Exploring Representations of Femininity in Pop Music

Videos of the 1980s and 2000s

0512573

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Contents Page

Abstract i

Literature Review 1
Visual Culture and Representation 2
What is Femininity? 3
Popular Culture and ‘Images of Women’ 4
Post-Feminism? 7
Music Videos 9
The media and Social Constructionism 10
Women and Sexuality 11

Methodological Approaches
13
Data Gathering 13
Methodology 14
What is Textual Analysis? 15
Sampling 17

‘Lights…Camera…Action’: Findings and Discussion 19

‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’-Cyndi Lauper (1983) 20
‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’-Whitney Houston (1987) 26
‘Express Yourself’-Madonna (1989) 32
‘Most Girls’-Pink (2000) 39
‘Dirrty’-Christina Aguilera (2002) 45
‘Hollywood’-Madonna (2003) 52
To Sum Up 58

‘That’s A Wrap’: Conclusion 60

References 63

Appendix 67

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 Literature Review

This section is a review of relevant background literature including literature on the politics of

representation, popular culture and feminist writing on women’s representations in the media,

which outlines their perspectives and findings and discusses the different stereotypes and

representations that have been detected.

“One of the most important contributions feminist theory has made

to the larger field of feminist inquiry has been the argument that

the image of the woman is a ‘construction’. As this argument goes,

the image is a product of culture in several senses at once-as it has

been industrially, manufactured, as it has been pieced together

according to aesthetic rules pertaining to lighting, gesture and

composition, and as it has been ‘prefabricated’ by men.”

(Gaines & Herzog, 1990:1)

The recent and general resurgence of feminism and feminist theory has been apparent in the

growing interest shown by cultural studies and the sociology of culture in popular cultural

representations of women. Feminism as an intellectual activity and a political strategy has a long

history (Spender 1983 cited in Strinati 2004).

It is possible to argue that there have been at least three strands of feminism which have

been significant: liberal feminism, which criticises the unequal and exploitative representation of

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women in the media and popular culture and argues for equal opportunities; radical feminism,

which sees the interests of men and women as being fundamentally and inevitably divergent,

regards patriarchy or the control and repression of women by men as the most crucial historical

form of social division and oppression, and argues for a strategy of female separatism; and

socialist feminism which accepts the stress on patriarchy but tries to incorporate it into the

analysis of capitalism, and argues for the radical transformation of the relations between the

genders as an integral part of the emergence of a socialist society. More recently in the study of

popular culture, these differences appear to have become blurred as attention has shifted away

from radical feminism and towards other theories such as postmodernism. Nowadays, feminism

consists of the argument that the inequalities in gender power relations are socially and culturally

constructed.

Visual Culture and Representation

We live in a culture that is increasingly permeated by visual images with a variety of purposes

and intended effects. These images can produce in us a wide array of emotions and responses:

pleasure, desire, anger, disgust, confusion or curiosity. We invest the images we create and

encounter on a daily basis with significant power – for instance, the power to conjure an absent

person, the power to calm or incite to action, the power to persuade or mystify. A single image

can serve a multitude of purposes, appear in a range of settings and mean different things to

different people.

‘Representation’ refers to the use of language and images to create meaning about the

world around us. Over time, images have been used to represent, make meaning of, and convey

various sentiments about nature, society, and culture as well as to represent imaginary worlds

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and abstract concepts (Sturken; Cartwright 2001). Representation brings me to the subject of this

dissertation. From its beginnings, feminism has regarded language and images as crucial in

shaping women’s lives. From this beginning, there followed critiques of stereotypical

representations of women in films and advertisements, and studies of the ways in which

language and image defines and confines women. Before I go on to talk about the research that

has been conducted on female media representations and their findings, since the key overall

theme of the research is femininity and how it is represented in contemporary music videos, I

would firstly like to review ideas about femininity and how these definitions link to the research.

‘What is femininity?’

This is a question, which has exercised feminist writers for decades, and many feminist writers

have attempted to pin down the elusive concept of femininity. For example, Brownmiller (1984

cited in Holland 2004:7) asserts that ‘femininity is an essence, is a romantic sentiment, a

nostalgic tradition of imposed limitations’. Wolf (1990 cited in Holland 2004:7) argues that

‘femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever a society happens to be selling. If femininity

means female sexuality…women never lost it and do not need to buy it back’. ‘Femininity’ as a

concept holds many shifting, subjective components and expectations and there can be no one

definition. It is a ‘curiously intangible and fluid term’ (Thesander 1997 cited in Holland 2004:

35). For many second-wave feminists, femininity was seen as fundamental to understanding

women’s oppression. Girls it was often claimed were socialized into feminine values and

behaviour, which were associated with passivity, submissiveness and dependence on males.

Smith (1988 cited in Holland 2004:10) refutes the idea of femininity as only an effect of

patriarchy or that women are merely the passive dupes of either mass media or male power. She

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argues that it is important to avoid “the treatment of women as passive victims…to recognize

women’s active and creative part…they are active, they create themselves”.

Fixed definitions reduce femininity to an inappropriately static phenomenon for

something lived by millions of women who are constantly changing and evolving. If we see

femininity as a discourse (that is, a set of ideas, rules and beliefs), we ‘shift away from viewing it

as a normative order’ (Smith 1988 cited in Holland 2004:35) and in doing so we see more

clearly how femininity is constructed. The connotations of being described as a ‘typically’

feminine woman include assumptions about vulnerability, physical strength, intelligence and

sexual availability.

By the mid 1970’s, the study of women and popular culture often centred on questions

about ‘images of women’ (Hollows 2000:21). In the US much of this research continued the

project started with Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (1963), a foundational text of

second-wave feminism, which was an analysis of the position of women in Western society, and

examined how the media played a role in socialising women into restrictive notions of

femininity.

Popular culture and ‘Images of Women’

Popular culture has been the object of a great deal of feminist analysis. As John Fiske has

pointed out:

“Popular culture is always part of power relations; it always bears traces of the constant

struggle between domination and subordination, between power and various forms of

resistance to it or evasions of it…”

(Fiske 1989 cited in Hollows 2000: 26)

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Central questions to this research include how femininity is represented in music videos and

whether women are challenging stereotypes or adopting traditional representations.

Much research has been conducted on female media representations. Advertising and the

representation of women are areas of popular culture, which have attracted the attention of

feminists. Baehr (1981 cited in Strinati 2004: 166) comments: ‘from its very beginnings the

Women’s movement has responded critically, often angrily, to what it has rather loosely called

“sexism in the media”. Gillian Dyer (1982: 97) in her analysis of advertisements notes:

‘analysis of ads suggests that gender is routinely portrayed according to traditional

cultural stereotypes: women are shown as very feminine, as “sex objects”, as

housewives, mothers’.

These findings can be compared with Angela McRobbie’s analysis of magazines, which comes

to similar conclusions. McRobbie offers one of the most thoughtful analyses of gender and

popular culture. She observes patriarchal ideology at work in media products, in particular

magazines in the 1970’s such as Jackie. According to McRobbie (1991), Jackie magazine is

constructed in such a way as to depict female gender identity as based on romantic love, finding

a man and being a good housewife.

Recurring patterns are found when analysing images of women in film. Laura Mulvey

(1975), in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, which is possibly the most frequently cited

piece of feminist film criticism, argues that dominant cinema speaks neither ‘for’ women nor ‘of’

women, but rather speaks a discourse of male Oedipal desire, a possessive, sadistic desire

haunted by the fear of sexual difference defined by the mother’s castration by the Father. Mulvey

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asserts that film represents women through a fetishistic visual process that simultaneously denies

and asserts their sexual difference. Woman is objectified by the male’s controlling gaze and has

only to be fetishised through available cinematic technique: lighting, costuming, camera

placement and editing. She is fetishised into a part object with visual emphasis added through

perspective, angle, or lighting to the legs, buttocks, breasts, face. Film as an oppressive

mechanism fashions the female into a passive spectacle for the male look. The female can only

function as the object of the narrative and signify passivity.

These conclusions support what Tuchman calls the ‘symbolic annihilation’ of women

(Tuchman 1981 cited in Strinati 2004: 163). Women are represented by stereotypes based on

sexual attractiveness and the performance of domestic labour. Tuchman (1981 cited in Strinati

2004:163) relates this notion of ‘symbolic annihilation’ to the ‘reflection hypothesis’, which

suggests that the mass media reflect the dominant social values in society. These concern, not the

society as it really is, but its ‘symbolic representation’, how it would like to see itself (Tuchman

1981 cited in Strinati 2004: 163).

The above findings can be compared with those from more recent studies of female

media representations, which come to different conclusions. McRobbie (1999), in her book In

the Culture Society, discusses the shifting representations of femininity in visual media and print

culture since the 1970’s, by analysing Just Seventeen magazine (which was launched in the

1980s). McRobbie’s recent approaches of feminism are her notions of the ‘changing modes of

femininity’ and ‘new sexualities’ (McRobbie 1999: 50). ‘New Sexualities’ refer to ‘images and

texts, which break decisively with the conventions of feminine behaviour by representing

females as lustful young women’ (McRobbie 1999: 50). According to McRobbie, women have

therefore departed the notions of ladylike behaviour and have entered a notion of sex. They have

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dramatically changed in their attitudes and have become sexual. The girl is no longer a slave for

love. Romance is an absent category in Just Seventeen. There is more of the self in this new

vocabulary of femininity, much more self-esteem and autonomy, which relates to what is called

‘post feminism’.

Post-feminism?

Post-feminism refers to an active process by which feminist gains of the 1970s come to

be undermined (McRobbie 2004). It proposes that through an ‘array of machinations’, elements

of contemporary popular culture are effective in regard to this ‘undoing’ of feminism (McRobbie

2004:255). Females endorse in female individualisation. By using the term ‘female

individualisation’ I am drawing on the concept of individualisation, which is discussed at length

by sociologist Giddens (1991). He emphasizes the enlargement of freedom and choice, which

appears to speak directly to the post-feminism generation. ‘Reflexive modernisation’ (Giddens

1991:75) allows females to be more independent and invent their own structures or in other

words be self-managing. Females now choose what kind of life they want to live. They have

become reflexive in many aspects of their lives: sexuality and leisure practices. McRobbie

identifies signs of ‘progress’ (McRobbie 1991:182). Females are being encouraged to achieve

their individual style and be creative. This ‘takes on a more confident edge’ (McRobbie

1991:182). This new individuality and confidence, McRobbie argues, is an advance on the

conformity of traditional female representations.

The roles females in recent decades are adopting are ‘take charge roles rather than usual

family roles’ (Demming 1992 cited in Lotz 2001:107). They are shaped within the roles of ‘new’

femininities and ‘new’ subjectivities located in a ‘girl power’ discourse (Jackson 2006:483).

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‘Girl Power’ girls know what they want and how they want to get it and are assertive, self-

inventive and sexual. This means subjectivity for women and ‘girl power’, not passivity and

objectification.

