Rebel yell: singer and provocateur, Pink. Photo courtesy Sony BMG Canada.
In the context of the Top 40, Pink is a free radical. She has shape-shifted and genre hopped — from R&B to rock ’n’ roll bad girl to teen pop icon — all the while promoting her unrepentant, in-your-face agenda of individualism and girl power. While she has always flirted with messages of a “lite” feminism, the sort that is not too bold to keep her off the radio charts, her messages of female self-empowerment and gender are conflicted at best on her new album I’m Not Dead.
Much discussion of I’m Not Dead has centered on the video for the album’s first single, Stupid Girls, which premiered on the internet in late January and quickly went into rotation on MTV and MuchMusic. It’s a parody of recognizable female celebutantes — Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, the Olsen Twins and Lindsay Lohan — all played by Pink clad in girly drag. These are women some might venture are her peers; Lohan and Simpson, at least, are competitors within the pop market. Pink’s four-album career has been built on portraying herself as an outsider (despite having sold 22 million copies worldwide between her first three albums), and with Stupid Girls she is pushing her girl-power message as much as she is marketing herself; though one does not doubt that her intent is anything short of genuine.
The chorus of Stupid Girls is built around the line “Maybe if I act like that / That guy will call me back.” In the video, Pink sings it, near naked, from a plastic surgeon’s operating table. In another scene she rallies for “a girl president” in between vignettes where she mocks, alternately (and with mixed results): Hilton’s sex tape, Simpson’s porno-inspired video moves (Pink comically sucks on a dirty sponge she is using to wash a car), bulimics, women who act dumb to attract men and women who dance in rap videos. The point Pink is trying to make, as she told Oprah Winfrey earlier this month, is that women who are imitating celebrities rather than being themselves are wasting their lives. “My definition of stupid is wasting your opportunity to be yourself,” she said.
Unfortunately, the message of Stupid Girls is as much confused as it is instructive. Instead of attacking the culture and media that pimp unrealistic beauty standards, Pink targets girls whose self esteem is so low that they are throwing up their lunches to attain Hilton’s same gamine profile. In the video, the vision of strength Pink offers up as the antidote is a typically masculine one; Pink gritting her teeth and scoring a touchdown as she plays tackle football with the guys, Pink, free of make up, acting stern in a powersuit and glasses. The message is clear, and echoes the ideas that culture broadcasts every day — that femininity equals weakness; to be a strong woman, you must act like a man. Strangely enough, Pink’s intended “radical” is only the same old same old.
Another Olsen? No, just Pink, dressed up for a scene from Stupid Girls. Courtesy Sony BMG Canada.
Though her trope may be well-polished teen pop fodder, with the album’s lyrics she makes clear that she is a breed apart; it is hard to imagine Gwen Stefani or Christina Aguilera tackling an open letter to George W. Bush. On Dear Mr. President — backed by Indigo Girls — her big, raspy voice is rife with soulful indignation. Asking, “What kind of father would take his own daughter’s rights away? / And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?” — and later referencing criminal-sentencing guidelines, No Child Left Behind and the invasion of Iraq — Pink is not triflin’.
Much of the rest of the album ping pongs between I-don’t-need-you and Baby-baby-please-come-back songs, though they are filtered through Pink’s lyrical bent of born-to-be-wild bad girl-isms, punky temerity and a liberal application of four-letter words. The second single, U & Ur Hand, is the singer at her most comically bratty. A diva-bitch anthem, the song tears a page from Kelly Clarkson’s Since U Been Gone, combining rueful spit with big flashes of guitar churn. It’s a kiss-off to a knucklehead on the make who interrupts Pink’s drunken funtimes on the dancefloor; on the big-budget chorus she lets the man know she’s not about to go home with him, and offers little by way of consolation: “Tonight, it’s just you and your hand.”
While I’m Not Dead is a thick slice of mega-polished pop, engineered for your thoughtless enjoyment, Pink’s didacticism keeps the album from just being chart-abiding ear candy. Her tomboyish party-girl persona dominates and cuts through the tracks of lovelorn sap; she may not have the dude of her dreams, but she does have her pride — a notion that sets her apart from rival chart-toppers and “stupid girls” alike.
Jessica Hopper is a Chicago writer. Her work has appeared in Spin, Punk Planet and the Chicago Reader.
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