 Lady GaGa |
 Drag Queen |
 Sexy Lady |
 Feminine Woman |
There comes an age where pop-culture isn’t part of life anymore. It’s more an object of occasional curiosity. I’ve had that curiosity when Lady GaGa flashes across my television screen. The interesting or curious part to me is that I find her unappealing, unattractive. My reaction to her, even the odd times when I’ve caught snatches of one of her videos is pretty straight-line [if there’s an age where the attractiveness of a pretty woman isn’t part of life anymore, I haven’t yet achieved it]. So when I saw the two articles in the New York Times about her [Lady Power, Authority and Arrogance: A Response], I read them. They are by Nancy Bauer, a feminist philosopher at Tufts who focuses on the powerful writings of Simone de Beauvoir among other things. Her articles are about the modern "hook-up" culture, Lady GaGa, feminism, philosophy, etc. I’ll leave her line of thinking for her to explain if you’re interested. Men shouldn’t comment on feminist writings. We’re always wrong.
But the articles got me to thinking about why the antics and costuming of Lady GaGa, someone who definitely presents herself as a "flower that has the look of flowers that are looked at" is such a flat-line for me. I developed a theory about that. Long ago, in reading about the Histrionic Personality in Psychiatric Training, I read that the "hysterical" or "histrionic" woman who exudes and uses her sexuality as a tool for living is a "caricature of femininity." That sounded right to me from my personal experience and from seeing such people in a clinical setting. The natural sensuality of femininity in such people is exaggerated and "used." Personally, while I am as prey to finding such women attractive as the next guy, thankfully, there’s another gauge inside labeled danger that also registers around such women and I always kept my distance.
At a later time, a researcher whose office was near my administrative office was studying a wide variety of people – transvestites, drag queens, transexuals, etc. It was a wide ranging study focusing on psychology, genetics, hormones, etc., so the nearby waiting room was filled with a variety of fascinating folks who came by frequently to get blood drawn or for interviews. Over the years, I met a number of them. One thing I noticed was that the drag queens, many of them performers, did not aspire to simply femininity. They were a lot more like the females with histrionic personae – exaggerated feminine gestures, exuding sexual seductiveness, flamboyant and colorful clothing, "big hair," etc. It was as if they were "caricatures of histrionic females." I actually began to think of them as "[male] caricatures of [female] caricatures of femininity" as odd as that sounds. I don’t know how general that was and I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, but I did note that my internal response was flat. Even though I was often awed at how good the were at female impersonation, I didn’t find them attractive.
So back to my thoughts about Lady GaGa. She seems to be aspiring to be a drag queen to me. She dresses and carries herself like a drag queen. Lordy Lordy. A "[female] caricature of a [male] caricature of a [female] caricature of femininity. That sounded like craziness on an overcast day when a storm is coming [which it is]. But I was in too deep, so I watched me a video of Lady GaGa [with Beyonce, who is plenty attractive, even in this Thelma and Louise wanna-be video].
By George, I think you’ve got it!!!
Make that “Boy George”
Tammy Faye Bakker Metzler, former wife of the deposed TV evangelist minister, was noted for her caricature of femininity appearance — the pounds of makeup, the unreal eyelashes, the mascara, and the tears — she cried about everything on their tv show, sad or glad..
After her husband went to prison, they divorced, and she led a different life and eventually married a very different kind of man. For a while she cohosted a TV show with a gay man co-host. She became an icon for the gay community — in part because she was the epitome of “drag.” And also because she became a real friend of the gay cause. Quite a departure from her and Jim in their evangelical TV days, where all she did was sing, banter mindlessly, and shed tears.
There was a documentary called “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” which included interview footage of her before she died of cancer a few years ago. She was quite articulate about what all the makeup and histrionics had meant to her. She was impersonating what she thought of as femininity. She said: “It was my drag.” And she explained that it was her way of hiding her insecurity. She had come a long way from there — and she wound up as a sympathetic, if not in fact lovable, character.