Break It Down: Sheela-Na-Gig

I wanted to do a series of short posts on popular songs that explore gender roles after I realized I had quite a few on my iPod, but I struggled with what to call it. Feminist classics seems a little reductive, and for myriad and often valid, not every woman identifies as a feminist. To label those songs as such reeks of a sort of ownership I'm not entirely comfortable with. (Plus the label "feminist" is becoming less and less meaningful to me as I get older, even though I still call myself one.)



So "break it down" it is, as I tend to do a bit of deconstructing. (Or until I figure out whom I stole it from.)

When I think of songs that really get to the meat (pardon the pun) of male/female relations, PJ Harvey's "Sheela-Na-Gig" tops my list. It was one of the first songs that made me step back and listen to words, and one of the few that made me a little afraid of what I was listening to. In his book, The Sex Revolts, Simon Reynold's says:

"Sheela-Na-Gig" turns around the gap between woman as ethereal icon and the fleshy reality of female physiology. The sheela-na-gig is a startling image, if you've ever seen one -- it's a Celtic fertility icon, a statue of a bulky, squatting woman pulling apart her vagina for all to see. In the verses, Harvey flaunts her "child-bearing hips," only to be rebuffed by the chorus, where she plays the part of a contemptuous or scandalized male: "You exhibitionist!"While icons of the Female Absolute from sheela-na-gigs to the Virgin Mary are idealized, flesh-and-blood woman with their periods and smells are deemed dirty.

I agree with this, but I think he's missing the larger point in reclaiming power in the grotesque. Instead of an idealized, plasticized doll, she's flesh-and-blood, reveling in the "grossness" that comes with being a woman, which she "lays down at his feet," only to yank it away and "take these hips to a man that cares." Look at this. You don't want it? Well, you can't have it anyway.

When I was going through songs, I tried to find the most "empowering" while disregarding the male gaze. I couldn't find any. Most themes of female empowerment unfortunately still have a "look at me" quality. This is also disconnect I feel with a lot of sex positive and choice feminists. I fail to see how empowering it is to still be an object of someone's affection. With "Sheela-Na-Gig" at least there's some level of awareness that our choices don't exist in a vacuum.

Earworm of the Day: PJ Harvey - "Good Fortune"

This video is exactly what I wish my mid-to-late twenties were like. I wanted to be strutting down the street at night in some stompy boots and swinging my purse.

I've been on a Pj Harvey binge lately, with her winning the Mercury Prize for the second time in her career, and being reminded via Recording Collecting For Girls, what a great album Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea, was. When it was released over a decade ago, someone whose music taste I normally respected flat-out dismissed the album, and I followed, like so many sheep. In the past ten years I've learned to trust my own taste (and not write off albums simply because they're glossier than their predecessors). I hadn't watched the video in as long either, and I'd forgotten how iconic it was, and how perfectly it defines that weird window of time between the 90s and 00s.

PJ Harvey Wins Mercury Prize

Congratulations to PJ Harvey for winning the 2011 Mercury Prize for her album, Let England Shake. This is her second win, her first came a decade ago for her 2001 record, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. Harvey is the only artist to have won twice, and one of few women who've won at all.

This year's shortlist of nominees wasn't without controversy, though. Aside from women being continually underrepresented (which is, let's face it, an industry-wide problem and not something unique to the Mercury Prize), some criticized the list for being too mainstream, not represented a diversity of musical styles or artists, or just being plain stodgy. Valid criticisms, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy with Harvey's win. She's an industry vet with many records under her belt, yet still managed to fly under the most mainstream music fans' radar. And in a industry that grows increasingly obsessed with youth and young upstarts, it's nice to see a more seasoned artist win.

Listen to PJ Harvey's Let England Shake, Courtesy of NPR

NPR's Exclusive First Listen Series has PJ Harvey's new album Let England Shake streaming in its entirety a week before its official release:

The topics are as bleak and violent as they were on her most lacerating work, but this time the subjects are soldiers falling in battle ("like lumps of meat") and landscapes that have been torn up, both physically and spiritually. Much of Let England Shake feels like an elegy for not just her homeland, but also the entire world; the bitterness behind the title of "This Glorious Land" is underlined by words like, "Our lands are plowed by tanks and feet, feet marching."

Listen here.