Image Police: Adele, Lana, and M.I.A.

Adele

A handful of articles dealing with the myriad ways female performers' images are policed were published this week. Granted, this is nothing new within the music industry, but after the media storms surrounding Adele's weight, M.I.A.'s middle finger, and the outright phenomenon that is Lana Del Rey, I feel as though it's necessary to tie some of these disparate things together.

I'm the first to admit I don't fully understand Lana Del Rey's appeal -- even after defending her shaky SNL performance. I think her lyrics are trite, and her voice is one I've heard many times before. These are valid criticisms, but the overwhelmingly male-dominated rock critic world is fixated on her image -- her "regressive" brand of femininity. In diaphanous dresses and sporting side-swooping hair,  she's neither a rock chick, nor a sexed-up pop star. Flavia, who wrote a great takedown of these critics, says:

Amusing that cis dudes would be experts in both femininity and its performance. I suppose these are the same guys who claim to only be attracted to women who do not wear make up. Because they like their women to be “natural beauties”. Ah how I amuse myself with cis dudes’ opinions about the intricacies of being a cis woman. [...] . They hate her, of course, because to acknowledge the artifice would, inevitably, lead to questioning the artifice behind their own notions of femininity and, again, inevitably, their own stereotypes of masculinity. Oh, but she is overdoing it! and she bought her way through fame and celebrity! She is terrible! she is not authentic!

There's that accusation of inauthenticity again.  Every performer's image is crafted to some degree, but women's authenticity -- or lack of it -- always seems to come under fire more. Let's be clear, it's not that I think the brand she's selling is above criticism. Lana Del Rey can play with these regressive images of femininity largely because she can: she's a young, thin, conventionally attractive white woman.

What Lana Del Rey lacks, Adele has in spades. She's a critic's darling; the "real thing," and authentic in every way -- or maybe not so much. Maura Johnston for Popdust explains:

One of the common adjectives used to describe Adele is “authentic,” a lightning-rod term often used by people to differentiate the artists they like from those they see as shallow or somehow lesser, and to differentiate themselves from those who consume pop culture’s lighter, or more cynically crafted, offerings. Her soul-throwback songs and rich, expressive voice are chief among the reasons for this; her aesthetic brings to mind the pre-MTV era, or at least the era where people were able to enjoy pop music before being made being aware that they were being sold a packaged product. Despite her using some of the same songwriters-for-hire as “fake” pop stars (OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder co-wrote “Rumour Has It”; Semisonic’s Dan Wilson assisted on “Someone Like You”); despite her being reared at the UK performing-arts academy the BRIT School, like Jessie J and Leona Lewis; despite her having stylists and publicists and all the other accoutrements befitting a chart-topping global star who can actually coax people back into the habit of buying music, this narrative about her still persists.

I never thought I'd draw parallels between Adele and Lana Del Rey, but while they seem to be, in critic's eyes, operating on opposite ends of the spectrum, they are both subject to the same kind of femininity-policing. Adele's falling outside the range of what's considered attractive for a pop singer gives her credibility and a certain degree of gravity, but doesn't allow her to be sexual; Lana can be every man's fantasy, but no one takes her work seriously.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Maya Arulpragasam -- otherwise known as M.I.A. -- for causing somewhat of a "scandal" (yes, scare quotes) last weekend by flipping the bird during the Superbowl halftime show. Sasha Frere-Jones  doesn't think she should have been made to apologize, and frankly, neither do I. Although the outrage isn't at all surprising, I'm afraid the narrative being written is one of "bad girl who needs to atone or else get punished." Yeah, maybe she shouldn't give the one-finger salute, but whenever a women messes up, the penalties always seem to be stiffer -- either literally or in the court of public opinion.