Lana, Lorde, & Feminism

[VegasBaby 895]

Then you have first to make a definition of what a feminist is to you and then we can talk about Lana being one or not. She seems to be happy of how she lives her relationships with men, she's not oppressed or anything so I guess she follows her choices. 

Being a feminst to me is believing women should have the freedom to do/say what they want, equal opportunities, etc without being bound to judgement or expectation because of their sex..

 

Like does anyone pick up on the lyrics male musicians sing about? Most of the time they are a lot more superficial than Lana. Lana sings about feelings and relationships and a lot of people relate to her...idek.

 

 

[Philomene 928]

Being a feminst to me is believing women should have the freedom to do/say what they want, equal opportunities, etc without being bound to judgement or expectation because of their sex..

 

Like does anyone pick up on the lyrics male musicians sing about? Most of the time they are a lot more superficial than Lana. Lana sings about feelings and relationships and a lot of people relate to her...idek.

 

 

 

I agree with you, why Lana is "controversial" is because she's not a man. 

[ThorixB 15]

I don't think Lana is submissive in her relationships. Anything but submission come in my mind when I think about Lana. I think she's quite stubborn, aggressive and she really loves her partners. The submissive image regarding Lana is the result of the many idiotic interpretations of her songs by feminist haters. She exploits her man, as well as she is exploited by them at some point. This is about real life relationships. There is no relationship without some form of exploitation, you care about your partner but in the same time you want something from her/him. In Off the races this is obvious and has nothing to do, in my opinion, with the Lolita story because the girl in the song is obliviously an adult (she sings about her Las Vegas past).Take for example, ROAR by KP, which is  a stupid, wannabe "feminist" anthem, which is sterile because has nothing to do with reality, is rather a pop reconstruction of some feminist point of view. This is what i call inauthentic, fabricated music. (Woman ROAR, what a "grand" image for a woman). Poor Lana was called inauthentic and crucified for expressing her feelings.

[VegasBaby 895]

Take for example, ROAR by KP, which is  a stupid, wannabe "feminist" anthem, which is sterile because has nothing to do with reality, is rather a pop reconstruction of some feminist point of view. This is what i call inauthentic, fabricated music. (Woman ROAR, what a "grand" image for a woman). Poor Lana was called inauthentic and crucified for expressing her feelings.

 

inb4 stans come after you

[PrettyBaby 2,220]

too much OVERdiscussing       

  I love this thread so much.

 

I agree with those who pointed out that Lorde was probably just demonstrating a shallow, superficial understanding of BTD lyrics, without actual animosity (even though it could come across that way out of context), with her primary goal being to talk about her own direction.

 

But yeah, I also agree that we shouldn't be too quick to pressure people into adopting the feminist label, when there isn't a universally agreed-upon definition at this time. If it means "the belief that all women are human and should have their basic human rights upheld," then of course all right-thinking people are feminist. (I'm just gonna lay that one out there without qualification... safe too many times  ) But it seems condescending somehow to tell someone, "oh trust me, you should consider yourself a feminist." I think it's more helpful to emphasize areas of agreement, and recognize that sometimes we're working toward the same goals.

 

:shrug: And besides, I used to consider myself "for equality, but not necessarily feminist" ...so given a chance, anyone can see the light eventually! 

[YUNGKALIMXEL 88]

I don't get what this bitch is talking about. She sings about glamorous stuff because it's a 60's hollywood cinema style she's going for, she's not bragging!

[Poison Ivy 1,588]

I don't think Lana is submissive in her relationships. Anything but submission come in my mind when I think about Lana. I think she's quite stubborn, aggressive and she really loves her partners. 

 

This is what I've been thinking, Lana likes to play the kitten because she coos and giggles and men fall in her lap immediately but she's more like a tiger in disguise (ehm, shark?). She seems like a very intense person and if I go by her songs she really starts idolizing the guys she likes - like people do generally when they fall in love, but Lana's extreme as always ('I promise that I'll think of you as the king' 'you can be the boss' 'you're my king champion' all this) - which sounds submissive, but she also has this borderline crazy sense of ownership over them which shows her more dominant side. I think she's just a very needy, passionate lover rather than submissive  .

 

Lana seems to glamorize life a lot and romanticize the past so I think her more submissive lyrics relate to her enjoying to play the role of a 50s girlfriend or something, but she's not all sugar. She is/was so immersed into this 'make your life a work of art' thing that she kinda directed her life the way it made sense in her mind, rather than how humans normally do - but she's very in charge, in a very weird way. I might be really wrong, of course ~ but this is why Lana fascinates me, she just is so many things.

