The Gaganator meets Ke$hing

What do you think Stefani Germanotta would say if she met Kesha Rose Sebert? What would they talk about? What do they have in common? What values, if any, do they share? I’m sure you immediately figured out that Stefani is really Lady Gaga and Kesha is really, well, Ke$ha. While Lady Gaga’s visual antics represent a homage to pop singers from the past, Madonna in particular, Ke$ha has been described as “garbage chic” whatever that is. I bring both of them up in the same blog post, because I think they express interesting and similar ideologies in their music and in their public manner. Ann Powers of the LA Times wrote about both of these pop singers, and I take my cue from her articles. What these pop stars have in common, I think, is the curious way they express post-feminist ideals. For example, Ke$ha has been quoted regarding her “frustration at the double standard for the objectification of women in songs.” That’s a pretty sophisticated philosophical stance for someone who sings about using a bottle of Jack as mouthwash. Similarly, Lady Gaga has been quoted as saying, “I find that men get away with saying a lot in this business, and that women get away with saying very little.” So, both women stake a claim to ideological territory that is somewhat obscured in their videos and the songs they write and sing. This obfuscation is important to those of us who study popular culture, because all pop culture is imbued with ideology; however, most casual consumers don’t notice. That’s the way culture works – we generally take it for granted.

But there is something in their excessiveness—a hallmark of contemporary popular culture—that draws attention to Lady Gaga and Ke$ha: they are representatives of a youthful generation of pop artists who take their gender identity seriously, sometimes turning it on its head in order to make a point. Oh, I know they are not the first; Madonna was a master of shape shifting identity as she toyed with masculine and feminine portrayals of herself throughout her career. But to suggest that both Lady Gaga and Ke$ha are merely reacting to issues of objectification is too simplistic a read of these artists. Lady Gaga, in particular, is quite complex in the ways in which she presents herself (herselves?). She is multiple and multifarious. Ke$sha, at least in the Tic Tok video, takes a skankier route by using herself to demonstrate what she ideologically opposes. Such a contradiction is an inherent part of pop culture. Both "Just Dance" and "Tic Tok" in some ways are similar on the surface, but I think what lurks below the surface is a read on feminist ideology that reflects, through their excessiveness, a particular understanding of women’s roles in a society that increasingly approaches gender identity through vagueness and ambiguity.