However, McCabe and Akass have come to different conclusions. They (2006) have

offered a critical response to one of the most talked about show on contemporary television:

Desperate Housewives. They argue, Desperate Housewives, a classic soap opera format, echoes

the suburban dystopias and reinforces the ideas of a dated version of suburbia and a version of

male-female relationships that have long past. Yet, in spite of the fact that the five female

protagonists have far more choices than women in previous generations, all are suffering from

the gap between ideals and reality. No less than for earlier generations, their lives fail to live up

to the brochure. Their relationships with men are unsatisfactory and their relationships with their

children are difficult. McCabe and Akass argue that despite the women’s movement efforts to

liberate women from the exile of the domestic sphere, Desperate Housewives, like domestic

reality television, returns women to the home. As in the domestic reality television series in

which housewives are taught traditional concepts of gender, and in which wives and not

husbands are swapped, Desperate Housewives puts forward the assumption that domesticity is a

female-orientated sphere and comes close to a feminist critique of patriarchy and the unequal

division of labour.

Having produced some background research on female media representations, it has

become clear that more recent research, such as the research conducted by McCabe and Akass,

does not necessarily mean ‘progress’ in female representations and the femininities that are

represented are not consistent. This lies primarily in the fact that the term ‘femininity’ is a

concept which refers to a set of gendered behaviours and practices, which are fluid and not fixed,

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and can mean as many different things. As Butler argues, it is a ‘stylised repetition of acts’ and is

fragile, shifting, contextual and never complete (2006:198). These shifting representations found

in the above research conducted, echo some of my own findings when analysing music videos. It

is now vital to talk about the medium I will use for my analysis: music videos.

Music Videos

Music video is one of the most important emergent cultural forms in contemporary popular

culture (Frith, Goodwin, Grossberg 1993). Since 1981 when MTV (Music Television) was

launched, music videos have made ‘image’ more important than the experience of music itself.

In watching a video, the visual plane tends to dominate our attention right away. “The song is

seen. The image is irresistible” (Frith; Goodwin; Grossberg 1993: 26).

Considering the popularity of the genre little academic work has been carried out on the

music video. My interest towards this study stemmed from the lack of writing on female

representations in music videos. This lack arises from the fact that postmodern critics see MTV a

mirror image of the ideal postmodern text: ‘fragmentation, segmentation, superficiality, stylistic

jumbling, the blurring of mediation and reality…’ (Tetzlaff 1986 cited in Frith; Goodwin;

Grossberg 1993: 45). This addresses some visible issues such as the simplicity and low cultural

status of the music video and that this has meant that academics have chosen to focus on more

‘serious’ and complex concerns. Marxist writers Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer notice

the above recurring themes in many contemporary media texts. Adorno (1991 cited in Strinati

2004: 54), uses the term ‘culture industry’ to describe the processes and products of popular or

mass culture. They argue that the culture industry produces a culture of ‘standardisation’ and

‘sameness’, which in turn prevents critical thought (1991 cited in Strinati 2004: 56). For Adorno:

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“the total effect of the culture industry is one of anti-enlightenment” (1991 cited in Strinati

2004:57). It ‘dumbs down’ the people. Therefore, as popular culture helps loose critical worth it

becomes non-artistic and devalues authentic or ‘high’ culture. Adorno makes the distinction

between popular and high culture, where ‘high’ is viewed as ‘serious’ (Adorno 1991 cited in

Strinati 2004).

Despite their frivolity, music videos, and in particular the dominant Pop form that I will

be analysing, stresses on style and artifice and one could argue that it ‘advertises’ the female

body. As Watson and Railton (2005: 52) note: ‘perhaps, more than anything, pop music videos is

a fruitful resource for examining representations of sexual behaviour’. They argue that

performance of sexual attractiveness and availability are imbricated in the generic codes of the

form itself. ‘Pop videos in short, foreground performance-as-seduction…video is now a key

component in our understanding of music as erotic’ (Frith 1996 cited in Watson; Railton 2005:

52). Therefore I feel Pop music videos deserve serious attention in terms of female

representations, as the female body becomes central. The use of music videos will build on

existing work, as there has not been much work in this form of media text before and therefore

my research will have touched on the wider media in terms of female representations. As post-

feminism has come to be of importance in the way representations are shaped in contemporary

culture, I will also look at whether or not post-feminism can be applied to music videos.

The media and social constructionism

Popular culture and the media have seen the female body become central in representations of

femininity and sexuality. The female body has been used in the creation of social order; therefore

female bodies are conceived and depicted depending on the dominant discourses of the mass

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media. Contemporary social theorists have found that ‘social constructionism’ has been used to

denote those views that the body is somehow shaped and controlled by society. Michel

Foucault’s work is in many ways, is the most influential social constructionist approach and it

goes well beyond seeing the body as a receptor of social meanings. For Foucault (1974 cited in

Shilling 1993), the body is not only given meaning by discourse but is wholly constituted by

discourse. In effect, the body vanishes as a biological entity and becomes instead a socially

constructed product. This approach has proved especially popular with feminist scholars who

have used Foucault’s work to argue against the notion that the natural body is the basis on which

individual identities and social inequalities are built and to support the argument that the

gendered identities are fractured. Foucault’s approach on social constructionism is useful for my

research, as it helps to acknowledge the fact that femininity is constructed in the media in order

to get a preferred reading, and this is how representations come about.

Women and Sexuality

As an undeniable powerful presence in contemporary popular culture, women are often upheld as

models of sexual-expression. Issues on sexuality necessitate a return to Foucault’s pioneered

theory of The History of Sexuality. In The History of Sexuality (1990), Foucault attempts to

disprove the thesis that Western society has seen a repression of sexuality since the 17th century

and that sexuality has been unmentionable, something impossible to speak about. In the 70s,

when the book was written, the sexual revolution was a fact. The ideas of the psychoanalyst

Wilhelm Reich, saying that to conserve your mental health you needed to liberate your sexual

energy, were popular. The past was seen as a dark age where sexuality had been something

forbidden. Foucault, on the other hand, states that Western culture has long been fixated on

sexuality. We call it a repression. The repression of feminine sexuality centres on the female

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body and the history of power relations that have acted upon it. Woman is always other, her

subjectivity (sexual or intellectual) is displaced by male domination. There is always a masculine

oppression that ascribes to a top-down structure, whether it is expressed in language, economics,

social relations, or sexuality. However, in discussing power relations, Foucault erases the binary

opposition between the oppressor and the oppressed; one cannot simply argue that males have

been the oppressive power force dominant throughout history. Nevertheless, women’s feminine

identities, including sexuality, in media texts still remain a feminist issue.

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 Methodological Approaches

This section reflects on the method I used in order to conduct my research and it includes

information on how I went about data gathering and sampling.

Data Gathering

As I have already mentioned and justified in my introduction, the data I have gathered for my

analysis consists of Pop music videos of the US, where I will be analysing the performance of

the female artist of each video. I have chosen to analyse three music videos from the 1980s and

three from the 2000s. The reason why I have chosen these particular decades rests on the

following:

By the 1980s women had reacted against second-wave feminism and this produced what

was called ‘post-feminism’, which I have already mentioned in the literature review. Post-

feminism indicated that feminist activism was no longer needed (Faludi 1991:50). A number of

media scholars writing in the US began to apply similar definitions of post-feminism to various

media texts. Faludi (1991) uses post-feminism to describe the attitude that women no longer care

about feminism, a perspective she finds particularly evident in news media representations of

women’s attitudes towards feminism in the 1980s. Press (1991 cited in Lotz 2001: 112) uses

post-feminism to define the anti-feminist spirit she finds in the 1980s fictional television,

suggesting that post-feminism indicates ‘a retreat from feminist ideas challenging women’s

traditional role in the family’ and instead marks ‘an increasing openness toward traditional

notions of femininity and feminine roles’. Finally, Modleski (1991 cited in Lotz: 2001) suggests

that post-feminism assumes that the goals of feminism have been attained, a discourse she finds

in 1980s films. Post-feminism has prolonged and it has reached the 2000s; therefore the

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significance of the 1980s and 2000s lies within post-feminism. What is of interest to me is to

unpack representations in Pop music videos of both decades, compare them and discover

whether or not post-feminism exists in this media text.

Methodology

The methodological approach I will use is the qualitative method of textual analysis and in

particular Ferdinand De Saussure’s (1916 cited in Rose 2001) contribution to semiology.

Saussure developed a systematic understanding of how language works and he argued that the

sign was the basic unit of the gauge. The sign consists of two parts: The signified is a concept or

an object, let’s say ‘a very young human unable to walk or talk’ and the second part is the

signifier, which is the sound or image attached to a signified, in this case the word ‘baby’.

In order to be able to find the appropriate signs for my own analysis, Gillian Dyer (1982)

in her analysis of ads, points out that the photographs of many adverts depend on signs of

humans, which symbolise particular qualities to their audience. Dyer has a useful checklist for

exploring what signs of humans might symbolise:

1) Representation of bodies (in my analysis female bodies):

• Hair. Women’s hair is often used to signify seductive beauty or narcissism.

• Dress. Women and dress may work especially well in order to keep women in

their traditional place.

• Looks. Make-up can signify the attitude a woman may adopt.

• Body. Which bodies are fat and which are thin? Are we shown certain parts of the

body in order to reinforce stereotypes?

2) Representations of manner

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 • Expression. Are women shown happy, sad, seductive and so on? Facial or other

expressions that are used to convey this.

• Eye contact. Who are women looking at (including audience) and how? Are these

looks submissive, confrontational, seductive?

• Pose. Are women standing or sitting? Are they in control or are they passive?

3) Representations of activity

• Touch. Are women touching anyone or anything? With what effects?

• Body movement. Are women active or passive?

• Positional communication. Are women positioned as superior or inferior? Are

they intimate and how?

4) Props and settings

• Props. Objects used may have a particular significance.

• Settings. Settings range from the ‘normal’ to the ‘exotic’. What effect does the

setting have on the women?

Using Dyer’s list as a framework for my own analysis provides a good way of specifying in

some detail how visual images of women produce certain signifieds. However, this kind of

interpretation clearly requires the kind of extensive knowledge of images. This is a matter I will

address further on.

What is textual analysis?

Semiotic textual analysis begins by attempting to assess how realistically a text represents the

world through codes. Semiology demands detailed analysis of images, and its reliance on

elaborate analytical terminology create careful and precise accounts of how meaning of

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particular images are made. This requires looking at the music videos, not as representing ‘the

manifest actuality of our society’, but rather as reflecting ‘symbolically the structure of values

and relationships beneath the surface’ (Fiske 1978 cited in Bertrand; Hughes 2005: 185). The

strengths of semiotic textual analysis are:

• It can be applied to very small samples, such as 3-5 min videos, and it does not require

that these are representative Bertrand; Hughes 2005).

• Provided the sample is small enough, it can deal with complex systems of significations

like film or television, analysing both moving and still images and sound (Bertrand;

Hughes 2005). As music videos are moving images, semiotic analysis will be

appropriate. Rakow and Kranich (1991 cited in Bertrand and Hughes 2005) successfully

used semiotic analysis to look at moving image such as television and particularly

individual new stories.

