Vertimus

Right. I am also wondering about this--what happened to VBBOTG (or whatever the correct acronym is)? First, she releases the spoken work album art, then announces CTOCC for September 5th, with no mention whatsoever of the release date of the spoken word album, then releases the poem 'Patent Leather Do-Over,' and many assume that CTOCC is actually a retitled WHF. But it may just be the new name of the spoken word album. The title does sound like one of her poems. Of course, this sort of terrible communication is typical of her.

I don't see 'The Greatest' as political either. It's her version of the end of the Earth, probably inspired by the Malibu fires. And she was pretty prescient, considering the events of this year so far. 'Hope' is political in the sense that 'the personal is political,' as some believe, and I do not, so I don't see it as largely political either.

Right. Adults don't struggle to make a point, or series of points, with other adults, and then end with "and fuck off if you don't like it," or words to that effect. This shows us where her mind is really at, where her level of emotional maturity is. I agree and said it before here--she invalidated the whole video. I agree that 'White Mustang' was a veiled reference to someone's male genitals, and, as such, fairly well done.

I really like about 3/4ths of LFL and consider it, overall, better than UV, HM and certainly NFR.

Using a would-be snarky term like 'mansplaining,' especially when you don't know much about me or how I identify, says a lot about you. Sexist, isn't it? Obviously, no one in their right mind with 20th or 21st century values is for having women painfully scarred and mutilated by acid attacks for 'disobeying' their spouses, fathers or other family members. Or for any other reason. Men or other women who behave in that way on a routine basis, or think it is an acceptable part of their culture or mores, are still essentially uncivilized; they're not an active part of Western culture. And I don't support gay or bisexual men or women being thrown off buildings, stoned with rocks, burnt alive, or imprisoned for life either. As Camille Paglia constantly points out, if Americans or Western Europeans think the rest of the world behaves in accordance with polite American Middle Class decorum, they're completely ignorant of the reality of most of the world. I totally disagree with your take on Marilyn Monroe. She certainly wasn't powerless to do anything about her career; she wanted fame and success and made choices all along the way, and said, 'Yes.' She was married to playwright and intellectual Arthur Miller, so don't you think she got good, solid advice? Did the entire process get out of control, did she lose control at some point, did it bring her unhappiness as well as happiness? Sure. She was a superstar, and the same thing happened to Judy Garland a decade earlier and to Edie Sedgwick a decade later. But it also happened to men, like John Barrymore, and that's what all the 'A Star Is Born' movies are about: a famous male actor who loses control of the star-and-image-making process and turns to alcohol. In the 1920s, a good deal of the biggest silent film stars were snorting heroin, cocaine and opium. Child stars of both genders often had difficult or tragic later lives due to the star-making process, including Jerry Mathers. I don't believe a lot of the great women artists and entertainers in any field were 'just puppets of men.' Give them credit for the talented, striving, disciplined and intelligent women they were, whether it's Josephine Baker, Bette Davis, Carson McCullers, Julie Harris, Diana Ross, Odetta, Pat Benatar or Fiona Apple. Even if, in some cases, their lives or careers ended abruptly or in tragedy. Look at Amelia Earhart, who never blamed men and took 100% responsibility for her life, self and career.