 

I think stuff like 'beat me and tell me no one will love me better than you do' is about a particular unhealthy relationship (I'm not sharp enough at Lanalysis to point at a specific one, but maybe one of her local rockstars) that she again romanticizes, because it's what Lana does. 

[Myriam 559]

I didn't read all the answers to this thread nor the comments on the status, so I'm sorry if there's repetition in what I'm saying, but answering the Lorde quote in the thread I just want to say that singing "I'm nothing without you" has nothing to do with feminism it's just one person expressing their love to another person. I'm not saying that this kind of 'you're my everything' love is healthy I'm just wondering why it has to be related to feminism? It's not like saying me as a woman, am nothing without you, a man.. Am I making sense, I don't know.. It's never an issue when a male singer sings it anyway.

 

Now as things people tend to refer to when speaking about this subject, like when she says she'd do anything for him and even "hit me my darling", I just want to say (speaking from experience) that you can enjoy being submissive in a relationship and still be a feminist, you can like being dominated by your man in certain ways/circumstances and still want women and men to have the same rights and be equal in society; I mean your personal preferences can be separated from your general views/standards.

[Atom Heart 1,929]

I love Lorde and I agree with her opinion. Some of you obviously don't know how to differentiate a casual fan from super fan like the ones found on here. Most people aren't going to search through the internet for all of Lana's unreleased songs and albums to understand her. Her released material represents who she is when she wrote it and released it. The fact that her songs on BTD and Paradise are about being the girl who is submissive says a lot. I would like Lana to be more "in control" through her lyrics and empower her female fanbase. At the end of the day I love them both for their music and there shouldn't be anything more important than that.

[COLACNT 5,180]

I would like Lana to be more "in control" through her lyrics and empower her female fanbase. 

 

but she *is* in control; she wants what she wants *regardless* of the judgements she'd inevitably garner in response to it all. it really just depends on how you read into it. its a bit of a circular, more convoluted sense of control, but theres no doubt a willingness and a certain intent behind it all 

 

i think it can be empowering, to someone with the proper mindset. the gist is: do what you want and fuck what society or anyone else says 

[PrettyBaby 2,220]

I didn't read all the answers to this thread nor the comments on the status, so I'm sorry if there's repetition in what I'm saying, but answering the Lorde quote in the thread I just want to say that singing "I'm nothing without you" has nothing to do with feminism it's just one person expressing their love to another person. I'm not saying that this kind of 'you're my everything' love is healthy I'm just wondering why it has to be related to feminism? It's not like saying me as a woman, am nothing without you, a man.. Am I making sense, I don't know.. It's never an issue when a male singer sings it anyway.

Makes sense to me. I guess if you just took some cloned women and men fully grown and stuck them someplace together to see what kind of society they would form, all-consuming love wouldn't have to be related to gender necessarily. But with the human history we've been born into, it's women (generally speaking) who have been more encouraged to make their lives revolve around men, you know? So now men can get away with it more often, while it triggers more red flags when a woman says it.

 

 

I love Lorde and I agree with her opinion. Some of you obviously don't know how to differentiate a casual fan from super fan like the ones found on here. Most people aren't going to search through the internet for all of Lana's unreleased songs and albums to understand her. Her released material represents who she is when she wrote it and released it. The fact that her songs on BTD and Paradise are about being the girl who is submissive says a lot. I would like Lana to be more "in control" through her lyrics and empower her female fanbase. At the end of the day I love them both for their music and there shouldn't be anything more important than that.

 

I for one try not to treat casual fans as second-class citizens, while respecting their right to only listen to Lana's released albums, and only as much as they feel like it But it's still possible for a legitimately casual fan to have an overly superficial understanding of BTD's lyrics, by reacting rather than really trying to understand.

[whitman 1,286]

I mostly agree with Lorde about how mainstream music glamourize a lifestyle of opulence that is not even close of what people can afford it – and it is very sick to think that people can’t really relate to it but somehow are obsessed with this lifestyle. But I think that Lana has a very different take on this subject.

