Beau Travail

86
NOTES
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Of course, my current problem with Lana Del Rey is that I literally can no longer trust any [heterosexual??] man to give a reliable reading of the image she is portraying. (Sorry guys, maybe stick to explaining how “Born to Die” sounds like Lovage; that one seems good). Someone wrote the she doesn’t expect any men to like Lana, which… uh what? I mean, come on, that’s just not… it’s not how it’s happening. Have we forgotten that the initial response to Del Rey was essentially “a sexy dream girl who lets me play video games”? A lot of men really do like her (especially guys who aren’t music critics!). And a lot of men really really don’t like her. Either way the response has been mostly icky.

The issue is not that they won’t like it. It’s that they won’t get it. Inevitably, they will miss the point. And so both the male praises and critiques of Del Rey have been mired in patriarchal ignorance and barely-concealed sexism. I have watched the most well-intentioned feminist men stumble in trying to get “Born to Die” right. Bless their hearts. They never will. Being a girl in a patriarchal society means wanting things that are directly contrary to your own happiness and liberation, and that is something that I’m not sure privileged people can ever actually understand.

For the record, I strongly dislike most of LDR’s output musically (it’s like chillwave minus everything I like about chillwave!), so I’ve been loathe to comment on BTD. But as far as her image and lyrics go, I find her to be simultaneously offensive to me as a female and deeply relateable. It’s confusing for me, and I’m a feminist who took real life women’s studies classes and I spend a lot of time reading/thinking/writing/discussing these ideas. It’s got to be double difficult if you’re a dude and your experiences with feminism involve reading some lady-blogs now and then.

We want these fucked up things that don’t even exist—the sublimation of pure devotion, beauty which can make us interesting, the very ideal of the “bad boy” itself. We want them because we have been told every day that they will make us happy and they are our natural desires. That Del Rey is wrapped up in filmic tropes makes sense—these are lies we are told by pop culture, really. The thing that even the most feminist of men never get is, realizing that those things are lies, that traditional female gender roles won’t make you happy, doesn’t make you want those things any less, especially not on a nonconscious level. This is further conflated by the fact that sometimes being that girl actually can make you happy. Sometimes you want to wear his favorite sundress. Sometimes you’re in the kitchen with your heels #dinnertime and it feels great. There’s a type of sick smugness that takes me over when I am being that girl and play the game the way they told me to. There’s also a pang of feminist guilt. It’s very emotionally and intellectually confusing shit.

If I’m not explaining this clearly it is because it barely makes sense to me. Let me reiterate how much I don’t expect male music writers to get it, especially as it manifests itself in Del Rey’s music.

What I’m not sure on is how self-aware Del Rey actually is. Is she playing the traditional female role because she feels she wants to? Does she know the role in-and-of-itself is damaging? That her pain does not come just from the indifference of her lovers? Is she trying to explore the inherent contradictions found in modern constructions of femininity? Or is she simply trying to sell old-timey gender roles with 2012 sexy-baby imagery? Is she saying that it’s fun and cute to be the girl she plays on BTD? Or she saying that it’s romantic but ultimately self-destructive? Is it good or bad or just a thing? Do her intentions really matter?

The best conversation I had with someone of the male gender regarding Lana Del Rey was with an IRL friend who writes about music also. This was before the album, before SNL, etc. He told me that he liked LDR because he actually related to her. That he had tried to make these grand romantic gestures for girls before, but they were never returned. He at least understood how painful that can be. It’s disappointing that more male writers have not tried to actually empathize with Del Rey, but rather have tried to interpret her from a third person perspective. Then again, I don’t expect men to try to empathize with women; you are notoriously awful at it. It occurred to me, days after this conversation, that LDR is not unlike Drake. Take Care is fundamentally about a young man getting all the things he was told would make him happy, and then finding that he is more miserable than ever. That men I know have scoffed at lines like “I’ve had sex four times this week / I’m ashamed” shows how much they buy into their own patriarchal myths. It’s me, it’s me, it’s all for me.

In the end, I cannot like LDR’s image because it reminds me of the things I dislike most in myself and then makes those things seem sexy and appealing to men. But even then, most of my contempt lies in the guys who decided that Lana is either a perfect sexybaby dream girl or a dumb slut trying ruin things for “real women.” Certainly she’s neither. Now if only her music didn’t suck so much.