Celeb News: How Lily Allen is challenging sexism + misogyny with Sheezus

IggyAzalea

Quote:

"**** you, male misogynistic bloggers"
How Lily Allen is challenging sexism and misogyny with Sheezus

“**** you male misogynistic bloggers, man — seriously”

Sheezus, regardless of its purely aesthetic interest, boldly stakes a claim and strikes gold in a moment in which tension between politics and prejudice is breaching in pop culture. To put it as plainly as she herself does: Lily Allen is perhaps the only mainstream pop performer who is, without mincing words or donning veils of ambiguity, actually and overtly challenging sexism and misogyny in the contemporary cultural landscape.

But as well as its politics, it’s Sheezus’ “human, all too human” awkwardness that makes it vital. Its messiness is not the typical and above-mentioned messiness of Ophelia-as-transgressive. That archetype is not to be dismissed, because it’s one that is deeply identifiable for many, but it has its own shaky political foundations that tend to go unrecognized. The originality of Allen’s disarray, rather, lies in domesticity. Which other pop singer writes songs wearily about being “head to toe in baby food” and too tired for lovin’ (“Life For Me”) or cheerily about the universality of menstruation (on the title track)?

As an album, Sheezus may not have the stylistic consistency or the keep-em-comin’ pop hooks of Allen’s earlier works. But that’s not why it’s critically important — to argue that that is a laurel reserved solely for works that are aesthetically perfect (a nebulous prey at best) would be mistaking the purpose of criticism as analysis. The smoking gun for this claim is found in a meta-moment that is paradoxically precisely authentic, inasmuch as a detached reflection, which is usually considered intellectual rather than emotional, pretentious rather than heartfelt, proves to be key.

Even the album’s weakest moments (Allen calls them “saccharine and beige”) feel excruciating only in the same way comedy does that strikes a nerve; even as Allen crows over her wedding ring and maternity as a symbol of romantic possession, she’s still singing about female pleasure as female pleasure (“He’s going nowhere till this fat lady sings”) rather than as a reflection of male pleasure; the obverse of an all-too-familiar trope in which the most spectacular sex is that which happens while blacked out, where the pleasure of being gazed upon and thereby objectified and instrumentalized is the only pleasure there is or possibly can be.

Source:
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features...medium=twitter

igninton

Love her and love the album.

Can't wait to see her live in Mallorca.

Sheezus

Read the article while listening to URL Badman

OprahIsBlack

And that's the main reason I love her.

SpaceOddity

Ugh, love her. I'm pretty mad she didn't get to sell as much as she wanted to this time around.

BeyonSea

I love her! I love Sheezus!

...lemme go to Lily Allen base

Bad Influence

lily.

genetic fail

Love this album

Sazare

Kind of upset these articles continue to ignore the blatant misogyny present in "Hard Out Here"

"Don't need to shake my ass for you 'cause I've got a brain" flies directly in the face of the song's supposedly "pro-feminist" lyrics yet everyone seems to overlook that when claiming the song is somehow "challenging sexism."

Quote:

"**** you, male misogynistic bloggers"

Wait. WHY did she say "male misogynystic bloggers"? Why didn't she just say "misogynystic bloggers"? Misogyny is bad regardless of the gender of the person behind it.

What kind of misandry.

tittieslap

Quote:

Originally posted by Sazare

Kind of upset these articles continue to ignore the blatant misogyny present in "Hard Out Here"

"Don't need to shake my ass for you 'cause I've got a brain" flies directly in the face of the song's supposedly "pro-feminist" lyrics yet everyone seems to overlook that when claiming the song is somehow "challenging sexism."

Wait. WHY did she say "male misogynystic bloggers"? Why didn't she just say "misogynystic bloggers"? Misogyny is bad regardless of the gender of the person behind it.

What kind of misandry.

I actually didn't notice this. Good points.

OprahIsBlack

Quote:

Originally posted by Sazare

Kind of upset these articles continue to ignore the blatant misogyny present in "Hard Out Here"

"Don't need to shake my ass for you 'cause I've got a brain" flies directly in the face of the song's supposedly "pro-feminist" lyrics yet everyone seems to overlook that when claiming the song is somehow "challenging sexism."

It really doesn't. It references how most of the people who sell sex do so because they have nothing else, like talent, to sell their music with. Those who can sell their music with good lyrics (which require a brain) or with a good voice, etc. don't NEED to shake their ass, even if they choose to do so.