and abbreviates it to be a mere vessel to give new birth (RW 240). While trying to explain what “remains repressed and undeveloped” in her male counterpart, Russo points to the subversive potential of the female grotesque to overthrow the normative constraints on female actand look (Russo 63). “[D]efined […] in relation to the ideal, standard, or normative form” of the twentieth century, this work tends to argue that the female grotesque in contemporary age still has the power to create horror as it plays a fundamental role “to identity formation for both men and women as a space of risk and abjection” (Russo 12, Miles
During the 1950s and 60s, many young teens started to rebel in various ways to break free from the ‘Ozzie and Harriet fantasy’ their parents and generations before them have experienced. This was displayed through the themes of various rock and roll songs. A specific theme described in many songs at that time was the defiance of stereotypical gender roles. Despite being common back then, this theme and many others at that time are still evident in modern music today. A prime example of the defiance of stereotypical gender roles in modern day music is Lady Gaga.
Sexism is a prevalent issue that society struggles with due to all to of the negative stereotypes that are created. Today numerous musicians bring awareness to sexism through there songs, one being Beyonce. The popular musician Beyonce fights for women’s empowerment in her music in order to unite women and go against sexism and stereotypes in her popular songs “Flawless”, “If I were a boy”,“Lemonade”, and several more. Beyonce says, "I try to write songs and sing songs that we as women need to hear". "I know sometimes it 's hard to realize how amazing we are.
Octavia Butler is an Afrofuturist, science fiction author who writes many dystopian stories that allude to questions about gender, social structures, and an individual’s ability to control her body and sexuality. When people think of speculative and science fiction they tend to think of nerdy white men writing stories about space and light sabers, but Octavia Butler challenges this stereotype herself by being one of the few African American women in this genre. In Octavia Butler’s speculative fiction short story “Speech Sounds” there is a reversal of gender roles and a strong idea of feminism that is portrayed through the main character Rye. There is also the use of simile and metaphor to help point out flaws in the social structure of the story and the world of the reader.
Lady GaGa uses all kinds of media, social networking to promote herself as well as her passion of equality. The fakebook page shows her flamboyant outfits, links to YouTube videos and her own personal posting to her fans. The page provides many rhetorical forms
In Butler’s theory, she introduces the idea that each woman’s feminism is her
This paper will discuss how Taylor Swift exemplifies an icon who uses feminism as an embellishment for her own personal brand. First it will discuss how feminism is defined and construed in mainstream popular culture. With this
Most songs are designed to entertain, however, they also communicate a certain message that the rhetor(s) intend to share with an audience. Songs can defy societal norms and provide a new perception of a problem in our culture. Dr. Funnell uses Beyoncé’s song, Flawless, as a prime example in her “broad based discussions about the women, the industries, and the messages in popular culture that are being presented to our society and what effects they have”. So when she uses
Sexism is an issue that’s plagued humanity for thousands of years. In 2016 in the majority of the world, women achieve the same opportunities for education and higher learning as men do whether school, college, internet education, learning on the job etc. therefore, the very concept of the female inferiority is illogical and impractical. However, due to how deeply rooted sexism has become in society, it’s difficult to say whether progress has eliminated sexism or not. Progress has a positive connotation; it involves advancement, development, and growth into a better form of whatever focus is at hand, therefore we must evaluate the growth of our society and culture and examine whether sexism has decreased at all and if it has, whether it was the growth of our society and culture that stimulated the decrease of sexism.
She then mentions how transgenders feel excluded due to the use of the words “women” and “vagina”, and how women are standing up for themselves and their body anatomy. She quotes how when actress Martha Plimpton was criticized for defending the word “vagina” Plimpton responded by saying, “given that without a vagina, there is no pregnancy or abortion?” (❡ 21). This is of