 

Lana sings as someone who lived a life of opulence but she doesn’t associate this with happiness - she is all about the dark side of the “American dream”. She sings “Everything I want I have: money, notoriety and Rivieras” in a song called Without You and she claims that all this “it means nothing if I can’t have you”.  Children of the Bad revolution, Carmen and National Anthem are songs that portray the tragic consequences of a life involved with opulence. Differently of a rapper who manage to sing about how life is fucking amazing now he has a new car, in her songs Lana plays the *miss America* girl who had everything  and done it all, she drove the rights cars, wore the right clothes  but she not is satisfied and found love in a doomed relationship. So I would not really include Lana as an artist who glamourize money.

 

Like Lorde, mostly people are really confused by Lana because she doesn’t have really a statement about this:  for some, lyrics like “money is the reason we exist” makes her a shallow girl and for others she is actually criticizing our society. It seems that nowadays either we are pro or against something, either you are the girl who sings about Hamptons or the girl who makes fun of it, there is no midterm anymore. But Lana is just someone really aware of all aspects of her own life, she doesn’t really have a massage, she is not really trying to change the game, she is just telling her story through music. That’s it. 

[Kerrigan 612]

too much OVERdiscussing       

too much OVERdiscussing       

too much OVERdiscussing       

too much OVERdiscussing       

too much OVERdiscussing       

too much OVERdiscussing       

[Agnese13 132]

Ok, I'm still not that good concerning all Lana's lyrics etc., but the impression I get is that she in a way uses the whole ''submissiveness '' thing in order to get what she wants from the guys. It's really like a reversed psychology or smth. The guy thinks he's the one in charge, when in fact, it's vice versa. In my opinion it just means that Lana is smart, by making her man feel like he's the best, which automatically makes him dependent from her.

[Viva 3,170]

most sex talk in pop songs annoys me tbh. it's like they're just singing about it because it's supposedly a taboo (which it isn't at all anymore, what is tbh) and they're trying to be edgy. tired image of a star acting naughtier than we really are~~

 

It depends where you are I guess. I think in US nudity, sex and certain things connected to culture/race are huge taboos. I dont get it, specially the nudity, but its how they see things. In Rio is obviously completely different. The idea of what is sexy in most US music videos amuses me a lot.

[Viva 3,170]

I think is what drives a lot of the critics and also one of the things that make Lana interesting: she said from the beggining, several times, that her lyrics are auto biographical. IMO they are mostly bio just not auto. Also Lana was born in wealth. That was her reality. Unlike most artists she didn't study in a public school, struggle to help her family or is a refugee. Lana is a girl that lived in NY, studied in a expensive private school and did go to college (if she actually graduated is another story). Lorde's reality is completely different.

 

Lana "made it" at the age of 25 (26 ). She was not a 15 year old that strugles money wise. . The cars, the money, the jets was nothing new to Lana. Lana's reality is the Hamptons not Tauranga. Lana is not a poor girl from Harlem. Even if Lana was a outcast and her stories about the Hamptons are from other people, she still was part of the scene. Lord was born and raised in very different circunstances. Lana talks about what surrounded her and that is interesting to many and like anyone born in wealth will annoy many.

 

I agree with Lorde that some of Lanas lyrics are not the healthiest thing for iimpressionable teens. But that is not Lana's job that is parent's and school job to educate. It's lazy to throw that over artits shoulders. 

 

I disagree when people say she doesn't make critics with her lyrics. I believe in the country America used to be is one of the best jabs an artist could give towards US and her music critics. I wonder many times how much Lana is playing the media, how much she planned from the start. SOmetimes I wonder if things happened to her by chance or if she actually planned it all including the repercussion of her lips and her plastic appearence. I wonder because sometimes I think LDR is a fool other that she is a genius. But I always like her music that I never question myself about.

 

I'm also glad that Lana wears clothes and not knickers to sing at concerts. Lana's videos are not filled with naked womens rolling in the mud or boobs poping from nowhere in our faces. Some of Lanas songs I can't stand because she seems like a door mat and that annoys me. In other lyrics she is beyong brillant.

 

IMO Lana is a storyteller before anything else and her stories from other people cover also girls that are beyond submissive. Girls who are lost, girls who think that happiness relays on $$, girls who like to drive with boys in the Hamptons. Mundane stories from mundane people.

[Sitar 22,213]

 

Lorde ‏@lordemusic

@Ahhn17H i think she's cool, i just have quite intense views sometimes and i can't help but express them. her videos are fucking amazing.

