Lady Pop Icons: Musicians or Soft-core Porn Stars???

Girls Gone Wild: As the music industry continues to shift and videos enjoy a comeback online, more and more provocative clips are hitting the web, most of them made by women

Do we see pop icons like Britney Spears, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Christina Aguillera, the Pussycat Dolls, etc. as musicians or soft-core porn stars?  Are they serious singers full of talent that should be taken seriously for their skills?  Or are those skills masked with their bodies?  Can these women make it in the mainstream music business without taking their clothes off?  Or do they have to strip in order to play with the boys? 

Further, do these pop icons WANT to be naked and dance like this? Do they want their music and identity to be all about sex? OR Do they want to be taken seriously as musicians and singers? Do they want people to look past their bodies and hear what is coming out of their mouths? 

And most strikingly, WHY CAN'T THERE BE A BALANCE?!  Why can't these women balance the focus on the body with the focus on the music?  Why can't they pose sexy sometimes and pose normally other times?  Why can't they switch up the outfits and put on a pair of jeans?

I feel like those questions can't really be answered until we look at the music industry itself. Without being a part of it, it is my understanding that various record labels - namely those of pop culture and more mainstreamed music - require these sorts of sexual identities as part of contracts or sales deals. They find a woman with talent who is pretty, sign her up for a record deal, and over time, encourage her in many smaller ways to become sexier and sexier. If you look at various artists, they all start off "fairly innocent" and as their success increases, their clothes come off. Other record labels don't seem to have this problem. Indie music, country music, etc. don't have this issue with their female artists. So generally, I feel like it's very much imbedded in the culture of pop and mainstream music. It's in the record labels, the people that run that show and own the music, the women's thirst for fame, the pressure from viewers and fans to be a certain way, awards shows, MTV, magazine companies, etc. It's coming from all over really, but a culture in which these particular singers/musicians must be hyper sexualized has certainly been created.

 

So the final questions: do we take them seriously? Are they okay with themselves and their identities in this light, or do they want us to see them as serious musicians? Personally, I like to hope that they want us to see them as serious musicians. With that said, not when they make their music all about their own bodies. They produce music that can be fun to dance to and for many people, that may be the extent of it.  The day one of these stars puts out a CD without a music video, without a coverpage spread to promote it, etc., perhaps it would be easier to take them seriously. Because we would see them and their music rather than their bodies.

I think my views of this particular aspect of mainstream music and its industry can be summed up in two fairly recent events:
1.  Beyonce's song "Single Ladies" won some kind of music award for best single of 2009. (I won't even pretend to know exactly what it was.  I only remember hearing about it.)  Beyonce didn't receive the award; the MAN who wrote it did. Beyonce is touted as being an "independent woman" because of her songs and such, but a closer look into the industry - just looking at one of her CD's and who writes and photographs everything, you can see that she is 100% "ran by" men. So truly, we can't really say she's an "independent woman" when men are writing her "independent woman" lyrics and creating the image for her.

2.  Lady Gaga has an alternative music identity.  She once went by her real name, Stefanie, and produced an album entitled, "Red and Blue".  Not unlike her current albums, she wrote all of the songs.  However, these songs were more piano based and had a Vanessa Carlton meets Michelle Branch vibe to them.  And they were not about hook ups and fame.  She wore little make-up and presented herself as herself rather than a parody of pop culture and icons.  Her identity as a musician was 100% different than it is today.  Her musical identity of Stefanie is almost entirely unknown, while Lady Gaga is known around the world.  So what happened?  What caused NYU's School of the Arts educated Stefanie to do a complete 360 and morph into Lady Gaga?  Was it change and growth that comes with young adulthood?  Was it a change in musical taste?  OR Was it the inability to get her musical career off the ground otherwise? 

Perhaps the bigger question here is - what kind of world is this particular culture of music creating for young girls?  How does that impact young boys and their relations to young girls?  We can't deny that, while this pop music is not AIMED at young girls, it is largely young girls who follow and appreciate it.  And it is largely young girls who are impacted by it, and this impact carries into many facets of adulthood. 

When "Single Ladies" goes from this: 

To this:

8 Year Olds Dance to "Single Ladies"

We should be concerned. 

We should hold this pop culture accountable for their actions as being negligent towards children for the pure and simple fact that this culture is well aware of their audiences.