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RSSOn Lady Gaga and that meat dress
Upsetting vegetarians was only part of the point of this ensemble.
By Laurie Penny Published 15 September 2010 16:57
Don't you just hate Lady Gaga sometimes? She seems to take a special pleasure in thinking up gorgeously anodine ways to get us talking, and her latest stunt is a delicatessen of breathlessly significant cultural connotations.
One imagines that when Gaga strutted up to the podium at Sunday's MTV awards wearing an elegant couture minidress made entirely of raw meat, complete with a little steak fascinator, a thousand critical theory students wet themselves with excitement. On this occasion, though, I must reluctantly join in with everyone else in asking: Gaga, a meat dress? What does it mean?
Personally, I found Gaga's gory getup rather less off-putting than the standard uniform of today's lady pop-stars - tiny hotpants and a saccharine smile - but then, I am an eater of flesh.
Upsetting vegetarians was only part of the point of this ensemble. With a cheeky little crack about asking Cher to "hold her meat purse", The Face that Launched a Thousand Theses made explicit her wink towards the well-worn notion of women's sexual bodies as pieces of meat, slaughtered and dressed - quite literally - for public consumption.
This is a metaphor with precedent. A 19th-century guidebook to French brothels informed punters that -
[the Madam] does not keep her meat long on the hooks, though she will have her price, but nothing to get stale here. You may have your meat dressed to your liking, and there is no need of cutting twice from one joint; and if it is to your taste, you may kill your own lamb or mutton, for her flock is in prime condition, and always ready for sticking.
Carol J Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat, agrees, saying that "fashioning clothing out of flesh for women to model is nothing new - as recently as 2008, contestants on America's Next Top Model were required to pose in a meat locker wearing bras and underpants made from recently killed dead animals."
Lady Gaga is far from the first person to think of dressing in steak and sausages - the theme of decorating women in bits of rotting flesh has been an 'edgy' refrain of experimental fashion since the early 1980s. "Raw meat may express a more immediate sense of violation, connected to consuming dead flesh and nearly-naked sexualized women," says Adams. "Women and animals are consumable beings in a male-dominated visual culture."
Lady Gaga has an eye for iconography. What is truly delicious about the imagery here is the way the raw red flesh of the steak dress throws the artificiality of Gaga's "real" body into sharp relief. Next to the bloody bacon couture, her platinum-dyed hair and impossibly glossy, polished skin, decked in diamonds, look artificial, unreal, plasticised. The effect calls to mind the iconic cover image of Germaine Greer's vintage feminist bible The Female Eunuch, which portrays female sexual organs as a hanging garment to be flung over the sterile, alienated body of the erotically tamed woman in consumer society.
Is Gaga appropriating the image of the eunuch for her own ends? Is she making a statement about the artificiality of pop music as opposed to the sticky actuality of real flesh, real sex, real death? Is she conjuring a symbology of slaughter and rottenness to expose the barren, blasted heart of the music video industry, churning out brutally identikit images of female sexuality, as sterile and tasteless as processed meat?
Well, no. In point of fact, she's wearing a dress made of bacon. And that's the point of Gaga: she probably thinks of a hundred kinky ways to fuck with us before she has breakfast, if indeed she does have breakfast, rather than subsisting on soundwaves, the blood of virgins and the adulation of her fans, of whom, grudgingly, I am one.
Of course she wouldn't stoop to explain it to us: she's too busy being fabulously weird. Besides, real stage magicians -- and Gaga is undoubtedly a stage magician before anything else -- never reveal how their tricks are orchestrated. It's far more satisfying to watch the little people scrabble for an explanation whilst raking in a meaty moutain of money.
Lady Gaga is not here to save feminism, but that doesn't stop her being a whole lot of fun.
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67 comments
From the letters page of the Guardian:
Interesting how times change (A cut above? Lady Gaga's new line in evening wear, 14 September). As I recall, when the Undertones released their singles album All Wrapped Up in 1983, featuring a cover shot of a woman wearing a "dress" made of different cuts of meat, it was criticised for its sexist imagery, not for offending animal rights activists.
