I don't write stuff like this too often, but sometimes Iggy Azalea wears a Scarface leotard/tanktop and it inspires one.
A - Operational Definition
Queer is a word I learned early on. "queerbait" was a favorite (not so) term of endearment used by my brother when we would play games when I was little. Growing up the term was mostly closely associated with homosexuality. "Queer" people in my adolescent years just meant someone gay. It was an especially fun day at recess when the boys would gather and decide it was a fun idea to play "Smear the Queer," a game that involves tackling/pummeling/disemboweling a boy who had a ball. If you caught the ball, then you became the Queer and everyone's job was to attack you until you gave it up.
This in itself is a fascinating object lesson. The desire to both destroy and be the object of difference is a tension that most people live in their whole lives. This, however, wasn't a game to dwell on this philosophical tension, so much as an excuse for boys to get together and give control to their most primal instincts of smashing into each other.
The glory of a college education is that understandings become larger and worlds open up. Queer Theory, the definition of queer came to mean a lot more in my college years when, outside of being tackled for carrying a ball, "Queer" came to mean aberrational and not just homosexual. The Golden Girls is a queer show, not because it is about gay people but because it is about alternative families and lifestyles. It is oppositional to the television programs centered on nuclear families that espouse traditional sexual mores and exhort the joys of suburban life. Homosexuality and Queerness are tied closely together because being gay is deviance; options of a nuclear family, traditional Christian values, Sundays at the ballpark, etc. are outside of that realm. By sheer value of existing and experiencing same-sex desires, homosexuals are deviant and cut off from mainstream cultural operations. As our society grows more open, this diminishes, but in many ways queerness is only normalized in larger urban centers. Take your same-sex partner and Asian baby to a baseball game in rural America and you will be stared at.
Being gay, despite our striving forward, is still weird, deviant, different, odd - queer.
But queerness isn't limited to that. I'm a double queer because yes, I like boys, but I also go to church, I would rather read Joyce than watch Andy Cohen, and I generally despise and mistrust any force that is able to exert power over me: governments, gravity, etc.
B - Islands
An interesting spin on the classic queer saga, is the push-pull of different subsets that strive toward or away from queerness.
For instance, in Boystown there are groups of guys who have somehow created their own islands of gayness. They operate under the assumption that while they are gay, they aren't queer. They're gay but not THAT gay. I tell people about this concept and it doesn't make sense to someone not in the bubble, but these people very much exists. These guys are generally very masculine, attractive, and in positions of social power through work or general social connections. In many ways it reminds me of Orwell's Animal Farm, how the pigs take over leadership but are then subsumed into the world of men and betray all the other animals in the farm. Four legs good, two legs bad inverts itself into two legs good, four legs bad as the pigs learn to walk on two legs and start to subjugate the other animals on the farm. Likewise, these gay men have turned their back on larger issues in the gay community and see themselves as above and removed. They have successfully merged into larger society ("People see me and don't even know I'm gay!"). There is no concern for the LGBTQ youth who have to walk the streets of Boystown because they have no homes to go to. When a chubby guy comes into a bar, they don't see a fellow gay person, but a guy who should work out so he's more attractive.
This isn't limited to gay men, but I find it the most upsetting and uncomfortable in my own community, because we have been ostracized and we should know better. This practice, however, is in every sect and slice of society. It's in the gifted artist who majors in accountancy so he can merge into the universal rat race; it is in the heterosexual couple who is afraid to break up because they have been together 3 years and it is "time to get married."
It is a human impulse is to drive toward this great beacon of sameness and uniformity. There is something terrifying and also awesome about thousands of soldiers moving in unison, perfect goosesteps rising in time with the sharp tap of boots. It is the desire to find the boy, queer, with the ball and crush him.
And yet oppositional to this are the other kind of islands; these are the ones who consciously seek a boat and a captain to drive them to a place of isolation and difference. This movement has a number of symbols, from Lady Gaga, to John Lennon. But these are sects of people who strive to drift off from the mainstream, the great continent of grey and white uniformity, that society represents.
Every high school and college student goes through this. Even the most cookie cutter of conservative Catholics discovers Objectivism at some point and decides that there is another reality, another plane of existence that they have not yet experienced. These feelings of elation drive them to pockets of likeminded individuals in which the merits of libertarianism are discussed and their true difference is realized.
Alternatively, it can happen to a group of vegans who decide that they will taken the mantle of diet difference. This I find most fascinating in that it also cloaks the wearer in a sort of martyrdom. "Oh, you don't have a vegan menu... I supposed I'll just eat after the party."
Either way, this tenacious desire for otherness tends to die off in the mid-twenties. People who you thought were hippie/rock alternative are suddenly married with two kids. The leftist who chained herself to a flagpole in college is suddenly voting Republican and reading C.S. Lewis for her Bible Study.
The movement, the masses fade off and most drift back to the continent of grey. They don't often make the trip across the sea to the island in its totality. A few waves experienced and a shark spotted in the deeper waters are enough to bring them back to shore. They drift back with the gays who have created their own inner-model of sameness.
But no one would get out in this water if it weren't for the captains on the shore who really ARE trying to break off the island. These people are rabid, crazy, and completely different. They aren't just queer, they are Queer. Their very being exudes separateness, divergence.
They are people like James Joyce, John Lennon; thinkers like Einstein, Copernicus, and Steve Jobs. And maybe like
C - Queen Iggy
Last summer a song was released called "Work." My boss played it and it was funny and catchy. Then she showed us the video.