Hey, I'm not claiming to be an advocate for or an expert on global feminism, or know a great deal about it, so yes, my focus was on America. We all know that men have dominated culture and society for a long, long time, and that that came directly out of the hunter/gatherer period, at least, was true in Ancient Greece and Rome, and was part of the social structure during feudalism and the Middle Ages into the early modern age, with homesteading, etc., a point I'm sure you're not willing to concede. Even in Native American cultures, the men did the fighting with other tribes and nations, did the hunting, did the major builting of the domiciles, fought off wildlife, cleared the land if necessary, etc., while women had less dynamic, if no less important, roles closer to the home, like child rearing, food preparation, the creation of clothing, sewing of furs, etc. The same as it had been in Ancient Greece--in all of these periods, life, and daily life, was still highly dangerous, unlike today. If you think men in Hollywood or 20th century entertainment, broadly speaking, just walked in and got jobs and signed contracts on the basis of their looks or reputations or their gender, you're dead wrong. They may have had an advantage over women, i.e., a 'privilege,' as you see it, but the thousands of men who attempted to enter the entertainment business were hardly all members of 'the old boys' club' who were welcomed with open arms and given fat contracts to sign, 1-2-3. When many male Hollywood stars returned from WW II, for example, they found their careers gone and their places taken by other younger actors. Also, I disagree with your stance on, for example, Marilyn Monroe. She wasn't given the role of the child murderer in 1952's 'Don't Bother to Knock' because she was seen purely as a sex symbol, but as a good actress. Also, I take Camille Paglia's position that women like Monroe have enormous powers, and enormous powers over men, that most men do not have over other men. And the same with Sophia Loren, Ava Gardner, Bright Bardot and hundreds of others. Monroe certainly knew her way around the 'world of men' and the Hollywood corporate system. Even in the 1930s, women like Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Katherine Hepburn fought the studio system and won, not on the basis of their looks or acting talent, but on the basis of their intelligence and will power. They knew how to leverage their advantages at every turn, just as some did not. There's never going to be a world were there is perfect equality of power, gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, social position, income and goods distribution, intelligence, discipline, talent, weight, beauty, athletic ability, DNA, health, grace, mental and emotional stability, etc. Nothing is 'perfect' or 'equal' in nature, if 'equal' means 'identical' or even approaches 'identical.' There have been vast social forces in the West trying to create a fair and equitable world since the dawn of modern civilization, and those forces are still at work everyday, every where, in America and Western Europe. But human beings are not perfect, and nature does not create 'equalities,' so the best we can do, and do do, is to continue to press for fairness and equal treatment under the law and economic system. We've seen huge advances in the rights of women in the last 70 years and similar advances in rights for gay men and women in the last 40. Gay men and women have never been freer anywhere at any time in history. Those advances have to be acknowledged and should be celebrated and enjoyed. If a person constantly looks at the world and choses to see only the inequalities that come directly out of nature, and which are corrected constantly by human beings though the inequalities keep coming, then that person is going to be sour and bitter for life.

Well, there were a lot of strong women in American entertainment pre-rock n' roll, as well as in politics, like Clare Booth Luce, Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Kennedy. As a literal matter of fact, the in the 1930s, the American box office was dominated not by men, but by women like Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Katherine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Marlene Dietrich, Jeanette MacDonald, Bette Davis and a string of others--and several of those women really pushed the social and gender envelopes of the times. Hepburn, in particular, constantly challenged female gender roles assumptions and social expectations. Later, there would be American actresses of great influence, like Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, Audrie Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor, most of whom were known for their strong personalities and personas. In music, there was Bessie Smith, Annette Henshaw, Josephine Baker and Libby Holman, who sang risqué songs, and famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, who was very much in the spotlight. The literary world was buzzing with strong, assertive women like Dorothy Parker and Mary McCarthy. I agree that much of the 20th century America pushed a dainty, fragile, subordinate image of women, but it was challenged constantly, and was certainly not the entire story. Feminism has a long history and a long history in the United States. I don't understand your last statement--as if "undermining" others is something only men can do and do do. That's like saying, "In marriages that end in divorce, the man is always the source of the problem," or "in marriages, men cheat, women never do." Do you not think that women undermine men, that men undermine other men, that women undermine other women? Have you ever seen an episode of 'The Real Housewives of ____________'? People undermine other people, people lie to other people, people manipulate other people, people betray other people, people seduce other people, people abuse and mistreat other people, and so on. And the same is true of positive, life-affirming human behavior.