• Category definitions and unit measurements can be developed to suit the material being

analysed, such as Dyer’s checklist for exploring signs, and notions of the reliability and

validity of measurement are not appropriate (Bertrand; Hughes 2005). Similar categories

have been used by Machin and Thornborrow (2003) in order to uncover female

representations in the images of Cosmopolitan magazine. They look at categories such as

background, setting and colours.

• Textual analyses will allow me to deal with subjects that are very current. I can work

with the latest music videos, which are from the 2000’s and compare it with the ones

from the 80’s (Silverman 2001). As my aim is to examine the representation of women in

two different decades, this method is suitable and I will be able to detect any changes in

female representations.

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Apart from the strengths of semiotic analysis, there are limitations that should be addressed:

• It is time-consuming to be applied to large samples of text (Bertrand; Hughes 2005)

• Some problems of category definition remain: television is still a complex technical

system, not easily broken down into measurable units Bertrand; Hughes 2005).

Regarding the limitations of this method, by using Dyer’s checklist I will be able to break down

the images into units that I can focus on and this will allow me to analyse in more detail.

Therefore, in consideration of the above, I believe textual analysis is appropriate for my research.

Sampling

The music videos I have selected for analysis are:

1980s:

1. Cyndi Lauper – ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ (1983)

2. Whitney Houston – ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ (1987)

3. Madonna – ‘Express Yourself’ (1989)

2000s:

1. Pink – ‘Most Girls’ (2000)

2. Christina Aguilera – ‘Dirrty’ (2002)

3. Madonna – ‘Hollywood’ (2003)

I will gain access to these videos through the Internet, specifically through ‘Youtube’.

As I stated earlier, semiological studies require extensive knowledge of the type of image the

study will examine (Rose 2001). Goldman (1992 cited in Rose 2001) was watching ads for over

a decade before writing his book. Since I can remember, music videos have been of interest to

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me and this is a television genre I watch frequently. Semiologists, such as Goldman and

Williamson (1978 cited in Rose 2001) however, neither suggest a rigorous sampling procedure is

required, as content analysis would. Nor do they say how they chose their data. This, according

to Rose (2001), is because semiologists choose their data on the basis of how conceptually

interesting they are. As there is no content analysis, there is no concern among semiologists to

find images that are statistically representative of a wider set of images, for example. Images are

interpreted in close relation to semiological theory, and the discussion of particular images is

often directed to exemplifying analytical points. Thus semiology often takes the form of detailed

studies of relatively few images and the study stands or falls on the analytical integrity and

interest rather than on its applicability to a wide range of material (Rose 2001). Therefore my

reason for choosing the particular music videos is not only because I was very familiar with these

but they also they stood out for me in terms of concept and I thought it was necessary for these

videos to be studied in depth.

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‘Lights…Camera…Action!’:
Findings & Discussion

This section offers a detailed analysis, using the methodological approach of semiotic textual

analyses and in particular Dyer’s checklist, of six selected pop music videos. Three videos from

the 80s: Cyndi Lauper-‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, Whitney Houston-‘I Wanna Dance With

Somebody’, Madonna-‘Express Yourself’ and three from the 00s: Pink-‘Most Girls’, Christina

Aguilera-‘Dirrty’ and Madonna-‘Hollywood’. Here I will be examining constructions of

femininity, sexuality, beauty and independence. Apart from Dyer’s checklist, I will also be

looking at relevant lyrics in the songs, which have important signifiers.

In order to illustrate the points I make on each video, I have provided images from the actual

music videos. I would like to inform you that all images you are about to see within this section

come from Google Images.

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‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ – Cyndi Lauper (1983)

The video begins with Lauper dancing her way home from her neighbourhood to her house.

Looking at dress, she is wearing a sleeveless, golden peach colour, knee-length dress with

different types of belts around her waist: a studded belt and waist chains. She is adorned with

accessories such as numerous colourful bangles and necklaces. Her hair is ginger coloured and it

is cut very short on the one side of her head, making it fall to one side of her neck, which reveals

a wild look, distinct from mainstream feminine looks. Lauper’s image is more an ode to the

adolescent discourse, enacting an alignment girls make in an attempt to counter the restrictive

femininity discourse. She represents a rebellious, anti-feminine image. Her display of odd

accessory combinations, her hair cut, her wearing of colourful, fake jewellery mock socially

appropriate modes of female attire and behaviour.

Lauper’s fashion is distinct from mainstream fashion. As Simmel argues (1971 cited in

Entwistle 2000) distinction is a characteristic feature of fashion. In contemporary culture,

distinction runs across a wide plane of social identities. In particular, youth subcultures employ

dress to mark out distinctive identities both between themselves and mainstream culture. Their

use of style and their distinctive patterns of life marked them out as different, exotic, or even

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deviant and violent. This leads me on to the next point, which is touch and I will be examining

this by looking Lauper’s attitude and behaviour.

The next scene is set in her house. It is in the middle of the night and the phone rings.

Lauper, in her pyjamas, attempts to pick up the phone; however her father stops her furiously, as

he is aware that her friends are calling. Her father yells ‘what are you gonna do with your life?’

(this is heard through her lyrics).

She then forcefully grabs his arm, twists it and pins him against the wall and sings ‘girls, they

want to have fun!’ Her father then runs off frightened, Lauper laughs and calls her friends. Here,

Lauper is being represented as controlling and ‘unruly’. According to Rowe (1995 cited in

Creeber 2001:68), the unruly woman is one who does not conform to her ‘proper place’ and

questions the primal social dichotomy between male and female through excess and

outrageousness. In Lauper’s case, the unruly woman is characterised by her control over her

father and this exceeds the norms of femininity. Although, Lauper is presented to us in a

dominating way, allowing male authority to be challenged, the sequence with her father is

portrayed in a comedic way. This demonstrates how dramedy fosters the weaving of comic and

dramatic elements, creating a complex text that lends itself to the articulation of ideological

discourse (McCabe & Akass 2006). My contention is that dramedy demolishes a politically

progressive text regarding the female gender. How and why does dramedy achieve this?

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 The term ‘dramedy’ first appeared in the 1980’s and was applied to series like

Moonlighting and The Wonder Years. Dramedies blend the comic and the serious together

(McCabe & Akass 2006) and often in dramedy, incongruity is used. Something is humorous

when it is odd, abnormal or out of place (Stott 2005). It is the bringing of one thing into a

taxonomy in which it is not considered to belong. Although Lauper in that particular scene of the

video is challenging traditional forms of femininity by embracing aggressive behaviour it is

unusual to see a woman performing in an unruly manner. Adopting abnormality becomes

humorous from the displacement of order. It acknowledges the disruption of order and then, by

using humour, reveals its absurdity (Stott 2005), which in turn makes the situation appear trivial,

silly and meaningless.

What is constantly repeated throughout the entire video are the lyrics ‘girls just want to

have fun’ and this is distinguished by Lauper’s continuous dancing in the corridors of her house,

in the kitchen and while on the phone to her friends. Before observing the theme of dance, I

would like to explore the central theme of this music video, which is fun and is observed through

expression and body movement. Throughout the video Lauper adopts happy facial expressions

by constantly smiling and laughing. She also dances her way around the surroundings she is

situated in, raising her hands high and moving them about, signifying playfulness and enjoyment.

Myra McDonald, (1995: 129) poses the question: ‘What do women want?’ She adds that

in media representations and in historical myth, women rarely had the opportunity to pose the

question. As Warner (1987 cited in McDonald 1995: 130) points out, Eve who was forbidden

from tasting the fruit from the tree of knowledge becomes the ‘agent of fatality through the

desire she inspires, not experiences’. Eve, by breaking the rules that were given to her by God,

was punished for her overbearing curiosity. However, what I found very interesting is that this

24
particular video answers the question posed by McDonald, which is fun and the media

acknowledges the existence of female desire, therefore in this music video it is possible to detect

what McRobbie calls ‘progress’ (McRobbie 1991 cited in Hollows 2000: 171). I will expand the

idea of ‘progress’ further on in the dissertation.

In this video however, fun does not include romance. McRobbie argues that by the late

1980s and early 1990s, magazines shifted away from the docile sensibility, replacing it instead

with a much more assertive and ‘fun-seeking’ female subjectivity (1999: 50). She adds that this

is signalled in the disappearance of romance. This is what is happening in Lauper’s video. There

is no sign of a romantic male figure in order for the text to include romance and she is not

dependent on a male in order to have fun. It is about Lauper wanting to have fun without the

romance topic. I will elaborate on romance further on in the dissertation.

The next aspect I would like to look at in the video is settings. Towards the end of the

video, the bouncing Lauper leads her band of girlfriends through New York City streets in a

frenzied snake dance that turns women’s experience of foreboding streets upside down in a

carnivalesque display. Her hands reaching out for more space, she pushes a group of male

construction workers who function as symbols of female harassment on the street. The lyrical

refrain ‘girl’s just want to have fun’ enacts a powerful cry for access to the realm of male

adolescent leisure and fun.

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 Sub-cultural theorists in their emphasis on deviant youth have tended to see ‘the street’ as

‘the home’ of the sub-culture (Hollows 2000: 163). Three key cultural critics have heavily

influenced the agenda for work on youth subcultures within cultural studies: Stuart Hall (1976

cited in Hollows 2000), Paul Willis (1977 cited in Hollows 2000) and Dick Hebdige (1979 cited

in Hollows 2000). These critics created a cultural distinction between members of youth

subcultures and the mainstream, the majority of young people. For these critics, youth

subcultures are valued positively because, it is opposed, they are ‘actively produced’ by young

people themselves (Hollows 2000: 162); they are defined by their distance from mainstream

culture; they are therefore authentic; they are a means by which young people express their

difference and they are deviant, resistant and oppositional. However, the characteristics

associated with youth subcultures are ones that are commonly associated with masculinity and

the characteristics associated with the mainstream are associated with femininity. This is

compounded by the ways in which sub-cultural theories have tended to see youth cultures as

inherently male (Thornton 1995 cited in Hollows 2000). Females are socialised to avoid streets

for fear of harassment or rape, to expect to become objects of the male gaze. Girls are

discouraged from participation in sub-cultural formations associated with male street culture

(Frith; Goodwin; Grossberg 1993). McRobbie argues whether it is necessary to explore whether

girls are totally absent from subcultures (McRobbie 1991). Lauper’s video shows evidence of

female presence in subcultures by the use of the street, which reworks the ideological stance of

male privilege and gender inequality. In the video, Lauper takes over the streets, pushes men

aside, there are equal exchanges of looks and co-participation in leisure practises among boys

and girls. This suggests the role-reversal and utopianism for equal rights and recognition.