 

Wow she's so bitter

[Manueldelrey 72]

I don't like this girl, her music is not very different from what Lana does and yet she's getting more recognition. In the public eye Lana is more popular but from the critics Lorde is the loved one and i don't know why seriously and she even said that Royals was written at a time were she was listening to a lot of Lana. 

 

At least Lana has the life and stories.

[CruelParadise 3]

"Okay, let’s talk about feminism. What’s your take on feminism?

To be honest, I don’t really have one. I have a great appreciation for our world’s history. I learn from my own mistakes, I learn from the mistakes we’ve made as a human race. But I think we've gotten to a good place as women and we’ll just keep naturally progressing. That’s kind of how I feel about it. "

 

Lana doesn't really have an opinion about femnism, 

 

 

 

http://www.electronicbeats.net/en/features/interviews/lana-del-rey-interview/

[Valentino 885]

well, shouldn't all women be feminists? obviously i don't expect all women to protest or even really talk about it too much but feminism's only real goal are equal rights and shouldn't all women want equal rights? it really surprises me how many people have recently started going on and on about gay rights and ~equality~ but so many people still have something against feminists even though the only thing feminists are asking for are also equal rights. 

 

Feminism as a movement kind of has a dark history when it comes to glossing over women of color, lower class women, and trans women. For a long time it was a movement heralded by upper middle class white women for upper middle class white women, with women not fitting into those qualifications being ignored, thrown under the bus, or used as tokens. I think it's pretty understandable why someone would not want to relate to a movement that historically hasn't had your interests at heart despite claiming to speak for you. Feminism nowadays generally tries to acknowledge its past failings as a movement, but being that "woman" is necessarily a broad category it's hard to have one movement that speaks for all women and addresses the varying levels of oppression (class, race, trans, sexuality, disability, etc).

 

Feminism is as much the movement it is associated with as it is the ideals it espouses. If you want to associate yourself with feminism, you need to acknowledge that yes, there are skeletons in the closet and deal with them. You can also agree with the ideals without adopting the label. Does believing people shouldn't live in equality mean one must identify as a socialist? Does believing people should have a chance to work hard and succeed mean one should call oneself a capitalist? You can't boil down complex political movements to a single-issue, especially not ideologies which purport to explain every facet of society (feminism has expanded a lot to issues most wouldn't associate with gender - environmentalism, distribution of wealth).

 

In addition, feminism is so broad that saying you're a feminist is quite unhelpful. Which subset of feminism are you? A lib fem is going to have different views than a rad fem. Is pornography good for the soul or inherently degrading to women? What is the true nature of the patriarchy? How can women take control of their own lives and do women have a responsibility to other women? These are all questions to which you'll get wildly different responses - all from people who identify as "feminist."

 

That's something that really bothers me about female artists (actually any artist, but lesser known female artists like to talk about feminism a lot) talking about feminism - their analysis is superficial and seems to come from like the Sparknotes version of second-wave feminism. It's a lazy way to make your songs seem like intellectual critiques of society without actually having the content to back it up. Grrl power! Don't ever be dependent on a man, ever! Implying, of course, that the roles traditionally assigned to women are lesser and that women who "play" into them are less intelligent... which sounds a lot like internalized misogyny to me. Marina and the Diamonds's "Girls" is a grade-A example of a "feminist" song that is actually super misogynistic (thankfully she's realized the unfortunate implications of the song). You'll still hear people proclaiming that lyrics like "look like a girl but I think like a guy!" are scathing deconstructions of gender when they actually reinforce this idea that there's a way to look like and think like a guy/girl. Not to mention the entire idea that instead of criticizing the institutions that "fuel a new insecurity" for women, we criticize women for... being influenced by the media.

 

Disclaimer: I don't study politics, women's studies, or gender theory. Most of what I know regarding feminism as a movement today comes from my frequenting self-proclaimed feminist circles which, though harmful in other ways, opened my eyes to the superficial and ultimately harmful nature of my own "brand" of feminism. I think there are a lot of women like me who grow up dissatisfied with gender roles and the way women are treated, but instead take it out on other women who are content with this system and imply that these women are the ones keeping them down, which is not necessarily true and demeans a woman's choice just for fitting into gender-conforming lines. Seeing this attitude being perpetuated reminds me of my old, harmful attitude and it upsets me because a) it reminds me of how terrible my grasp of politics was at a young age (not that it's much better now, but it was worse then) and b) it's actually not really helpful to women and might even be harmful.