That's not accurate or factual in 20th century and 21st century rock n' roll and pop music. Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Patti Smith, Anne Wilson of Heart, Suzi Quatro, Debbie Harry of Blondie, Pat Benatar, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, the Runaways, Joan Jett, Lene Lovich, Nico, all of these women kicked ass and didn't embody or hide behind a 'fragile femininity' persona, and we're talking well over 30 years go. Joni Mitchell, in the 70s, was an undisputed master of various kinds of musical form, comparable only to Bob Dylan, and while she sang many 'sad' songs, her intelligence, objectivity, and criticism of the post-1960s 'hot tub and wife-swapping' lifestyle was unparalleled. Rickie Lee Jones didn't adopt any sort of 'fragile womanhood' pose either in the same era. She was 'street,' she was 'tough.' Listen to Heart's 'Devil Delight' and tell me Anne Wilson didn't kick major ass--her vocals are like a nuclear explosion. And Joplin, Slick, Smith, Harry and Wilson were the leaders, the powers behind, their bands. The Runaways were all tough women. Nico's 'Genghis Khan' from 1980 is one of the most blistering rock n' roll statements ever. When Carly Simon wrote and sang 'You're So Vain,' and conquered the world with that song, she didn't adopt a 'fragile' pose; quite the opposite. Likewise, Linda Ronstadt told off many a man with 'You're Not Good.' In the 80s, aggressive, domineering Annie Lennox was no wallflower by any means. Tori Amos has produced at least a dozen songs that challenge just about everything in Western culture, certainly the role of women, and she hasn't done it in a sheepish or mousy manner, and in interviews she's been quite abrasive. She came to conquer. And Courtney Love with Hole? And Kim Gordan with Sonic Youth? And Lady GaGa? These are 'victims' in some shape or form, or 'fragile women'? All of these women have said, "I'm strong like a man too," in the very least.

Thank you. I've observed the entire process of her development and/or decline since the BTD/P era as objectively as possible, noting each available change, each shift, each action and reaction, each comment, each alteration, each post and interview, and all of those are what I base my conclusions on--empirical data, like Carl Jung. I readily admit I do not 'know everything,' having limited access, and have no direct contact with LDR. I have access to her mind only through her public remarks, and less so through her public behavior. This is nothing remarkable, certainly, because her motivations over the last ten years ago are fairly clear to anyone with experience, insight, perception, objectivity and some grounded psychological understanding of human behavior. It's really no different that observing the behavior of a partner, child, colleague, family member or neighbor over a period of time. Most of us do it with some regularity. Personally, I was shocked that she gave in, because, as I wrote then, "she seemed too smart, too talented, too confident to fall down that particular rabbit hole."

Great, and thank you. Most people, I think, don't realize how much work is involved in genuine spiritual work--it's a path, it takes a lot of time, a lifetime, it takes suffering, self-reflection and objectivity to make progress. LDR has also recently attended Christin churches of a somewhat dubious nature, very much criticized on this board, and she ended this latest video with 'God bless you' or very similar words. She alluded to her Christian beliefs in 'Hope Is A Dangerous Thing' too, as well as elsewhere in her body of work. Whether she is a Christian or not, however, is not a matter of any importance to me. As long as she continues to strive and finds her path. We've seen this same process play out in Tori Amos's work, for example.

When she first burst on the scene as LDR, she sometimes projected a superior, arrogant attitude, which doesn't fly easily in these times, and that, combined with her beauty and talent made a lot of weasels--thousands of them--go after her. The subtext of everything they wrote was, "How DARE she? How dare she be who she thinks she is, not common and down in the mud like the rest of us, kissing ass and sucking up to get along?" Well, she did dare, and millions of soon-to-be-or-become fans loved it. LDR made millions. The weasels went nuts: "why do we have to tolerate this ***** who thinks she's superior and who's daddy bought her a career and a record contract?" But she certainly heard the attacks early, and unfortunately started mitigating everything, including her image, her approach, her songwriting, and, sadly, apparently, her politics. In fact, over her next several albums, culminating in NRF, she bent over backwards trying to appease and fit in with the general dominant 'cancel' culture, but of course, for individuals like Anne Powers, nothing is enough unless you adhere strictly and totally to Powers' specific brand of feminism. Personally, I wish LDR had never given in, never mitigated anything, and simply "considered the source" of the type of envious, trollish and sometimes controlling and fascistic people going after her. She should have laughed in their sad, jealous faces, like the 21st century Helen of Troy of pop music. That's what Brigit Bardot would have done, what Sophia Loren would have done, what Charlotte Rampling would have done.