What I had assumed was an African-American woman trying to be like Nicki Minaj was actually a 5'10" blond Australian woman. In the video she rides a bicycle in Louboutin heels around a trailer park. Further diving into her background showed she was Australian but came to the US at 16 to make her way in hip-hop by cleaning hotel rooms. Her first big hit was called Pu$$y. In one video called, "Murda Bizness" she forces her fictional daughter into a beauty pageant. Her follow up single to "Work" was called "Bounce" and featured her in full Indian garb dancing Bollywood style as midi, videogamish music throbs in the chorus.
I had liked "Work" - I loved Iggy Azalea. There were two things very clear from these videos.
a - She gave zero f@#ks
b - Gurl was queer
Of course, not queer in the homosexual way, but in the I am different and I fit into no particular mold whatsoever kind of way.
Even looking at other so-called symbols of difference like Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj, she stands out as actually different. Lady Gaga is a white girl with a good voice who sings pop songs. She wears meat suits for attention. It's fun and different and there's a reason that people who don’t fit in identify with her. Likewise, Nicki is an African-American who raps and performs hip-hop music. She makes some weird music videos and wears colorful wigs - it's kind of different and fun.
But Iggy... What is this glorious mess?
D - Case Study: "New Bitch"
A lot of female pop artists make songs about female empowerment. "Roar" and "Brave" come to mind over the past year. Lady Gaga's "Do What You Want" is an interesting play on the loss of female/individual autonomy within different contexts. These all speak to the plight of women, the desire to be stronger in spirit and carve out a special and unique place within a dominantly masculine culture. This concept is something that resonates with a plurality of different social groups, from women, to gays, to chubby boys in grade school who would rather take dance lessons than go to football practice.
One of Iggy's ballad's on her new album is called "New Bitch." The song is about finding a man who's rich then talking trash to the other women who you have replaced in his affections. Within the song Iggy sets herself up to be successful and powerful in the first verse, however, the song is structured around her relationship to a man. The song isn't about female empowerment, but it's about power. Iggy has chosen a subordinate position because she wants a man. She defends her position and she doesn't compromise. One gets the idea that a conversation between Miss Azalea and her man in this song would go like this:
Her "Daddy": "Baby, you want a Lexus or a Ferrari for your birthday?"
Iggy: "Or? Boy, you better buy me one of each."
The song isn't an anthem for women but it's not about cowing to a man. It's a weird convergence of feminism, traditional gender construction, and empowerment. The phrase, "I'm his new bitch" isn't about her relationship to her man, it's about her telling everyone else who she is. She appropriates the vulgar term our society uses for women and claims it as her own.
Iggy: "Call me a bitch? Yeah, I am and I'm the one running this show."
Is this song a positive influence on young women?
I have no idea, but it's catchy and it makes me want a new boyfriend so I can be his New Bitch.
E - Oh Captain, My Captain
In the crowd at Iggy Azalea's Chicago show last week, I looked around and saw a pretty odd cross-section of the Chicago population. There were Hip Hop fans, hipsters, and copious homosexuals. For some reason Iggy has spoken to all of us. How can a female vegan hipster converse with an uptight, well-quaffed homosexual? I guess you put on Iggy's The New Classic and see.
The group I went with was in and of itself bizarre. I was the Midwestern Homo, a graduate advisor friend from rural Michigan was our leader, and my engineering friend from Houston rounded out the group.
Something about Iggy's queerness, the difference conveyed in her weird, gravely vocals and throbbing club and hip hop beats draws us together. The manifestation of a tall, blond Australian singing American hip hop is a nucleus that pulls a number of us in. Something about the hit, the crunch of bone and skin and being the queer that is smeared is tied to her difference, her willingness to stand out, be the target and represent something unique, different, queer.
To paraphrase an interview I read on Iggy, someone asked her what it was like growing up. She said it was awkward - people made fun of her for rapping. They made fun of her rhymes and her love of hip hop music. She basically ran away at 16 to pursue a life that dreamed of in America in the epicenter of the hip hop scene.
It is a variation of the American Dream, the longing for a place that will offer our difference opportunity. America has symbolized this to people of different religions, ethnicities, creeds, and colors. But even when we arrive it is our tendency to forget our longing, our desire for our difference to be upheld. The masses subsume us and our colorful Scarface leotards turn to gray. It is the struggle to keep our head high and recognize our differences and remember that dream that disconnected us from the masses in the first place.
It is difficult to be different. In college and high school we push away, we dance to Lady Gaga in her meat costume and celebrate being a New Bitch. But the party starts to die down. Our friends through marriage, career, and children pull toward the mainland and it is our impulse, the natural flow to join them. There are only a few with boats along the shore, calling us to remember difference, isolation. They are the queers who keep holding the ball when the world strives to smear them.
Iggy seems to be one of those with her boat ready. Gurl doesn't paddle herself, but she is on her way to new and exciting lands. She represents that difference that we all strive toward but have beaten back. She is queer and strong and has cut out a place in a subculture that is usually not receptive to people of her color, gender, or nationality. But she stands tall and raps for all of us who have forgotten what that striving, what that dream is like.
This whole exercise is probably putting too much creative emphasis on the songwriter of a song called "Pu$$y", but I think what Iggy Azalea represents is something that is more universal than one hip hop artist in the early 21st century. Artists like her will continue to arise, lead, and remind us of the pulse and bang of queerness. They hold the boats and remind us that there is a shimmering world out there that we may just be too afraid to explore.