26
 As I mentioned earlier, throughout the entire video, Lauper is seen dancing. This next

point, which is also the last point I will be looking at for this music video is associated with body

movement and it is dance. McRobbie (1984 cited in Frith, Goodwin, Grossberg 1993: 140)

describes dance as an ‘activity of control, pleasure and sensuality’ for girls and offers girls ‘a

positive and vibrant sexual expressiveness and a point of connection with other pleasures of

femininity such as dressing up and putting on make up’. Lauper and her girlfriends are shown

chatting on the phone in a shot of long duration. The video summons up the pleasure that many

girls find in choreographed movement with a shot of Lauper and friends swaying rhythmically to

the music, wrapped in intimate arm embraces. Dance is the mode through which Lauper and her

female followers accomplish their symbolic take-back on the street. Dance, here, carries within it

the possibility of some transformative power. Its art lies in its ability to create a change, escape

or achievement for girls who are surrounded by more mundane and limiting leisure opportunities

(Desmond 1998 cited in Boyd 2004). Although women have traditionally been silenced in the

literal forms of communication, women comprise the majority of dance communities (Desmond

1998 cited in Boyd 2004). Dance is a medium where women and girls can actively express

themselves and in the video, Lauper is not only expressing herself but is dominating the dance

world.

In this video, not only has Lauper answered McRobbie’s question that girls are present in

subcultures but her willingness to shout out what she wants, fun, gives her a ‘presence in a male

dominated public space’ (Lemish 1998 cited in Jackson 2006:471). Lauper has demonstrated

female independence and confidence and refutes passive and dependent representations of

femininity.

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‘I Want to Dance with Somebody’- Whitney Houston (1987)

The video starts off with Houston performing in a black and white concert arena. She walks

backstage and the scene is intercut with vivid and colourful images of her. The entire video is set

in a studio setting, which is a confined and restricted area. I will talk about the setting feature

shortly. First, I would like to look at dress, which is an attention-grabbing feature throughout the

video. Houston is shown wearing different fashionable and colourful short dresses and skirts,

accompanied with stiletto heels.

Along with dresses and skirts, the colours pink and red potently communicate

‘femininity’ in the west. The skirt or dress helps to maintain a crucial gender distinction

(Entwistle 2000). Distinctions of gender drawn by clothes, often become fundamental to our

‘commonsense’ readings of bodies and in this respect, fashion ‘naturalises’ the cultural order

(Entwistle 2000: 144). As Woodhouse (1989 cited in Entwistle: 144) notes:

‘clothing forms part of a system of social signalling; it is used to indicate belonging…above

all, it is used to demarcate gender, so that although the symbols change with fashion the

gender message remains the same’.

The dresses Houston wears are stretch fabric, which form a tight fit and vary in style: sleeveless,

one sleeve, polo sleeveless and low cut displaying cleavage. Identifying a fashion style – one that

accentuates breasts and hips with tight fittings and stiletto heels - implies ‘a renewed celebration

of woman as about intimacy, sex and reproductive destiny’ (McCabe & Akass 2006: 83). In his

discussion of male and female dress, Laver (1995 cited in Entwistle 2000: 159) suggests that

28
women are ‘naturally’ narcissistic than men and their dress exhibits what he calls the ‘seduction

principle’, the aim being to enhance sexual attractiveness. What does this mean? Do women

want to look attractive for men?

Some women are presumed to be concerned to the point of distraction about the way they

look and what they wear to please and attract men. According to Berger (1972 cited in Gaines &

Herzog 1990) a woman sees herself from the point of view of two constituent but distinct parts

of her identity: the surveyed and the surveyor. As the surveyed, she is the person being looked at

and as the surveyor she plays the part of a man looking at herself, judging and criticizing herself.

Surprisingly this theory does in fact apply to the video, when Houston is standing in front of a

mirror and looking at herself while moving to the beat, where we could argue that Houston is

judging herself in order to attract the males. But I thought the video was about Houston being the

surveyor and looking for the perfect dance partner! Considering the lyrics again, Houston sings:

‘I want to dance with somebody…with somebody who loves me’. Houston is not only looking for

the perfect dance partner, but also someone who loves her and this is where the tables turn. In

order for someone to love her, she has to be the one surveyed and therefore needs to look her

best in order to please that someone. It could be argued that this is why she is constantly

changing her outfits throughout the video. It is almost as if she is trying to find the outfit that

looks best on her. This illustrates that women view their bodies as objects ‘to be looked at’ and

informs the choices women make when getting dressed for certain situations (Berger 1972 cited

in Entwistle 2000: 31).

In Lauper’s video, we saw a resistance in traditional femininity, as she adopted a sub-

cultural and punk dress with baggy fittings, flat shoes and not in need of a man or romance.

However, Houston is not only dependent on love and romance, which is a theme I will be

29
looking at further on in the dissertation, but her dress and fashion sense also illustrates that the

boundaries of gender are tangibly still in place and that post-modern society still remains

preoccupied with sexual difference.

Throughout the video, certain parts of Houston’s body are emphasised with the use of the

camera focusing in on them. I will explore hair, looks and body in the video and look at what

they signify in terms of the wider female issues. In the beginning of the video Houston’s body is

fragmented into a series of fetishized parts via a montage of close-ups: her red luscious lips, her

dazzling big brown eyes, her thin hands, her buttocks, which is outlined through a tight fitted

dresses and a close up of her facial profile. Throughout the video we are shown close-ups of her

face, which is sealed with bright coloured make up and each time matching her dress.

In the video, Houston possesses brunette, long and curly hair, which certainly enhances her

beauty and femininity. Women’s hair has had a powerful effect and has been used in images,

stories and fairytales throughout history. Medusa’s hair was made of snakes; Rapunzel, locked in

a tower, let down her hair for a prince to climb up and rescue her. Bryer (2000 cited in Holland

2004:59) points out that long hair has embodied Western beauty and femininity for centuries: for

example ‘the length and abundance of the woman’s hair is the prime feature of Botticelli’s

evocation of beauty’. Through her tight fitted dress we also see her model like figure: thin yet

30
curvaceous. Houston is represented as a beautiful, slim woman, just like the ones you see in the

glossy magazines and classic film narratives.

It is clear, that Houston’s agency in the video is linked to beauty and sexiness. Mulvey

(1975 cited in Penley 1988:58), argues that woman in film narratives ‘acts as a signifier for the

male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions

through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her

place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning’. Mulvey (1975) goes on to say that the image

of the woman in cinema becomes fetishistic. Fetishism turns women into an image that is

enjoyable by turning some part of her body into a fetish - that is, by focusing on some aspect of

her that can be made pleasurable in itself. Using Houston’s video as an example, her lips, her

buttocks, her eyes and curvaceous body become objects that are fetishised. According to Adorno

(1991), when describing the processes of popular culture, humans enter a state of fetishism when

they start to worship a cultural product or commodity such as music or television. If we apply the

fetishised commodity to the fetishised woman, she automatically becomes devalued to a product,

a commodity and looses her intellectual and human worth. Earlier work on women and popular

culture concentrated upon what Tuchman (1981 cited in Strinati 2004: 162),) has called the

‘symbolic annihilation’ of women. This refers to the way cultural production and media

representations ignore, marginalise or trivialise women and their interests. Women are

represented by stereotypes based on sexual attractiveness (Tuchman 1981 cited in Strinati 2004),

and this is illustrated through Houston. Therefore, for Mulvey, woman as an image in

mainstream cinema is produced as a spectacle for the ‘male gaze’ and she can only function as

an object and product of the narrative, which signifies passivity (Mulvey 1975 cited in Penley

1988: 62). Whereas Lauper, who, through her unruly actions and her oppositional looks and

31
dress, represented an attempt to challenge certain stereotypes, Houston shows no resistant

stances towards stereotypes, rather, she remains under patriarchal ideology.

Moving on to my next point: setting, the video is set a studio setting, which is a confined

area with a minimum of props that index a bar area (table, chair, drinking glass). Houston

appears in empty settings with empty but colourful backgrounds that evoke a de-territorialised

simplicity. The empty bar and settings, could signify the emptiness in her life, the lack of a man.

This is the reason why she is looking for someone to dance with her and that loves her, so that

her life would be fulfilled and she would not be alone. As Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996 cited in

Machin & Thornborrow 2003) have shown in their analysis of magazines, the absence of setting

lowers modality, moves it away from naturalistic representations to more schematic and

idealised representations. Colour plays a key role in the modality of theses images. Rather than

embracing natural settings in the outside and real world, as Lauper did with the use of the streets,

Houston is restricted in an area that reinforces the constraint of challenging female agency.

There colours of the settings are vivid and bright such as purples, pinks, blues, and

yellows, which makes them sensual and enticing and the colours of Houston’s clothes are closely

coordinated, which produces an impression of high stylisation and a further remove from reality,

as well as a connotation of mainstream modernist fashion.

The whole feel of this video, is that of fashion. It is as if one is looking at the glossy

pages of women’s magazines. As I am being drawn back to the fashion theme, I feel it is

significant to make a last point about it. Tseelon (1997 cited in Entwistle 2000) suggests, women

have historically been defined as trivial, superficial and vain because of their association with

vanities of dress by discourses ranging from theology to fashion. Furthermore, discourses on

fashion have therefore represented women as the object of fashion, even its victim (Veblen 1953,

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Roberts 1977 cited in Entwistle 2000). Dress was not a matter of equal male and female concern

and a woman’s disposition to decorate herself served to represent her as silly or weak. The things

associated with women tend to have lower social status than the things associated with men

(Modleski 1982; Radway 1987 cited in Entwistle 2000).

Although I argue that the fashion perspective reinforces Houston as a passive and weak

object, in the beginning of the section, she was observed as the surveyor, monitoring herself in

order to improve her image through fashion. Fashion becomes the ultimate expression of an

individual transformation and a kind of empowerment. Foucault’s notion of the ‘disciplined

body’ (Foucault 1979 cited in Featherstone 1991: 54) is a way to explain disciplinary practices of

femininity. Houston monitors herself by looking in the mirror and improves herself through the

use of fashion. This self-surveillance allows women to exert control over their bodies and make

them their own, which enables the experience of liberation.

Houston’s video is very different to the one previously analysed. Overall this video

illustrates a ‘girly’ representation (Holland 2004:37). ‘Girly’ is used to refer dependency,

conformity, purity and non-aggressiveness’. Thus Houston adopts traditionally feminine

attributes. Love, romance and the beauty myth are all subjects this video embraces, which

counter poses Houston against a heroic feminine figure. Rather than offering transgressive

possibilities in which alternative views of female subjectivity are offered, disrupting women’s

traditional position, the video reinforces the domestic containment symbolised by the fantasies of

romantic love.

33
‘Express Yourself’- Madonna (1989)

In the beginning of the video, Madonna is the epitome of feminity.

Looking at dress, she is wearing a pale green, long, satin dress, she has

short blonde hair that reminds us of the Marilyn Monroe look and she is

residing with her black cat, high above the masculine world of hard

work and steam. The importance of the cat is underscored at the end of

the video, which will be the last part I examine.

