Monday, August 25, 2014

Is Maddie & Tae’s Girl In A Country Song a successful gender flip or fail?

Is Maddie & Tae’s Girl In A Country Song a successful gender flip or fail?
Music video trends come and go: once upon a time it was all about the sweeping, Michael Bay-esque crane shots (Will Smith’s Miami, we hardly knew ye), then the well-
timed celebrity cameo (do you think Ben Stiller wonders whether Bad Boys For Life hurt his Walter Mitty Oscar chances?). And lest we forget the brief, mind-melting era
when everyone wanted an Eric Wareheim Techincolor nightmare-fuel vid.
Evidently in mid-2014, the music video trend du jour is to play fast and loose with a bit of gender role reversal. You know, instead of armies of video vixens, female
artists are surrounded by Calvin Klein-poster-lookin’ hunks: think J-Lo’s I Luh Ya Papi, and now country artists Maddie & Tae’s Girl In A Country Song, in which the
duo literally flip an industrial switch labelled “ROLE REVERSAL” before dudes kitted out in Daisy Dukes flood the screen.
Girl in a Country Song gif
Well, it’s a trend if you take Amanda Hess’ latest XX Factor column for Slate at face value - and doing so would also require you to believe that gender role
reversals in music videos do nothing to dismantle the objectification of female artists.
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In the piece, Hess argues that little is solved by Country Song, because, “Maddie & Tae’s role reversal switch only works on one gender. The objectified women from
the first shot don’t get a masculine wardrobe change; throughout the video, they’re filmed pushing out their butts as they play at farming and making eyes at the
camera as they writhe on a tree swing. Meanwhile, the gender-flipped guys are styled and directed to appear purposely ridiculous, not actually sexy.”
It’s true, the women don’t get a wardrobe change, but I have a different reading, which is that their continued presence alongside the sexy outfits of the dudes
works precisely because it illustrates that the notion of “girl[s] in a country song” is as “ridiculous” as the farmer dudes wearing crop-tops and cut-offs. The
viewer has to read the dudes’ presence as silly in order to understand the point of the song and video; if it’s dumb to have a half-dressed farmer dude making out
with a strawberry, it’s just as stupid for a woman to do it.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Kendall Jenner Models Sexy Lingerie,

Kendall Jenner Models Sexy Lingerie, Displays Her Amazing Figure for 'Love' Magazine Shoo
Kendall Jenner strikes a powerful pose as she models her lingerie in this new feature from Love magazine, posted to her Instagram account.
“me by @kegrand and #MarioSorrenti for @thelovemagazine” the 18-year-old model captioned the picture – how amazing does Kendall look!?
“Kendall is not only one of our cover stars, but one of the breakthrough faces of the season, who I loved so much that I asked her to model in three of our stories this issue,” editor-in-chief Katie Grand told Models.com about the shoot.