Kay - you say it better than I ever could. Do you have a blog? Serious question. Also:
Listen to 'Girl Next Door' by Darin and compare it to Just Dance; then 'Calling You' by Kat de Luna and compare it to Poker Face. Both were written by RedOne before he met Lady gaga. Bad Romance: beat from Ballnation by DJ Dean, melody from 'Fly Project' by Lumea Mea and 'Lick It' by Roula, special mention goes to Rasputin by Boney M.
And dressed by Formichetti. What's to love? As Paglia said - a 'confected copycat'.
Esta criatura é bem o espelho da sociedade actual! CRISE. Ela e os que a promovem vão enriquecendo. Desde que ela vestiu aquela porcaria até hoje já morreram de FOME neste lindo mundo milhares de crianças inocentes...
omg when i see her i was
alrady death
looks like deli meats to me...how fab was the black outfit worn on same night...she truly outdid herself.
Why?..........I'll go for celebrating Eid???
I don't get it. Is Lady Gaga part of the solution or part of the problem? Is she either?
You rail against the objectification of women by every part of the media - a stance which I often agree with. But lady Gaga is just 'a bit of fun'? I try and work out myself whether she is actually a strong, independant, extremely talented musician fully in controll of her own mind and body or an extremely talented musician who has been made into another packaged object for mass consumption. Or some strange mixture of the two.
I just don't know.
WTF, why is The New Statesman writing about this publicity whore? Get on with more serious issues.
i just dont really get this lady ga ga hysteria in the media, but she loves it,it kinds of reminds me of when the libertines reformed last week for there one off gig at leeds and reading festival and what a bunch of talentless out of tune troglites they are,both ga ga and and the likes of the libertines gets this kinda god like status in the music world and that gets me scratching my head thinking whats happening in the music industry,jimi hendrix and keith moon would be turning in there graves today witnessing this crap and garbage that poses as musical talent.
'Of course she wouldn't stoop to explain it to us: she's too busy being fabulously weird''
Apparently she did - on the Ellen De Generes Show. Something to do with protesting the right of gays to join the US Military.
No doubt with added - how can I get my picture in the news this week?
I cannot see that this is in any way fun. Anyone who finds it fun is totally alienated from the real world. It is pure sick inducing, like Damien Hirst and the Chapman Brothers. Shock tactics are still very juvenile, aren't they, even if they make a lot of money?
Revolting, unhygienic and, worst of all, disrespectful to animals. And the meaning of it all? Just publicity seeking.
No one is original anymore...
http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&expIds=17050,25657,25856,25901,2644...
i didn't notice a reference to Orwell in this weeks offering. Presumably i just missed it right?
Is it danish streaky?
stop paying attention to her. just stop.
She is rich and getting richer thats why she does it, and of course none of us would do this for money would we. yes I would.
Gaye Bykers on Acid photographed covered in fish - deconstructing male imagery on an album cover? Or traditional attention seeking behavior by performance artists? Hmmm, an easy one to work out.
Tastes in music differ, and I just cant get with the GaGa thing - too contrived. Too thought-out.
Maybe she's making a critical political statement by wearing this meat dress... What if the meat is to portray the torn flesh of wounded, maimed victims of US imperialistic campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan?? Nah, on second thoughts this is simply "another" celebrity manufacturing a sensation in order to get as much face time in the corporate media as possible. Seems like her image is more important than the music. Enough said.
She forgot the two veg.
Sorry, couldn't resist it.
I wanted my wife to dress like Lady Gaga!
She wasn't happy!
tommy in danger of sounding stupid,only a twisted far lefty like you could link lady ga ga meat infested body with(us imperialism)what what next george micheal smoked 25 joints day and drove around like a madman as a protest against british imperialism in afghanistan,tommy what you lot discuss at your meetings of the socalist workers party amazes me.
I wonder how stinky that dress was by the end of the night?
"Gaga, a meat dress? What does it mean?"