The next scene shows Madonna in a bathroom wearing nothing but a corset. The corset is dress

that has strong associations with sexuality and eroticism in both

past and present culture: once tied to the Victorian standard of

beauty, it now has links with sadomasochism in pornographic

iconography (Steele 1996 cited in Entwistle 2000). I will

elucidate sadomasochism further on in this video analysis. Steele

argues that the corset is seen as an instrument of physical

oppression and sexual objectification. Kunzel (1982 cited in

Entwistle 2000) however, goes further and argues that it is a garment that asserts sexual and

social power. For Kunzel (1982 cited in Entwistle 2000:196), although ‘the history of tight-

lacing is part of the history of struggle for sexual expression, male and female’, he goes on to

analyse Victorian women who were tight-lacing fetishists and did so because they enjoyed the

feeling of constriction produced by the corset to the extent that they might become sexually

aroused by it. He sees this practise as sexually expressive. This sexual expression that Madonna

34
is presenting goes further with body movement of a striptease that takes place in the bathroom

behind a screen and reduces her figuration to a cartoon like silhouette. Swafford (1997) has

found, that some American cartoons, such as Jessica Rabbit show females with unrealistic body

shapes and in tight, short, revealing clothing. They are depicted as ‘bombshells’ and as objects of

desire (Swafford 1997:3). Madonna,

just like the cartoon like female

figure, is represented as a sexy

female who is sexually appealing

and is reduced to an object. In

addition, this scene makes reference

to the conventions of pornography and she becomes what McNair

(2002:61) calls ‘porno chic’, which is the representation of porn in non-pornographic art or

culture and the postmodern transformation of porn into mainstream culture. Movies such as

Striptease (1996) and Showgirls (1996) are examples of ‘porno chic’ and according to McNair

(2002), with the release of such movies, feminists were prepared to view strippers as feisty

independent souls rather than objectified and exploited victims.

Is sexual expression and independence what Madonna is really representing in the

striptease scene? Among constructions of gender is ‘femininity’ itself, which can be regarded as

masquerade. Psychoanalyst Joan Riviere (1986 cited in Padva 2006) has been influential in

suggesting that gender is performed through dress and body style. She notes that ‘womanliness

therefore could be assumed and worn as a mask, both to hide the possession of masculinity and

to avert the repercussions expected if she was found to possess it’ (Riviere 1986 cited in Padva

35
2006:26). This exaggerated performance allayed some of women’s anxieties about their

femininity and their desire for masculinity.

Judith Butler (2006:200) and Mary Anne Doane (1982 cited in Schwitchtenberg

1994:133) have suggested the mutable cultural underpinnings of femininity as an exaggeration in

which woman ‘plays’ at herself, playing a part. This suggests a reflexive shift to the surface

where femininity is in excess of itself as a masquerade. In particular, Doane (1982 cited in

Schwitchtenberg 1994: 133) notes that ‘this type of masquerade, an excess of femininity, is

aligned with the femme fatale’. Madonna performs the femme fatale in the striptease scene,

where Madonna knows that the voyeur is watching; thus she bears the devices of femininity,

thereby asserting that femininity is a device. ‘Madonna takes simulation to its limits in a

deconstructive maneuver that plays femininity off against itself-in a meta-femininity that reduces

gender to the overplay of style’ (Schwichtenberg 1994: 134). Film performances by Marlene

Dietrich in Blonde Venus (1932) have also been characterised as so excessively feminine that the

audience ‘is watching a woman demonstrate the representation of a woman’s body’ (Bovenschen

cited in Rose 2001: 117).

What are the representational implications of these arguments about masquerade? Doane

(1982 cited in Rose 2001) raises the possibility that masquerade may provide a way of thinking

about how women see themselves and each other. Femininity can be seen as a mask, a

masquerade, performed by mimicking what being a woman is meant to be about. Irigaray (1985

cited in Rose 2001) has taken this argument further to suggest that masquerade-or what she calls

mimesis-might even be an evasion of those disciplines of femininity.

‘If femininity is an excessive performance on one side of the divide, then gender play

marks the play of signifiers across the bar’ (Schwichtenberg 1994: 134). Gender play is

36
highlighted by the play of differences signifying cross-dressing or ‘drag’ (Schwichtenberg 1994:

134). In the next scene, Madonna is staged against the futuristic, intertextual backdrop of Fritz

Lang’s Metropolis (1927) (the film that the video was based on). Madonna has entered the

masculine world of work and steam. Madonna’s dress is a man’s suit. She adopts various body

movements:

she is dancing, punches the air, grabs her crotch and spreads her legs. She teasingly opens and

closes her jacket revealing a black lace bra in interplay of difference. The dress Madonna adopts

is quite striking. She references both genders simultaneously, signified by the combination of the

business suit and the bra. Madonna parodies gender roles. Butler (2006) argues that through

parodic play, binary constructs are challenged and this notion of challenging binary constructs

through parodic play with gender stereotypes is attractive. In many ways, Madonna would seem

to embody what Butler believes is the most useful future strategy to avoid oppressive binary

‘engendering’ (Butler 2006: 153). Pleasure is found in the confusion of boundaries and as

described by Donna Haraway (1990 cited in Schwichtenberg 1994: 177), the postmodern body

becomes that of a cyborg, ‘the disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and

personal self’, whose mode of expression is ‘a powerful infidel of heteroglossia’ that replaces a

37
common language. Postmodern theory, therefore promises feminists a means of cultural critique

that does not depend on generalisations or categories, a perspective that does not set boundaries

but instead violates them.

The next sequence shows Madonna, lying naked on a bed, which is the prop in the

setting, wearing an iron collar attached to a heavy chain. These elements suggest one thing:

victimisation. Bordo (1990 cited in Schwichtenberg 1994: 28)

believes that Madonna’s body is put on display and the

‘containment, sexualisation and objectification of the female

body’ continues. Apart from sleep, what else usually takes

place in a bed? Sex does. Again, the bed scene is indicating

pornographic iconography and with Madonna chained,

indicates the subordination of women that takes place in

pornography. She is objectified as a purely sexual animal. Women in pornography are

represented as sexually insatiable, seeking and enjoying sexual victimisation and humiliation

(Itzin 1992). They are often reduced to their sexual body parts, dehumanised, pieces of meat.

They are reduced to animals and Madonna, like a dog or wild animal, has to be chained and

thereby ‘animalised’ (Itzin 1992: 86).

The objectification and fetishisation of women present in pornography is a reflection of

male dominance. When the master of the male workers is watching Madonna he becomes

aroused. The arousal of pornography, by objectifying women, induces sadism and misogyny,

which underpins the oppression of women and therefore reinforces gender inequality. According

to McKinnon (1985 cited in Itzin 1992: 128) ‘pornography makes hierarchy sexy’ and is ‘a way

of seeing and using women’. As Faludi expressed (1991 cited in McNair 1996:97), the

38
‘explosion’ of sexually explicit imagery represents nothing less than a patriarchally inspired

‘backlash’ against the gains of women since the 1960’s. Applying Gramsci’s (1971 cited in

Strinati 2004: 147) theory of hegemony, the dominant groups in society, in this case males,

maintain their dominance by securing the ‘spontaneous consent’ of subordinate groups, in this

case females. This is achieved by the negotiated construction of a political and ideological

consensus, which incorporates both dominant and dominated groups.

Although the elements in the sequence suggest vulnerability and victimisation, Madonna

appears to be aroused by this. She is making eye contact straight into the camera and her self-

possessed gaze suggests as if aroused by and desiring her spectators. Unlike sadism, which

demands a true victim, masochism is a ‘contractual alliance’ and masochism achieves sexual

gratification through physical abuse (Gaines & Herzog 1990:235). The willing victim, in this

case Madonna, provocatively inspires and goes so far as to chain herself and sexually express

herself through her actions. It is argued that pornography offers women the chance to express

their sexuality in ways, which would have been socially unacceptable prior to the sexual

revolution. This has included acknowledging the existence of ‘active feminine sexuality’

(McNair 1996: 95).

At the end of the video, the significance of the black cat shown in the beginning of the

video is established. This importance of the cat is underscored by Madonna’s cat masquerade.

Madonna, wearing tight black clothing, crawls on her hands and knees across the floor. This

scene adds emphasis to the fetishistic filming of her body in erotically angled and fragmented

shots. Her performance here is sexual and dominant and brings to mind the fictional character of

‘cat woman’, which signifies a dominatrix-style and presents a more demeaning version of

39
female sexuality. McDonald (1995) argues that these sequences aim to satisfy males’ obsessive

and possessive cravings.

Madonna, throughout the entire video, is expressing herself. This is not a surprise

however, as the title of the song is ‘express yourself’. Despite the fact that the expressions are

sexual, I probe how they still allow her to be part of what Habermas (1991) calls the ‘public

sphere’. Habermas’ (1991) original and well-known formulation of the public sphere concept

promotes a participatory democracy grounded in the free exchange of ideas in the formation of

the will of the sovereign public. Madonna therefore, is able to re-question her role as a female

and communicate in ways that are not considered conventionally feminine.

With this video, not only has Madonna made sex the subject of popular culture, she has

also subverted dominant gender categories. She has represented an image of a woman in control

of her own sexuality, playing patriarchal society’s stereotypical model of female beauty back to

itself in a parodic form which endows it with new meaning. Incorporating victimisation and

displaying her body without inhibition, Madonna has challenged ‘the codes that patriarchy relies

upon’ to represent instead ‘a highly visible and successful image of power and control’ (Lloyd

1993 cited in McNair 1996: 161).

40
‘Most Girls’- Pink (2000)

The scene opens with Pink in her hotel room, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a white vest,

exercising by doing push-ups, using one hand and with the other behind her back. She also

performs karate and boxing moves by punching and kicking the air. This is part of her body

movement. From the beginning of the video we are emphasised her muscular and more male like

body. The muscular woman disturbs dominant notions of sex, gender and sexuality and

transgresses established notions of what a woman is ‘supposed to look like’ (Gaines & Herzog

1990: 59). What is generally referred to as the ‘fitness phenomenon’ indicates a shift in the

definition of the ‘ideal body’ of the 1980’s (as we have seen in Houston’s video) to a more

muscular body. Women are now using sports such as boxing and karate to ‘strengthen their

muscles and to develop rounder contours’ (Gaines & Herzog 1990:60). The new female ideal of

beauty is now taut, toned and possessing strength. There have been similar films that embrace

this type of female representation such as Million Dollar Baby (2004), which features Hillary

Swank, who chases her dream as a female boxer.

Richard Dyer (1972 cited in Gaines & Herzog 1990: 70) observes that ‘muscularity is the

sign of power-natural, achieved, phallic’. Ascribing ‘natural’ physical superiority to the male is

one of patriarchy’s primary supports. Although the ‘naturalness’ of muscles legitimates male

power and domination says Dyer, visible muscle is not really ‘natural’ at all but ‘achieved’ and

goes on to say that when we look at the beauty queen, we may acknowledge that she has dieted

and used cosmetics to achieve her appearance, but these are ‘things that have been done to the

woman’ (Dyer 1972 cited in Gaines & Herzog 1990: 70). In contrast, it is impossible to read the

visible muscle as ‘something that has been done to the woman’. The muscle, strength and power

41
Pink’s body displays, is clearly an achievement, the product of years of intense, concentrated,

deliberate work in the gym, which is a sign of activity and not passivity. Her strength and power

is not only shown through her muscles but through movements such as dance, where some of her

choreographed moves are punching, kicking and moving quite firmly and robust, which signifies

aggressiveness. The setting in which she is dancing choreography is also in a masculine

environment. It is indoor, industrial looking, with steam coming out of pipes. This reminds us of

Madonna’s video in the 80’s, when she enters the masculine world of work and steam.

