I realize that I may be a bit behind the times to be addressing (ha!) Lady Gaga's fashion stunt of last fall, but meat's been on my mind this week as I'm about to embark on 30 days of eating vegetarian - largely as a result of the text we're teaching in our introductory rhetoric classes here at UT: Colin Beavan's No Impact Man. But that's another story. Gaga's appearance at the Mtv Video Music Awards sparked controversy that dissipated rather quickly, and though this may have been due to the singer's own inability to adequately (or logically) explain the reasons behind her wardrobe choice, the images left behind offer a really interesting opportunity for varying and disparate interpretations.
While I was surprised (and a bit disappointed) to discover that Jezebel didn't have much to say about the dress, my immediate reaction was to think of the outfit as a commentary on female objectification. The dress literalizes an all too familiar trope - that women are just pieces of meat - and the contrast between the female body and the hunks of beef strewn about it seemingly negates the metaphor by calling attention to it. Yet considering Gaga's videos and her ethos in general, it could also easily be argued that the outfit does just the opposite (reenforcing the trope/idea/attitude instead of negating it), especially considering the precursor to the dress - her appearance on the cover of the Japanese Men's Vogue in a meat bikini. They say we are what we eat, perhaps we are what we wear, too?
No comments:
Post a Comment