LDR doesn't seem to understand that a lot of her critics, and critics, period, today don't necessarily want to see 'female empowerment,' but their specific version and vision of what 'female empowerment' is, and while NFR moved closer to their version of it, they still see her as not embodying their feminist ideology completely enough. And they do see her as easily goaded and weak, and so attack, because they're bullies. Personally, the 'fuck off' at the end made her look immature and weak, in my opinion, all over again, and practically canceled out the entire point. Also, people who claim to be feminists, especially female feminists, should support all women, including female non-feminists and even women who are anti-feminist, at least as fellow women if not ideologically.

Hilarious title, hopefully intended as tongue-in-cheek or satirically.

I think part of LDR's problem is that she's a genuine spiritual seeker, and yet at present she's relying on 'gurus' like Marianne Williamson, who is a sincere and well-intentioned individual, but who, in my opinion, is vacuous and empty of real insight except for New Age-y "love is the answer" and "Love will defeat Donald Trump in the next election!" sort of nonsense that manipulates the emotions of seekers in moments of weakness and confusion. You don’t get far if your spiritual beliefs boil down to ‘karma is a bitch,’ ‘everything happens for a reason,’ ‘everyone has a soulmate,’ etc. Look up Williamson's history or Wikipedia entry, it's all New Age channeling BS, though her politics are liberal and so no doubt appeal to LDR in this period of her life. 'Answers' are not readily forthcoming, it takes time and maturity to find meaning in life for many or most, and I'm glad LDR is on that path. Therefore, her belief and/or support of Williamson right now is not necessarily a bad thing in my eyes, as one step on the path towards genuine 'enlightenment' of some kind. I do wish LDR would read Carl Jung, especially his autobiography, 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections,' and since she's mentioned that she's read the 1992 book, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Jungian analyst Clarissa Pinkola Estes, I feel that book and others like it may lead her to Jung's sometimes admittedly-difficult work. ​Reading the lives of Vita Sackville-West and of the American poet and mystic Hilda Doolittle, who wrote under the initials H.D., would also be helpful to her, I think, as well as Camile Paglia's first three books and some classic Buddhist texts.

You've got the WASP down culture right, as LDR did in 'Old Money,' and as many filmmakers and novelists have. I'm not approving or condemning her for her socioeconomic background, whatever it was, whether she grew up in poverty, lower middle middle class, middle middle class, upper middle class or wealthy. I would never condemn anyone for their origins, for the same reason you mention: "suffering knows no rent bracket," as the saying goes. Just because a person grows up with some level of prosperity around them doesn't mean they weren't ignored, abused, overlooked, bullied, misunderstood, lonely, etc. "Yet still, inside, I felt alone, for reasons unknown to me." You may have missed the first post I wrote about this, several pages back, which the one you quote from was a continuation of.

Thanks. I think she DOES come from wealth or relative wealth—‘upper middle class wealth’ at least—but in her mind, ‘wealth’ may mean only the kind of wealth she has now, and better than that. I assume her father made most of the family money and since he had to continue to work to generate it, they weren’t ‘independently wealthy’ by any means. Unlike a lot of members here, I also believe LDR played a big role in crafting her initial LDR persona, participating in all of those dozens, if not hundreds, of mostly high-glamour photo shoots. Some like to believe Interscope forced that all on her.