Throughout the video, Pink reveals and flexes her biceps and stomach muscles in a way

as if to show them off to the viewer. This may lead to what is called ‘sthenolagnia’, which is a

fetish defined as ‘sexual arousal from demonstration of

strength or muscles’ (Love 1994). Therefore, it could be

argued that although Pink is displaying strength and

muscles, which connote masculinity, she becomes a

fetish and thus represented as a desired object, which

makes her a victim of the male gaze. Jackson

(2006:472) however, talks about, ‘girl power’ for the emergence of ‘new’ sexual subjectivities.

Although Pink takes on the element of the fetishised image, her subjectivity also embraces

strength, self-assertion and independence, which defines ‘girl power’, and therefore can be seen

as a movement forward for feminist politics. I will elaborate on ‘girl power’ in a video to come.

Pink, however, adopts a somewhat sub-cultural style. She does not subscribe to the

traditional feminine dress and adornment. Starting with her hair, it is cut short and boy like and

it is dyed fuscia pink. Pink colour hair is different from mainstream culture colour hair and

assumes unconventional femininity (Holland 2004). Although it is a ‘girly colour’, you do not

42
often see girls in pink hair. The cutting of women’s hair has been the arena of much debate and

protest, not least since women’s hair has been closely associated with women’s beauty,

femininity and sexuality. By the time of the Great War (1914-18) women’s desire and right to

cut off their hair had become a matter of public debate and it was more than simply a matter of

independence and rebellion. It also became chic and fashionable but the arguments raged on

about this ‘frightening challenge to the masculine-feminine polarity’ (Brownmiller 1984 cited in

Holland 2004:61). Hair loss can therefore become a signal of freedom and self-government.

As for dress Pink, throughout the entire video, wears black leather trousers (baggy and

tight). Not once is she shown wearing a skirt. The adoption of trousered and masculine dress

rejects both feminine values and the practical constraints of feminine dress (Hollows 1994).

Brownmiller has argued that ‘trousers are practical…They cover the lower half of the body

without nonsense and permit the freedom of natural movement and therein lies their unfeminine

danger to patriarchy’ (1984 cited in Hollows 1994: 141). However, this strategy reproduces the

idea that masculinity is the norm by privileging masculine values over feminine ones (Wilson

1985; Barnard 1996 cited in Hollows 1994). Furthermore, by asserting the ‘practical’ merits of

masculine over feminine dress, this approach distinguishes between feminist and non-feminist

clothing on the grounds of how functional and practical they are (Wilson 1985; Barnard 1996

cited in Hollows 1994). In Pink’s case, trousers are indeed more practical, as she is dancing,

boxing and performing karate, which therefore implies that masculine dress can be the ‘rational’

dress (Wilson 1985; Barnard 1996 cited in Hollows 1994: 141). Apart from the trousered dress,

Pink adopts a punk look, as did Lauper in her video. Pink wears black leather wristbands and

chokers (around the neck) with spikes. In the beginning of the video she wears black PVC

trousers and a black top with holes in it. Firstly, black clothing is often associated with resistance

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 and opposition (Holland 2004). Female punk dress

constitutes a form of deviance. Female punks

however, do not represent an attempt to ‘escape’

femininity, but rather challenge the ways in which

femininity is ‘naturalised’ through ‘conformist’

fashion and beauty practices (Hollows 2000:145).

Looking at other adornment, Pink possesses tattoos and a tongue piercing. Sweetman

(1999 cited in Holland 2004: 104) notes, ‘the stereotypical

image of the tattooee is young and male…although this is

increasingly outdated’. Body modifications move females

away, rather than towards, the Western ideal of a slim, young

and unmarked body (Sweetman 1999 cited in Holland 2004).

A tattooed female body is a resisting body because as DeMello and Govenar note, ‘tattooed

women overstep the physical boundaries of femininity by embodying a formerly masculine sign’

(1996 cited in Holland 2004:104). This creates a significant tension between the position females

occupy in regard to femininity: ‘there is a pulling back with the traditionally feminine items they

use; but there is also a pushing forward of having more body modifications’ (Holland 2004:106).

Pink is represented as ‘alternative’ (Holland 2004: 105) and distinct from the mainstream.

McRobbie (1994: 157) revisits sub-cultural theory and ‘changing modes of femininity’ to

assess what, if any advances have occurred for the girls within subcultures. She asks if girls are

more visible in subcultures, more involved in creative practices. Hence the acceptability of

Pink’s tattoos and bright pink hair. Generally girls are more visible and more accepted.

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McRobbie suggests a ‘dramatic unfixing’ and explains that the ‘state of flux in relation to what

now constitutes feminine identity offers girls more opportunities and choices’ (1994: 157).

Pink, through her body movement and actions has demonstrated that she is not in need of

a man to take care of her, as she is capable to look after herself. Within her lyrics she tells us that

‘most girls want a man with the bling bling…but I’m not every girl and I don’t need no G to take

care of me’ (‘G’ meaning guy). Pink is not economically dependent on men. However, what she

does want is ‘real love’. Is not love and romance stereotypically what every girl wants?

Romantic fiction is the genre that tends to be most commonly associated with women and most

of its readers are women. In the 1960’s and the 70’s romance novels were seen as a seductive

trap which justified women’s subordination to men and rendered women complicit in that

subordination; as a kind of false consciousness or as a distraction which diverted women’s

energies from more worthwhile pursuits (Jackson 1995 cited in Gill & Herdieckerhoff 2006).

Pink is another reader of romance, as she acknowledges what love is and desires it. As Jackson

notes, ‘love was seen as an ideology which legitimated women’s oppression and trapped them

into exploitative heterosexual relationships’ (1993 cited in Hollows 2000:72). Traditional notions

of the domestic, that are premised on the desirability of romantic love are evoked. Pink is

therefore represented as passive, dependent and addicted to trivial, escapist fantasies.

This is why second wave feminist antipathy and dismissiveness toward romantic fiction took

place, because it situated women in subordinate positions. Modleski (1982) however disrupted

the commonsense feminist critique of romance. Modleski doesn’t necessarily condone the way in

which romances help women accept patriarchy, she acknowledges that they help women cope

with it (Modleski 1982). For example, there is a scene in the video where Pink leaves her hotel

and heads to her car and she realises that it had been ravaged. A guy passes by with his car and

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offers Pink a lift, but she doesn’t accept it and he is left wondering why she resisted him. This

challenges the assumption that she is passive, childlike and dependent on men.

Throughout the video, Pink has shown to be consistent in her quest of challenging

traditional notions of femininity and displays an independent and assertive female that adopts

masculine attributes such as physical strength and a more muscular body. The muscular woman

disturbs dominant notions of sex, gender and sexuality and redefines the idea of femininity.

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‘Dirrty’- Christina Aguilera (2002)

The video opens with Aguilera gearing up by zipping up her leather

jacket, putting on a helmet, getting on her motorcycle and driving to

a nightclub. The prop here is the motorcycle. She is represented as a

‘motor-bike girl’, as McRobbie (2000:18) calls it. The motorbike

girl, leather-clad, a sort of sub-cultural ‘pin-up’, proclaims a new and

threatened sort of sexuality (McRobbie 2000:18). This image was

often used as a symbol of the new permissive sexuality of the 1960’s

and was encapsulated in the figure of Brigitte Bardot astride a motor-

bike with her tousled hair flying behind her. This image encoded female sexuality in a modern,

bold and abrasive way. This was an image therefore at odds with conventional femininity and

suggestive of sexual deviance. At the same time this image was utilised in advertising and in soft

pornography, an example of how-within the repertoire of sub-cultural representations-girls and

women have always been located nearer to the point of consumerism than to the ‘ritual of

resistance’ (Hall 1976 cited in McRobbie 2000:19). Arguably, Aguilera uses the motor-bike to

represent an oppositional type of femininity, which signifies roughness and violence. While

gearing up, her facial expression is almost expressionless and suggests feminine abnormality,

unlike Houston and Lauper in the 80’s whose facial expressions were that of happy and joyful

females.

Aguilera has driven her motor-bike to the nightclub setting where the majority of the

video is located. Subcultures which are located in clubs and where dance is a central focus of the

subculture may offer opportunities for girls and empowers them (Thornton 1995 cited in Holland

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2004). Youth subcultures are ‘masculine’ spaces and the fact that a girl, becomes involved in

these subcultures, emphasizes resistance of conventional femininity.

Aguilera is then seen being lowered from a cage into a boxing ring. Arguably, here,

she is represented as ‘animalistic’. This is reinforced

when she says: ‘let me loose’. Like wild animals, she

needs to be put in a cage in order for her not to cause

any damage. This element however, may suggest

victimisation. This reminds us of Madonna’s Express

Yourself video when she was chained to a bed. Bordo

(1990 cited in Schwichtenberg 1994: 28) believes the female body is put on display and the

‘containment, sexualisation and objectification of the female body’ continues. However, it could

be argued that the objectification of women is represented in a more ‘progressive’ way. Rather

than being ‘girly’ (Holland 2004: 37), which brings to mind images of a 1950’s and 60’s type of

femininity: passive and conformist, Aguilera embraces a wild and sexualised objectification,

which refuses traditional femininity.

When Aguilera eventually is set free, out of the cage, accompanied by several female

dancers, they perform choreographed dance. Before I say a few things on dance, I would like to

look at dress more closely. In the boxing ring,

Aguilera is wearing women’s chaps and a bikini top.

Chaps are male wear, in particular cowboy wear and

are usually worn over trousers, as they are not joined

at the crotch or the buttocks. However, Aguilera does

not wear trousers underneath her chaps and reveals

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her underpants. It is not surprising that underwear is the focus of intense erotic interest. ‘It is the

last staging-post before the naked body is revealed, an intermediate position between the clothed

and naked body, which serves to invest a greater erotic charge to the process of undressing’

(Steele 1996 cited in Entwistle 2000:203). Underwear can become the focus of male obsession as

a result and is associated with seduction and eroticism (Holland 2004). Although bikini tops

provide a highly sexual dress and appearance, in club cultures they provide the basic wardrobe

(McRobbie 1994). Aguilera, as part of a club culture does not provide a ‘fashionable’

appearance. Houston, in her video was engaged in the ‘fashion’ element, which connotes

‘frivolity’ and ‘flightiness’ (Holland 2004:47). Aguilera however, does not follow ‘fashion’ as

such and she is able to evade the label of ‘frivolity’ or ‘flightiness’. Despite this, she continues to

‘flash her femininity’ (Holland 2004:47) through the use of her underpants, her long, blonde,

extended hair and later on her micro-skirt, which is an extremely short skirt that reveals her

crotch area.

