Not one of them asked me for my name or my story. Did you ever ask for their story? No one cares about your story like no one cares about their story. Like a person would be quick to buy a very nice looking -but used- car and not look at the carfax. No one is a special little snow flake because of their sexual orientation.
This was at one of the biggest Pride parades in the world. How dare a person whom is not a parent of an autistic child put a sticker on their car to raise awareness for autism! How dare someone draw a heart on their wrist Who does this person drawing butterflies on their wrist to raise awareness for self harm think they are?! Terry: I think Genevieve was trying to do the same thing you are, claiming the ridiculous-soundingness.
Let me get all the attention for the butterflies on my arm and make a zillion dollars out of it. Even though the only relationship I have to self-harm is drawing butterflies. This light purple dress is too tight. All of those things were created to be worn by everyone for their intended purpose!
All of those things are worn to represent a specific cause. They are not apart of a racial or religious culture in the way it is talked about in this article and I think you know that. Wearing a rainbow pin in of itself is not appropriation.
Wearing a burqa outside of its cultural context and claiming to act on behalf of Muslim women is in the same category because it implies that Muslim women are incapable of speaking up for themselves; that a white woman who has worn a cultural symbol for political albeit grossly insensitive and tacky reasons has more right to speak up about Muslim experiences than Muslim women themselves.
But correlation with racist acts is not causation. The mere appearance of butterfly tattoos is not linked to the notion of speaking over those with self-harm experiences.
Maybe I should just copy and paste this to every person who completely misses the point of the issue at hand? How many times can I copy and paste that?? Please find me one line in the song that makes even the slightest claim that she is anything other than Lady Gaga being Gaga as fuck. Why not? Appreciate it as a purely aesthetic garment and it loses power. To limit Gaga from doing what she wants with it promotes separatism. To say that the garment is for oppressed people only is oppressive in itself.
Because the burqa is the only one that fully covers the body. Vanessa, have I mentioned lately that I adore your very sweet nature and rational point of view?
Well, gurrrrl I do! Earlier people gave me shit because they thought I was saying that only Muslim women have the right to speak up about this, when progress is only made if there is global involvement. Now you say that this has to be resolved by the affected people before people like Gaga can touch it. That is so limiting and stifles cultural progress.
Of course it is a privilege to be able to do that, and Lady Gaga is a privileged person. Celebrate, signal boost, and center the voices of Muslim women who are already tackling the burqa from whatever perspective they came from. Use her privilege to boost the work of others with a more in-depth point of view.
I still wish more people answered my question of what would to reaction be if the song was performed and produced by a Muslim woman. I agree with Tiara. Like those cultural stereotypes need more flattening. Same here, and fair enough. It did take me moving to the west Australia and the US to realise that their activism can be all sorts of fucked too :-P.
For many people, Madonna, her music and being a fan of her in the 80s meant a liberation of some kind, whether Madonna actively worked to liberate people or not. I know people who claim the Spice Girls helped to craft their personalities or gave them strength to go on against hardship, too. But I feel like Lady Gaga has gone past defending issues who needed to be talked about, to directly trying to make profit out of those issues, or to improve her public image with those issues.
She could continue supporting the LGBT community or raising awareness for mental illness without being so obviously trying to benefit from that support she gives? I hope I make sense. Thank you so fucking much for this article. I still have friends that are die-hard Gaga fans, and while I was definitely one of her little monsters early on, Born This Way killed the image I had of her of this genuine, no fucks given quirky girl with a heart full of love for people.
But I appreciate the sincerity of her work. But what I like about Kesha is what I used to adore about Gaga — an artist who gave no fucks about societal norms and who did her own thing, with a message of love, acceptance, and empowerment to people who have previously been treated like shit or had trouble finding a place they fit in. When I think of Gaga now, I think of someone profiting off of the very people she was supposed to be protecting, and it reeks of betrayal.
I wish people would can that already. Thank you for this! Also, the title is wonderfully witty. My one question about this song: What would the response have been if it was sung and recorded by a Muslim woman?
I could see someone like Deeyah doing this, or similar. One of my earliest burlesque acts involved a reverse strip into a Muslim prayer outfit or a burqa. This was in the height of the Ban the Burqa campaigns in Australia where I was at the time and elsewhere, as well as me trying to grapple with my interest in burlesque and sexuality clashing with my Muslim background. So I did my piece as a way to show a complex view of a Muslim woman: owning her sexual agency and finding pleasure in covering up.
The piece gets interesting reactions. Deeyah probably picked up on a similar thing when she made her What Will It Be music video, where she walks around the city in a burqa and in the end pulls it off to reveal a bikini the whole song and video challenges Islamic fundamentalism.
She got a lot of death threats because of it. Her idea was to show Muslim women as having regular concerns like everyone else — but both Muslims AND non-Muslims gave her so much trouble for that one photo that she had to quit school, move cities, and consider dropping her art and her faith: her two big life anchors. So it is possible that a Muslim woman would do a song like this, or another art piece like this.
There is precedent. They were featured in a Brother Ali video and performed at Facing Race a racial justice conference and yet most of my friends who are interested in racial justice, talking about creeping Islamaphobia, and hip hop have never heard of them.
So my suspicion is that, in the US, at least, a Muslim woman would be unlikely to have a huge audience to react, sadly. So what? The world is rotten regardless of where, cultural relativism has no point because all cultures are equally a facade of evopsych drives of domination, destruction and oppression.
More power, long enjoyable life and many notches on her weapon handle is all i can say. And no i am not rich. I feel empowered by embracing that term. I can only imagine what this album did for teens living in a much more restrictive environment. My personal attachment aside, this album also increased LGBT awareness — did you ever hear the words lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender on the radio before this song??? How about on small town radio?? I will not pretend that her use of racial stereotypes is okay and that they are not problematic.
