2008 Pop Conference Bios/AbstractsAnn PowersAnn Powers is the chief pop critic of the
Los Angeles Times.
Panel(s):He Pop/She PopSaturday, April 12, 2008, 11:00 - 12:45
Moderator:Lunch Session - Feminist Working GroupFriday, April 11, 2008, 1:00 - 1:50
Abstract:"
In Love with a Strippa: Sex and Power in the So-Called Post-Feminist Age"
Women who work in the pop music world stand on a tightrope—clinging to an an unstable line between sexual liberation and self-objectification, between celebrating pleasure and pointing out when that pleasure becomes oppressive to some. Lately, however, the tightrope's turned vertical, and become a pole.
In hip hop, the paradigmatic heterosexual relationship is now between stripper and john. Whether it's an ode to a literal working girl like T-Pain's "In Love With a Strippa," an instruction manual like Ludacris's "P**y Poppin'," or something more ambiguous like The-Dream's "Shawty is the S—"—in which an every-hottie is metaphorically linked to the trade—the genre's most popular songs define sexual desire within the context of booties shaken and money exchanged. The ladies of mainstream pop have answered this call by embracing the stripper role, whether literally (the Pussycat Dolls), in their stage routines (Christina Aguilera), or in videos (the hapless Britney Spears).
A feminist might easily be enraged by this levelling of the feminine into body parts and cash deals. Yet feminists themselves have a long and complicated relationship with the sex trade. Throughout the movements second and especially third wave, sex workers have played a vital role, whether in raising awareness about what constitutes women's labor or in expressing female sexuality in a strong and forthright way.
The stripper has always been a liminal figure in the history of women struggling to find their power. From the self-aware burlesque tradition immortalized by Mae West to current "it" girl Diablo Cody's journey from the club to the screenwriter's chair, strippers have at times stood apart as self-owned women, whose acceptance of money for their charms freed them from the illusion of patriarchal romance. In rock, the mid-1990s saw a mostly celebratory examination of the stripper as Third Wave icons like Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna spoke of their own experiences in the field.
It's crucial to note that these "feminist" strippers have been almost entirely white and middle class, while the ones who make Busta Rhymes get excited tend to be women of color, presumably working-class. Within feminist movements, too, a tension arose between sex-worker organizers and "cultural" strippers, who explored voyeurism for their own gratification more than for money. In pop, the stripper is also a signifier of racial tension, an aspect of the rift between privileged white "nice girls" and "nasty girls" of color. That power struggle plays out in the music of women artists, and in the songs by men celebrating their notion of the "ideal girl."
This presentation will explore the complex figure of the stripper within pop, as a way of confronting that always-treacherous passageway between sexual freedom and servitude to hotness.