Throughout the video, her body movement consists of powerful, choreographed dance. Her

dance however is seductive, as she constantly moves in a way as to reveal her genital parts and

buttocks: she kneels down and opens her legs, shakes her buttocks, shakes her breasts and within

her dance performs sexual positions. Men dance on her and she dances sexually on men. And her

dress, as we saw earlier, facilitates the revealing of her fetishised body parts. Aguilera’s body is

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the staple of this video, just like Madonna was in her video. By showing us the human body in a

quite explicit way, it would be accurate to say that it represents pornographic images. Feminists

such as Dworkin (1981: 72) define pornography as ‘the graphic sexually explicit subordination

of women through pictures or words’. Women are reduced to their sexual body part,

dehumanised and are objects of men’s lust and desire. As Faludi (1991 cited in McNair 1996:97)

expresses, ‘the explosion of sexually explicit imagery represents nothing less than a patriarchally

inspired and directed backlash against the gains of women’. Friedan (1963) however, argues that

sex has acquired symbolic significance for women. Her comment that ‘sex is the only frontier

open to women who have always lived with the confines of the feminine mystique’ drew

attention to its role as a vicarious magnet for women’s unfulfilled aspirations across a range of

fields (Friedan 1963 cited in McNair 1996:97).

My final thought on Aguilera’s sexual body is related to what Machin and Thornborrow

(2003: 458) believed to be representations of women in the images of Cosmopolitan magazine:

the ‘fun fearless female’. Women are no longer represented in domestic settings. Women now

have needs and desires outside of the home and family sphere. The goals of the ‘fun fearless

female’ are to feel sexy and confident and to get what she wants.

What does Aguilera want in the video? As she says in her lyrics: ‘I wanna get dirty,

wanna get a little unruly!’ Comparing these lyrics to Houston’s lyrics: ‘I wanna dance with

somebody…who loves me’, they have totally different implications. Whereas Houston evokes

traditional notions of the domestic that are premised in the desirability of romantic love, Aguilera

is a grotesque female whose excesses break social boundaries. Allow me to expand.

In the video Aguilera has gotten dirty and the unruliness has been reinforced with the

scene, where Aguilera is seen in the boxing ring, boxing with another woman. By looking at this

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as touch, the other woman punches Aguilera in the face and she nearly falls down. Aguilera then

punches the other woman several times until she falls down. Aguilera has won and her spectators

in the club are cheering. Apart from the fact the she

signifies fearlessness, which exemplifies the ‘fun

fearless female’; Aguilera here is represented as the

unruly woman. The unruly woman is not only

characterised by her assertiveness, a loud and raw

manner of speaking, but by her androgynous actions.

Rowe (1995 cited in Padva 2006:25) adds the ‘unruly woman’ is a prototype of woman as

subject rather than object; one who expresses her own desires and who makes a spectacle of

herself. Clearly Aguilera has accomplished these features. The unruliness of the video recalls

Bakhtin’s (1984 cited in Stott 2005) theory of carnival. He argues that carnival is the vehicle of

an authentic proletarian voice answering the oppressions of the ruling classes. As a fixture of the

medieval calendar, carnival was a special holiday that permitted the suspension of social rules

and codes of conduct. ‘The inversion and suspension permitted and legitimised by carnival

represent challenges to authority, therefore offering the possibility of expression of popular

dissatisfaction’ (Bakhtin 1984 cited in Stott 2005:34). In the case of Aguilera’s video, carnival

illustrates the androgynous character women adopt today, which transgresses normative

formulations of womanliness.

Looking at TV Characters such as Xena the Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire

Slayer, they are strong, independent embodiments of the feminine ethos: they know what they

want, they go for it and they get it. This is what Jackson (2006:471) calls ‘girl power’. It may be

51
that Aguilera is shown as a sexualised image; however I can positively say Aguilera embraces

‘girl power’: she is confident, powerful and independent.

In the last scene I will look at, Aguilera and her female back-up dancers are dancing and

splashing, while being sprayed with water in a room containing several urinals. This scene may

be a possible reference to what is called ‘urolagnia’.

Urolagnia is a sexual fetish in which participants derive

sexual pleasure from urine and urination (Haeberle

1981). People with urolagnia like to urinate on, or be

urinated on by other people. The spraying of the water

in the video may signify urine instead of water and

Aguilera becomes aroused by this and is shown touching her female dancers sexually and them

touching her. Urolagnia implies perversion: the violation of the norm, a turning away from the

proper feminine path (Haeberle 1981). This perversion could be rendered by an excessive sexual

urge, called erotomania, which is the obsession with sexual activity (Haeberle 1981).

Arguably, touch here implies lesbianism and in

particular lesbian porn. ‘The most explicit vision of

lesbianism has been left to pornography, where the

lesbian loses her menace and becomes a turn

on…Pornography uses lesbianism by defining it as a

form of genital sexuality that can thereby be

recuperated into male fantasy’ (Becker 1995 cited in McNair 2002:142). It was argued that the

perspectives of the male gaze, which represented women as the objects, structured most

mainstream images of lesbians. However, looking at the film Basic Instinct (1992), the U.S critic

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Hoberman (cited in McNair 2002:143) considered that the lesbians are ‘the film’s most positive

characters’ and that ‘Stone is the ultimate bad girl…in every instance she flaunts her trangressive

power’. In Aguilera’s case, she is a positive representation of homosexuality. Not only is she an

expression of the minority community of homosexuality, but she also transgresses heterosexual

boundaries, which in turn resist traditional notions of femininity.

Although Aguilera is aggressively sexual and provocative in this video, she entirely

resists passive, compliant versions of femininity and accords with notions of ‘girl power’:

agentic and powerful. The girl power subject knows what she wants, goes for it and gets it and

there is no dependence on a male. Despite the fact that Aguilera is being stripped down to her

sexual essence, she is able to express herself, which reflects the needs of an independent,

sexually assertive woman. ‘Women are agents and not merely victims, who make decisions and

act on them, and who desire, seek out and enjoy sexuality’ (Duggan 1988 cited in McNair

1996:97).

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‘Hollywood’ – Madonna (2003)

This video differs from the others I have examined. There is one major theme in this video that is

worth talking about in depth and is: cosmetic surgery. Madonna’s video deals with the shallow

and superficial world of Hollywood. There is a scene in the video, (the scene I will mainly

inspect) which features Madonna receiving botox injections, which is a form of cosmetic

treatment and helps to abolish wrinkles. Madonna is posed sitting back on a chair, which

suggests her positional communication is inferior, by allowing superficiality take over. Allow

me to elaborate.

‘Cosmetic surgery is the cultural product of modernity and of a consumer culture which

treats the body as a vehicle for self-expression’ (Giddens 1991:198). By engaging in a wide array

of available body maintenance routines, individuals are encouraged to seek their salvation

through altering their appearance. Bodies no longer have to be damaged or impaired to merit

surgical alteration. Growing older, gaining or losing weight, or simply failing to meet the

transitory cultural norms of beauty is now sufficient cause for surgical improvement. Beauty now

requires a new form of discipline in order to abolish the wrinkles on your face.

Foucault’s notion of discipline can be applied to cosmetic surgery. Firstly, I would like to

summarise Foucault’s social philosophy. Foucault (1979 cited in Featherstone 1991) in his

investigation of disciplinary power, discovers that the body was seen a highly visible target of

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penal repression. Foucault also talks about modern society and the body and Jeremy Bentham’s

Panopticon scheme, which provided systematic control and surveillance of the inmate world.

Being under the constant gaze of an overseer, this disciplinary technique encouraged prisoners to

monitor themselves and exert self-control over their behaviour. This was Foucault’s concept of

the ‘disciplined body’ (Featherstone 1991:158). Therefore the idea of the Panopticon scheme can

be applied to the way in which Madonna in the video is maintaining her body. In turn, cosmetic

surgery becomes a form of control exercised over the body with the aim of establishing a

discipline.

By maintaining her body, Madonna is illustrating how important it is to look beautiful

and young, especially if you want to be successful in Hollywood as well as life. ‘Shine your light

now, you know it’s got to be good…cause you’re in Hollywood’, as her lyrics say. The attractive

person is happier, more successful and generally better liked. In the video, Madonna is part of a

photo shoot, while make up artists and hair stylists are

fixing her hair and touching up her make-up. Madonna is

also shown acting as part of a film. This illustrates, that

by improving her appearance through surgery, it was

easier for her to be offered jobs in Hollywood.

‘Beauty and the female body go hand in hand’ (Davis 1995:39). The cultivation of

appearance has become a central concern for women.

Beauty is worth spending time, money and pain. As

shown in the video, when Madonna has just had the botox

injection, she is seen looking down with an expression of

pain. Beauty hurts and it appears that modern women are willing to go to extreme lengths to

55
improve and transform their bodies to meet the cultural requirements of femininity. Women

believe that beauty is important in their everyday social interactions and relationships, while men

are more likely to find their attractiveness important in intimate relationships alone (Lakoff &

Scherr 1984 cited in Davis 1995). It is difficult to explain why most of the females I have looked

at in the selected videos, who have managed to defy social conventions in other areas of their

lives, are unable to resist the norms of beauty.

Madonna is represented as the victim of beauty and of the ideologies of feminine

inferiority, which produce and maintain practices of body maintenance and improvement.

Chapkis (1986:37) treats the beauty system as a repressive collection of structures and practices,

which are referred to as the ‘politics of appearance’ and work through the mechanism of

internalised oppression. Power here, is primarily a matter of male domination and female

subordination. Women are lulled into believing that by controlling their bodies they can control

their lives. They are compelled to conform to standards of feminine beauty, which are not only

impossible to meet but have to be met, paradoxically that is without effort or artifice.

Despite women’s entrapment in the beauty system, Chapkis is convinced that there are

possibilities for change. She illustrates the optimism with instances of women who manage to

find ways to beat the system, for example by dressing to please themselves or celebrating their

wrinkles. The key to liberation lies in women casting aside the oppression of femininity and

along with it, their own obsession with beauty and accepting themselves as they really are. There

is no point in going into depth with this however, as Madonna shows no sign of trying to beat the

dominant norms of feminine beauty. However, it is possible to argue for the beauty system and

cosmetic surgery. Although cosmetic surgery is largely known to be a capitulation to patriarchal

interests (Wolf 1991 cited in Tait 2007), many scholars examine the desire for surgery and the

56
inherent contradiction that submission to hegemonic standards of beauty enables the experience

of liberation (Bordo 1993; Gillespie 1996 cited in Tait 2007). Rather than produce a critique,

Davis (1995) focuses on the subjectivity of surgical consumers and this enables the

domestication of cosmetic surgery with feminist scholarship. Davis’s work with surgical women,

leads her to argue that cosmetic surgery is not about subscribing to prevailing standards of

beauty, but about performing a more coherent identity.

