A woman singing about her happiness, her sexuality, and how much she likes getting dicked down isn't her centering the male gaze. You're just fucking stupid.
you’re right about that, except i’m not saying that those specific things are for the male gaze.
(this post is long because as i was writing it it lowkey became a lyrical analysis so forgive me for that)
in multiple songs she refers to other women as bitches and she shades her fiancé’s ex (“and the bitch was telling me to back off / ‘cause her man had looked at me wrong” in the song honey). this lyric pisses me off because she’s doing the very thing she has been very vocally against her whole life: pitting women against each other for a male-centered conflict (the man’s gaze). she CAN make happy love songs without being misogynistic because she has done it before (aotgylb, you are in love, daylight…)
as much as i love the first song, it is about a man saving her. moreover, in shakespeare’s hamlet (which was the base for the song) not only it was the men who drove ophelia insane, but she didn’t drown herself just because she was sad that her relationship with hamlet hadn’t worked out, it feels like the song reduces ophelia’s character to some depressed lady driven mad by heartbreak.
on a similar note, eldest daughter disappointed me so much. it’s not at all what i imagined it would be, it seems to me that it follows a classical trope of “a woman is suffering and lacks identity -> the man enters her life -> his love acts as a magic cure that gives her a purpose and heals her”.
a woman wanting to marry, settle down and start a family is not inherently tradwife propaganda or conservative. however, in wi$h li$t she distances herself, through the use of the pronoun “they”, from the desires of other artists and common people (oscars, yatch life, freedom…), things she thought she wanted until this man came into her life. after a series of failures (“i thought i had it right once, twice, but i did not”), the domestic life is the correct outcome for her. the fact that the act of bossing up is settling down (“boss up, settle down, got a wish list”) feels like she’s making choosing this man the pinnacle of her success. so again, she’s contrasting a “before her man” (she had ambitions but was broken) vs “after her man” (a domestic life with him is her salvation). (this one being travis’ favorite says a lot to me but i’d rather not get into that now.)
there is evidence that she can write songs about her sexuality that don’t make the man the subject. songs like false god, guilty as sin, so it goes…, dress, wildest dreams… they’re inherently sexual songs that are centered around her feelings, her desire, her mind; while songs in this album, such as wood, are centered around the man and him being her savior.
i’ll take guilty as sin as an example and compare it to wood. the former is very clearly about sexuality too and it does involve a man as well (she talks about a “he” throughout the song), but the lyrics are focused on her sensations and emotions, she is the active subject. sex is a sacred act, but what makes it sacred is not the physical act itself, but the tenderness and intimacy of it, it’s a desire for connection (“what if the way you hold me is actually what’s holy?”).
on the other hand, the latter portrays the female subject as a passive recipient; she was sad and broken, her sexuality was locked until this man came with his “magic wand”, lifted this “curse” from her and got sexually involved with her (“the curse on me was broken by your magic wand” / “he dickmatized me and opened my eyes” / “his love was the key that opened my thighs”). the line “girls, i don’t need to catch the bouquet to know a hard rock is on the way” gives me the ick, it feels like an “i win” statement and a sense of superiority to other girls because she has a man secured while other women partake in different superstitious rituals and traditions.
lastly, you can make your point without insulting.
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