The thing about LDR's family's wealth or lack thereof is this: it seems they were/are upper middle class, which means someone the family, or several in the family, is/are working to generate the income. They're not independently wealthy. A typical American upper middle class family is that of a 'successful' doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. The family own a very nice home, and maybe a second summer home; all the children are able to go to good colleges if they like and are accepted; the family belongs to a country club perhaps, one or two 'exotic' vacations a year are the norm for them, and, after 16 or 17, everyone has her or his own upscale vehicle. As someone else pointed out, that doesn't mean her family supported her financially partially, wholly, or at all. Often such parents want their children to learn and earn their own way in the world, as 'it builds character.' This, to me, seems to be the kind of family LDR comes from. If I'm correct, to her, it may not seem 'wealthy,' but then 'wealthy' is a relative term. If I'm right, then, they're not 'wealthy' in the sense that the family still has to generate that wealth, as I said, and there may still be fallow years or periods, and a fair amount of debt. Not everyone who looks like they have money actually does. 'Keeping Up Appearances' of middle class respectability has been a major part of American life. As we know, in America, at least since the late 19th century, there's always been a certain class resentment towards income inequality. Many artists and creative people consider those who have relative or outright wealth to be automatically corrupt or at least 'tainted.' Three examples: Carl Sandburg's first book of poems, 'Chicago Poems,' is all about how everyone who is wealthy must be some sort of a malicious, uncaring bastard; in their marriage in the 1970s, James Taylor, whose own father was a successful doctor, held it against wife Carly Simon for 'coming from money,' as her father was Richard Simon, creator and owner of Simon & Schuster Publishing; and Bob Dylan has been probably the premier 20th century musician who, early in his own career, promoted the idea that no one who came from money could be a genuine artist or 'creatively pure,' a view that came right out of Dylan's predecessors in the folk music world, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. So the accusations and suspicions that LDR 'comes from wealth' and is therefore incapable of being a genuine artist are only to be expected, they're part of a long tradition of class warfare in the country and especially in the arts.

Well, I agree it was her best era. Sometimes artists need the strong guidance of industry professionals to keep everything seamless and smooth. I've seen other examples of this, where the artist demands control and then everything sinks. The Monkees were a good example of that. But I can't agree that she's become more in control of her image, especially her physical image. While I certainly don't hold her to any kind of high standard of beauty, the 'plain Jane' selfies she's been posting since before the release of 'LFL' on IG and FB, and continues to post don't really serve much of a purpose. They look intentionally unattractive. I doubt they makes other women say, "Look, she's just an average person, just an average-looking human being, just like me," and feel more comfortable with her or with themselves. Most of us can take better selfies than those on a cloudy day in the rain. Whatever her point is in taking and posting such selfies, they don't do much for her career. And the clumsy, mediocre-at-best 'professional' LFL and NFR album art is just more of the same. If she doesn't want to be seen as a sex symbol of any kind, then why not skip using photographs of her on her albums at all? Or, certainly she can have aesthetically-appealing, professional-level photographs of herself taken for album art use that are not provocative, sexy or otherwise over-the-top. In terms of her image otherwise, it's been a disaster, with the 'Insta-baddies,' the long delay of LFL and then the year-long, go-nowhere rollout of 'NFR,' the inability of her and her team to communicate effectively with the public, which we see even now: she announces her spoken word album, then postpones it, then releases album art for it and then announces the release date of WHF but without any mention of the spoken word album, and then has this glorious public meltdown, and then another, and then another. Teens creating and posting music videos on Youtube have better professional instincts about and execution of their projects, and they lack a 'professional' team behind them. So while I agree she's trying to show us a more 'authentic' LDR, I don't think she's doing a good job of it at all. And for me, the music and the production on NFR were extremely poor.

The persona LDR projected in that era was of a strong, masterful individual who was in control of herself and her career, despite the presence of 'sad' songs like the BTD title track and G&M. Even in the BTD title track, she projected strength and confidence, as she did in 'Cola,' 'Ride,' 'Video Games,' 'Summertime Sadness,' 'American,' 'Bel Air' and others. She was capable of writing and delivering witty, 'light' songs like 'Radio' and 'Hollywood's Dead.' Look at the perhaps tongue-in-cheek 'Paradise' cover art, and all of the publicity photographs of her released then, including the nude British GQ cover, where she was elected 'Woman of the Year.' She was, for 18 months or so, an international style icon. Perhaps that was all an act, and it does seem from the perspective of 2020 that it was, but it was pretty convincing at the time; it captured the attention of the world.