Cosmetic surgery rests on the conception that women are viewed as oppressed victims of

patriarchal capitalism. Therefore the cultivation of appearance is also treated as an artefact of

consumer culture. Cosmetic surgery, as it is seen less as a medical procedure and more as a

beauty product or commodity, women are being involved in mass consumption by buying

themselves a new body/look through surgery. According to Adorno (1991) mass consumption is

a negative activity. They used the concept of the culture industry to describe the products and

processes of mass or popular culture. To summarise their arguments: mass produced culture

maintains social authority, or in other words promotes dominant ideology. The culture industry

produces a culture of standardisation and manipulated consumer goods. It shapes the tastes and

preferences of the masses, thereby moulding their consciousness, by instilling the desire for false

needs. If a society becomes obsessed with the purchase of cultural goods-in this case beauty

practices such as cosmetic surgery-then humans enter a state of fetishism with products and

almost worship them. This concept of commodity fetishism is based upon false ideological wants

and is manipulated by capitalism through processes such as advertising. This manipulation

creates the process of mass consumption and discourages the masses from being critical. As

beauty has become an imperative for women, and in this case Madonna, they become enticed in

consumer culture, which, according to Adorno, makes them passive.

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 Modleski’s (1986 cited in Strinati 2004:171) account of the relationship between gender

and mass culture goes beyond saying that women have been ‘annihilated’ by popular culture.

Her concern is that women have been held responsible for mass culture and its affects, while

men are privileged to have the responsibility for high culture, since mass culture is identified

with femininity and high culture with femininity. Modleski shows how the terms used to assess

mass culture and define its inferiority to high culture are derived from the sexist constructions of

femininity and masculinity in the wider society. Femininity and consumption are both associated

with mass culture, and masculinity and production are associated with high culture. Therefore,

while masculinity is active, femininity is passive (Modleski 1986 cited in Strinati 2004). These

assumptions are built into Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (1963) where the female consumer was

portrayed as passive, dependent and gullible, while the world of work was seen as the key to

fulfilment.

As already mentioned, Adorno characterises the mass consumer as passive and

‘feminised’ and any product consumed within popular culture is a false ideological need (Adorno

1991 cited in Strinati 2004:70). In this case, Madonna’s consumption of beauty practices such as

botox injections is recognised as a false need. Why should this however, be defined as a false

need? The desire for a false need rests on the assumption that if people were not satisfying these

needs, they would be doing something more worthwhile. But what would this entail? The idea of

what people should or should not be consuming and what they should really want to consume

assumes a particular model of cultural activity influenced by the position of the elite intellectual,

which all people should aspire (Strinati 2004).

According to Baudrillard (1998 cited in Fraser; Greco 2005:279) ‘the body is simply the

finest of these physically…consumed objects’. The body has become an ‘object of salvation’

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(Baudrillard 1998 cited in Fraser; Greco 2005:277). Madonna’s body in the music video is

represented as a fetish and consumer object. However, I argue that the female consumer,

Madonna, should not be represented as passive. For Gilman (2002 cited in Tait 2007:123)

cosmetic surgery is a ‘canny purchase’, an act of self-determination and it reflects individualism

through consumption. Cosmetic surgery, through its legitimation of a particular idealised

feminine beauty, is the ultimate expression of an individual rights and a kind of empowerment.

Cosmetic surgery also functions as a significant example of Foucault’s ‘disciplined body’. When

a female, in this case Madonna, undergoes cosmetic surgery, she enters a state of self-

surveillance and self-monitoring. This self-surveillance allows Madonna to exert control over her

body and make it her own, which enables the experience of liberation.

‘The popular reframing of a post-feminist appearance work is about

individual choice, self-love and empowerment, rather than submission

to patriarchy’

(Gerhard 2005; McRobbie 2004 cited in Tait 2007: 122)

Having looked at this video, it is safe to say that Madonna adopts a female consumer identity.

This consumer identity affords what is called ‘power femininity’: an empowered or powerful

feminine identity in contemporary culture (Lazar 2006: 505). Madonna by adopting ‘power

femininity’ incorporates feminist signifiers of emancipation and empowerment and indicates that

‘women of today can have it all’ (Lazar 2006: 505). The video implies that it is becoming a

woman’s world, with a celebration of all things feminine, including the desire for self-

aestheticiation.

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To Sum Up

Now that I have completed my analysis of the six music videos, these are my main findings: it is

observable and therefore possible to argue, that each video from the 1980’s corresponds with a

video from the 2000’s and vice versa. Lauper’s video ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ brings to

mind Pink’s video ‘Most Girls’ from the 2000’s, as they both adopt the sub-cultural theme. With

Pink’s punk look, her piercing and tattoos and Lauper’s dance in the streets of New York City,

both women in the video are represented as rebellious and anti-feminine. Dancing, streets and

bodily adornment offer scope for play and experimentation with identity that is liberating. In

these practises of the body, postmodernist optimism comes into its own. Angela McRobbie

(1994:168) has written persuasively of the ‘upbeat’ case to be made for seeing those aspects of

females as breaking down old oppositions between femininity and feminism, and allowing new

forms of self expression to emerge for women, challenging previous starched polarities of

gender.

Madonna’s video ‘Express Yourself’ and Aguilera’s ‘Dirty’ video, both comprise the

overt display of sexuality and the desire for control. Although these women are represented as

actively enjoying sexual pleasure and although their female sexuality is being fetishised and

commodified, by Madonna being chained naked to a bed and Aguilera dancing sexually with

both males and females, they are women in control of their own sexuality. Sexually explicit

material, otherwise known as pornographic iconography offers women the chance to express

their sexuality in ways, which would have been socially unacceptable prior to the sexual

revolution. This has included acknowledging the existence of ‘active’ feminine sexuality

(McNair 1996: 95). Both women also use post-modern strategies of representation to challenge

60
the foundational truths of sex and gender (Schwitchtenberg 1993:120): Madonna’s drag scene

and Aguilera’s masculine boxing scene challenge binary constructs.

The last pair of videos that can be joined in terms of their similarities are Houston’s 80s

video ‘I Want to Dance with somebody’ and Madonna’s 00s ‘Hollywood’. Both these videos

occupy an agency linked to beauty and consumerism. Houston’s video is centred on the fashion

theme, which suggests triviality, superficiality and women as the object of fashion, even its

victim (Veblen 1953, Roberts 1977 cited in Entwistle 2000: 22). The same can be said with

Madonna, but instead of fashion, beauty practices such as cosmetic surgery is the core theme.

What these videos say about women is that the things associated with them tend to have lower

social status than the things associated with men (Modleski 1982, Radway 1987 cited in

Entwistle 2000: 146), which therefore represents them as passive, mass consumers. However,

there is indeed room to argue that consumer feminism is a reflexive, modern dimension of

‘commercial femininities’, a term McRobbie (1996 cited in Lazar 2006:505) uses to feminine

subjectivities produced by popular culture. Consumer feminism and power femininity (a term I

already mentioned in Madonna’s video Hollywood), like popular post-feminism, are an

appropriation of certain post-feminist currents as espoused by Wolf (1993 cited in Lazar 2006),

who offers a summary of the discussion around the term post-feminism, and argues that post-

feminism is skewed in favour of liberal humanism, embracing a flexible ideology which can be

adapted to suit individual needs and desires.

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 ‘That’s a Wrap’: Conclusion

While a limited amount of research can hardly be relied upon as a guide to possible social

change and transformation, what is important are the recurring themes throughout the two

decades, which produces a reading that picks up new and emergent modes of femininity.

With my attempt to unpack some of the representations in the selected music videos, I

can safely say post-feminism exists in this type of media text. The women in the videos reflect

‘choice’, and have become subjects who make their own decisions. This is a ‘more

independently minded female generation’ (Rabinovitz 1999 cited in Lotz 2001:107). Feminist

disourses in these popular media texts tend to correspond to ‘take charge roles rather than usual

women’s embourgeoised family or domestic roles’ and the ‘new woman’ role (Deming 1992

cited in Lotz 2001:107). Post-feminist attributes that have been detected while analysing the

selected videos start from Lauper and move to Houston to Madonna to Pink to Christina, who

deconstruct binary categories of gender and sexuality through sub-cultural style, transgendered

bodies, bisexuality and most importantly individual choice. I do not wish however, to suggest

that these are the only attributes of post-feminism evident in contemporary media culture but

they seem the most significant for my own analysis and findings.

My analysis of women in music videos has indeed tied in with and moved along, existing

work, I have observed in the literature review. The main feature that has been added on my

behalf is the music video television genre. I was able to tie this media format with findings from

existing work and conclude in a way in which to support the fact that post-feminism has

embraced music videos, which is a positive aspect towards female representations.

Reflecting on the research process, some of the main points are as follows.

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I feel that one of the strengths of this study was that my fascination with music videos gave me

motivation to carry out my research. For this reason, I was enthusiastic while analysing the

music videos, which helped in completing a sufficient analysis. Another strength was the fact

that I was very familiar with the particular videos I was analysing, which facilitated to detailed

analyses. Semiological studies need extensive knowledge of the type of image the study will

examine. Williamson (1978 cited in Rose 2001) tells her readers that in order to write her book

on ads, she had to watch ads for over a decade. I have been watching music videos since I can

remember, which has made me very familiar with this type of image and was to my advantage.

An additional strength was my easy access to the selected music videos. Internet is simple way

of getting the information you want, when you want it. ‘Youtube’ was the medium

I used to watch the music videos, and was able to rewind and forward them at any time

necessary. Anything I missed when observing the videos, with a click of a button, I was able to

go back and see it again.

Some weaknesses I encountered were concerning my methodology and in particular

Dyer’s checklist of features to use when analysing female bodies. Although my methodology of

semiotic textual analysis allowed me to look at texts in depth and although Dyer’s list breaks

down images into components, I could not use all of her features in every individual video. The

analysis and findings were too many and lets not forget that the word count of the dissertation is

limited. Therefore, I decided to use the features I felt were appropriate and significant for each

video. This worked very well and I was able to elaborate more on my findings. Overall I believe

that my ideas have been adequately warranted with respect to the methodology employed, the

data collected and the observations that were made. Amongst the most obvious limitations of this

research was the time-scale, which was limited.

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 Future research however, could expand my research by using all of Dyer’ s features in

one individual video, which would require a more thorough examination of female

representations. In addition, it would be interesting for future research to look at women in other

genre’s of music video such as rock, rnb, hip hop and uncover and compare the representations

of women within the wider range of music video. Another way my research could be developed

is by looking at males and females together in music videos and observing whether or not men

are positioned superior to women. Music video is with no doubt an increasingly popular

television genre, which definitely offers opportunities for some interesting pieces of research to

be conducted.

Word Count: 16.685

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Film References

Basic Instinct (1992) Paul Verhoeven

Blonde Venus (1932) Josef Von Sternberg

Metropolis (1927) Fritz Lang

Million Dollar Baby (2004) Clint Eastwood

Showgirls (1996) Paul Verhoven

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Striptease (1996) Andrew Bergman

TV References

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) Mutant Enemy Productions

Moonlighting (1985-1989) ABC

The Wonder Years (1988-1993) ABC

Xena Warrior Princess (1995-2001) Pacific Renaissance Pictures Ltd.

Images

All images that were used within the findings and discussion section come from Google Images:
http://images.google.co.uk/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi

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 Appendix

In this appendix, I include the School of social science research ethics checklist.

69