I love your takes on arca and in gender/transition in general. What do you think about songs like prada where arca seems to assume both a very delicate feminine and dominant masculine approach to sexuality? I’ve seen reviews talking about how that’s arca challenging the views of femininity especially for a trans woman and I was curious to know what you make of it
Dear Anonymous,
First - I'm glad you find something interesting in what I wrote about Arca. I am a recent fan and still in the grips of a very powerful crush :)
Second - why are you asking such a hard question? :) I tried to answer it concisely a couple of times and didn't succeed. So please be patient with me for a bit longer, or send me a direct message for a more fluid conversation.
For now, here is a partial answer:
There's an Arca interview that I keep going to: buttmagazine.com/interviews/arca-2 (August 31 2022). Short quote: "I'm continuing to explore the question of what my womanhood looks like, and how to convey it without it becoming a caricature. [...] It's been a slow process of not wanting to renounce any extreme. Tomboy mode is as important to me as being able to get dolled up. I don't want to replace one script with another script. [...] I'm constantly asking myself certain questions that never go away. The answers change over time." There's a lot to unpack in the interview, and I'd love to return to it in a longer post.
I'd give away years off my life if we could just stop using the words 'feminity' and 'masculinity'. Do you remember Mary Poppins' nanny bag in which everything and anything can fit? This is how I see these words. We stuff in them neat collections of concepts/adjectives ("delicate", "dominant"....), forgetting that their contents is time/culture dependent, and that it is not a given - we choose what is put there, and we don't necessarily agree what fits best in each of them. I'd love to hear from you what is in your bags.
Returning to all this with a longer post soon...