Very few pop stars, hip hop artists, etc are aware of these issues, just like the culture I live in. I feel that this album has done much more good than bad. That being said, I am completely disappointed with this new song. If her album is supposed to be inspired by the art world, then surely she should make an effort to understand the meaning of the lyrics she chooses, the images, cultural appropriation, etc. Thanks for saying this. I agree with this article and I am deeply disappointed in Gaga re: the whole goddamn Burqa Swag and her use of racist terms.
Bottom line for me is that no one should feel they HAVE to support her and her shitty appropriations and accept her as he spokesperson of our community. I guess I feel that as a queer white artist myself, Lady Gaga will always be my responsibility. I agree. There is a lot to criticize about Lady Gaga: her blatent cultural appropriation, her unapologetic use of offensive racial terms, the meat dress.
She is clearly a flawed individual who deserves to be criticized. If she says that she is bisexual, then I beleive her. I think that Gaga genuinly tries to be a force for good in the LGBT community, though her efforts are far from perfect.
Those things are absolutly not OK. But no matter how good or bad of a person she is, her identity deserves respect. Namely, headdresses. Johnny Depp has been praised on this site plenty of times, and no one mentioned a thing when he decided to do redface in the worst possible way.
For the record, I think this is terrible. This is definitely the final straw. Just my opinion. I forgot to mention that you guys just recently had a post celebrating Cher, the queen of cultural appropriation of First Nation things in the worst possible ways.
I found The Lone Ranger particularly embarrassing because he went all the way in defending his being cast in the role and then proceeded to ham it up in the most inappropriate and offensive way possible. I was so disgusted with that movie. Because you know what? Oh my god, yes. Same for First Nation women and Cher. Other artists that the queer community celebrates who have appropriated things in dumb ways? Even though a couple of dancers from the ballroom scene made small amounts of money from helping with making the video, she made the vast cashing in from that huge hit.
Gee, big surprise. It kills me that some Madonna fans seem to think she invented the shit. They should probably go back and watch Paris Is Burning.
Side note — The commentary on this article has completely distracted me from my job the last few days. Sorry, brides. There are bigger fish to fry! What sources, btw? All I saw were sources that linked within the website. I listened to the track and it sounded unfinished and, well, like an unused demo. Now if her album was already out and it was a track on her album, sure. Yeah, but like in my comment above…. Yes, it does exist, but my point is that it might just be one of those weird experimental things.
But did she refer to it as a burqa? Or does it just kind of look like one? But this is all news to me, hence my initial skepticism. It all seems so…. I mean, when Madonna went through her whole Indian thing…. But a headscarf? Not so much, because women of other cultures wear them too. She is, whether you agree or not, an artist and hey, art definition has been a matter of subjectivity since the days of cavemen and their cave doodles.
As an artist who travels the world, she is gaining a massive amount of worldly experience via different cultures and customs. For her to funnel this experience into music is what she does as an artist. Artists explore new ideas and topics. Furthermore, she has come out and said that she is bisexual. The Kinsey scale is not black and white. There are those who can claim bisexuality when there has only been a single occurrence of attraction.
Would you prefer people to use their popularity by ignoring important issues? The hipocracy of wanting acceptance by straight people yet admonishing straight or bisexual people from being massively supportive is odd and does not make sense to me. And why does a white person of privilege get shunned for having an open mind in exploring issues that go beyond their white privilege world?
Would you prefer for her to not care about people who are different from her? And as a totally unrelated note, my boyfriend is Muslim who comes from a large Muslim family. They have heard the song and are not outraged by it. As Fikri mentioned, some will find this liberating, some will want to throw things. And some, like me, have a more ambivalent complicated perspective. Why are people expecting there to be One Official Muslim Response to this song? I feel that the complexity of the issue discussed is what, as an artist, she is aiming to spark through debate.
She has done her job so that is why I have issue with those who try to minimalize what she does. Possibly, but not because people were celebrating or thanking Gaga — quite the opposite, even. Then you miss the point. The only comparison I will make between her and Madonna is that they are both provacateurs in order to raise awareness of some sort. Now, years later, the shock has worn off and she is remembered for pushing the boundaries and possibly even revolutionizing how women can be in terms of power, sexuality and frankness and also helping to destigmatize and push homosexuality into the mainstream.
Perhaps with Gaga, people are still at the stage where all they can do is focus on the shock, but it will take years in order for the bigger picture to be seen.
As a gay woman, I have zero right to claim to represent the entire community and the myriad of experiences within it. You believe that, but there are others who say otherwise, that it has a deeper meaning.
In the end, it only validates her claim of being an artist when what she does provokes thought on either side of the aisle and sparks debate. Furthermore about gay rights, the gay struggle is anchored in oppression. Gay people did not invent oppression. Those who are oppressed may it be through gender, race, sexuality or more or any reason combined can all relate with one another.
To be oppressed is to be made to feel worthless by a larger force by way of control. Can she not empathize with other members of the LGBT community and do her part in making a change in which she wants to see made? This comes a few months after an instrumental supposedly titled "Burqa," also allegedly from the single's upcoming album, "ARTPOP," leaked online. That hard-driving electro track is believably Gaga, especially as she's working with dance music artists like Zedd on the upcoming LP.
Take a listen below:. We've reached out to Gaga's reps for comment and will update this post if one is received. This wouldn't be the first time the singer has referenced burqas. Here are the supposed lyrics to the snippet, via BuzzFeed :. Main Menu U. News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Why didn't Does that mean a new collaboration with Queen B? We hope so, what do you think? The singer had to cancel her shows in February because of the urgent surgery and was confined to a wheelchair for many months after that.
I had broken my hip. There were giant I have no restrictions. No restrictions.
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