The problem is that LDR doesn't know how to separate her personal life and feelings from her professional life, and, admittedly, the categories can become extremely blurred in this IG/TW era. But LDR isn't 14, she's not someone just out of the gate. She's in her 30s and has been at this a while now. So many great writers and vocalists were her age or younger when they were at the height of their fame, including women like Janis Joplin, Dianna Ross, Grace Slick, Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, Grace Jones, Carly Simon, Stevie Nicks, Rickie Lee Jones, Linda Ronstadt, Patti Smith, Ann Wilson, Debbie Harry, Kate Bush, Pat Benatar, Siouxsie, Shiela E, Sade, Kim Gordan, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Tracy Chapman, Pink, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Lorde, etc. It's up to LDR and her team to figure this process out and not allow themselves to be trolled or easily upset by people like Ann Powers, who seems to believe that she, Powers, sets the pace for women everywhere, especially women in music. That's absurd. What Powers wants is to see, like a facist, is every female vocalist and artist out there towing Powers' political line and and keeping in line, under Powers' control. As I said before, LDR can write and sing about virtually anything she wishes, it's no one's business but her own. If people don't like it, they can turn it off, delete it, not buy or download it. She's letting people successfully make her their punching bag. She's falling for it, like a teenager. Where is the old confidence, the old assurity? I have noticed LDR trying to get 'more in line' with Woke culture, especially on NFR, and to me, that's sad, and part of the reason why she's gone from the 'steely goddess' who was largely above the fray of BTD/P to the limping, sometimes broken, apologist we've seen so often since. And now she's broken again, and in public, and the trolls of the world LOVE IT. The trolls are eagerly feeding off her and would probably love to see nothing more than a LDR suicide.

The sad thing is that, even in the beginning with BTD and Paradise, she seemed to be firmly in control and somewhat 'above it all.' She was a sort of new, fresh pop goddess. That's what attracted me to her. But about the time of the public feud with Lorde, the disastrous SNL appearance and into the early UV period, and ever since, she's seemed scattered, broken, unsure of who she is and what she wants to project as an artist, a woman and an individual. The terrible NFR rollout is part of that, and so is this rant, which seems poorly considered, though I understand what she's attempting to say. She's just not saying it well, not the first, not the second.

LDR has the right to write and sing about anything she wants to at all, and certainly to reflect her own reality and experiences in her art. And other people--all other people--have there right to reject it, love it, not like it, think it's self-destructive, think it's okay, like some tracks and dislike others, believe it's negative for young women to emulate, think she projects a destructive image of womanhood, perceive her as a positive role model, etc.

FG, thank you. I appreciate it. Your ideas also seem like "weird shit" to me sometimes. I don't know what your specific beliefs are in multiple areas, but I think if you knew me well, you'd be surprised to find that I'm not like you appear to currently conceive of me. I know a great deal about Celtic religions and folklore, the British "fairy faith," the work of Ronald Hutton, Cernunnos, contemporary Wicca movements, the work of Margaret Murray, Carlo Ginzburg, W.Y. Evans-Wentz, Yeats and Lady Gregory, Carl Jung and so on. Maybe none of that means anything to you; I don't know. May the forces of the universe grace us all with open-mindedness, broad tolerance, an understanding of individual differences and the ability to not jump to conclusions. V.

Test for Elle.

Your selective outrage is noted. As I said, I'd like to see all the posts where you challenged or commented upon the constant stream of bullies, would-be intimidators and endless trolls---what you're doing is defending them, when I am standing up for myself and reason, and I have been the attackee, not the attacker. You're just throwing yourself in, irresponsibly. The world is hieratical, and thus exclusionary and sometimes elitist. If it weren't, there wouldn't be movie and sports stars, and there wouldn't be moderators here on this board in the first place, who stand in some position above the average member. I don't have a problem with the fact that humans are not identical to one another, that individuals have different and varying degrees of intelligence, talent, skill, good looks, ethical character, discipline, insight, athletic ability, foresight, privilege, access, grace, taste and so on. We may be equal before for the law, but we're not identical in fact. Nothing in nature is, not even 'identical' twins.