It's a publicity stunt. And it worked. End of story.
Except it's not the end of the story because everyone's talking about it. Including the New Statesman apparently.
Did you really?
Could murder a bacon sarnie right now...
@ Neuroskeptic
What do you expect? We've been starved of good Katie Price stories. Another great female role model.
Hello StarBucker! no I don't but I really appreciate your comments. Love the breakdown of the real origins of her music too. Urge all who worship at the cult of Gaga to have a listen.
Didn't read the above: did i miss anything?
CarolJAdams? Not so much 'Meat is Murder' as 'Pork is Patriarchy'? And then feminists wonder where the cliche of the tofu-munching gender activist comes from. As Elspeth Probyn wrote (cf 'Carnal Appetites'): '[Adams] equates S/M and butchery in a sort of weird reversal of Sade'. It seems to be more about dividing the world along 'good' and 'bad' lines than either ethical eating or feminism.
PS: Buckskins - v. amusing. She is clearly wearing the flayed hides of her critics as trophies of the culture war. After all, leather is soooo last season, dahling.
"...churning out brutally identikit images of female sexuality, as sterile and tasteless as processed meat?".
So, the fact that the camera spends a lot of the time in Gagas' "telephone" video gazing at Beyonces breasts doesn't count then? or is it subversive because shes in the midst of poisoning her boyfriend?
Ah! the magical irony of it all.
Amazed that after reading Carol J Adam's wonderful book you can still persist as an 'eater of flesh'. Did she teach you nothing, or are you not all that compassionate to nonhuman animals? Veg-anism and Feminism are such compatible doctrines! It's a bit of a disappointment to hear this revelation......!
see,if lady ga ga is a feminist i cant understand why she has to bend over and waggle her bum in the tight body suits i have watched on you tube, and at the end of the day she just brings shame on all the decent women out there.look at my favorite female singer duffy,does she go on stage with her bum and tits hanging out,no she dresses in a modest manner and in fact she can sing a decent melody unlike lady ga ga,cover your body up woman and stop all this obscene posturing on stage.
I think my latest blog does a fine job of nailing this and Gaga ;)
http://innegative.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/lady-gaga-the-iconic-medium/
Maybe a little after the event.
Even more violent a pastime than eating animals. Meat is murder. Watch Food Inc. How impoverished must be someone's awareness to see this primarily as a cultural statement?
Sadly, most feminism still fails to appreciate that the self-interest, solipsism and lack of empathy that cuts a cow's throat is the same frat-party arrogance that rapes women and/or sees them only as use-objects.
How can anyone oppose, say, rape when they not only condone murder but eat and wear its victims? Is a penis going into a vagina really more offensive than a boltgun through a skull?
Boring. Really boring Penny. I give this undergratuate essay a D-.
@ Buckskins
Are you George Bush by any chance?
The whole 'point' of the article (that Gaga does kooky things without giving us an explanation) is off the mark, because she went on Ellen straight after the VMAs (wearing the same dress, and Ellen's a vegetarian, no less) and gave an explanation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VmFpK0beKU
End of story.
Nutcase, just mental really!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhZ5-L9znt8..duffy does her stuff
She's wearing the dress because to her fans it's entertaining, simple as. Just stop speculating on the motives and enjoy the bizarre humour.
Believe the carefully constructed hype if you want to.
Its only because other "artists" are so bland that she she stands out at all.
The media seem to be completely enthrall to her.
I've become more aquainted with her torso than my own in the last months.
What she says and does doesn't mean anything and is pretty vacuous.
She is doing what other pop stars do, i.e. raunch it up, but she does it in an oh so ironic way, so everyone says "wow! what a post-modern way to undermine gender stereotypes in the 21st century!".
Great. Its Kylie on a beginners guide to Sociology.
The bottom line is: if she was, and I mean this in the narrow terms of curent pop culture "conventional" looking, commentators probably wouldn't bother. They like the fact that someone who looks 'different' is current darling of the pop world and overlook everything else.
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