We're... Still Doing This?!
In the year 2025, it feels as though we should be past the age of pop starlets performing in their underwear (although, then again, maybe it doesn't feel like that at all)
I’ve been listening to Tate McRae’s Sports Car on repeat, having become particularly intrigued with her off the back of this article I read last week.
It’s a fascinating piece that seems to posit that any critique of McRae’s music cannot be made without the acknowledgement of her as a Canadian, something that I find slightly… confusing, but that might just be because I’m an Irish person, living in the US, who grew up largely listening to British and American music and never really thought of said music’s cultural context and geographical situation as being significant to my enjoyment of said music.
Let me tell you, I’m thinking about it now!
(I should also caveat this by saying that a piece of journalistic writing that talks about Canadian pop music and doesn’t so much as mention Avril Lavigne is surely bonkers in and of itself – and simply do not try to tell me she’s not a pop star, have you heard What The Hell?!)
Anyway, I really like Sports Car. It’s got – and I’m sorry, I know these aren’t Canadians – Pussycat Dolls-meet-Britney energy and that was truly a golden age of dancing-in-nightclubs for me, so I suppose I’m having a sort of Pavlovian response to the beat. It imbues me with a sort of “get me to the dancefloor!” energy which, were there a dancefloor in sight, I suspect I’d be powerless to resist.
But one thing that just… sticks in my craw, you could say, in the year of our lord 2025, is the sexiness of the visuals behind the music (or, you could say, in front of it). Because when was the last time you saw a man – pick a man! any man! – performing music in a state of near-total nudity?
Why are women – talented women! singers! songwriters! incredible dancers! – still expected to be on display in a way we simply do not see from men in music? WHY?!?
This still, by the way, is from the above SNL performance, the choreography for which is amazing. And I say that as someone who has no clue about choreography beyond saying things like “how did anyone come up with that?!” and “wow!” over and over again. See also: this incredible work by CDK and Sergio Reis.
It’s easy, sometimes – and as I say this, I’m distinctly not talking about the US, which is doing… something else that can’t be called progress – to imagine that we have got really far when it comes to feminism, and equality, more generally. But then there are moments – most often, I’m sad to say, popping up in the hallowed halls of popular culture – that remind us that women are still there to perform, to be the beauties, while men get to be the brains (and the brawn, should they so desire, but it’s not a requirement).
I’m thinking about Tate McRae in this context, sure, but also about Gracie Abrams (JJ Abrams’ daughter, FYI, lest you think the nepo baby phenomenon is going anywhere) and Marina and Jennie in the rain and Beyoncé and Jay Z at the 2014 Grammys, he in a sharp suit and she in her lingerie.
It seems as though women can’t “just” be musicians, performers, or dancers (or even all three at once) without also demonstrating their beauty, sex appeal, or femininity (preferably, all three at once) – even if, and maybe especially if, their target audience is women, gay men (or both). It’s catering to the male gaze without actually expecting to cater to the men; it’s bowing down to patriarchy when you’d think pop music would, of all genres, be a place to eschew every expectation the patriarchy makes of us.
It’s something I thought about a lot while watching the latest season of Love is Blind, which is, if you can believe it, its eighth, and took place in Minnesota, which my friend Deb says is why it was so dull. “They picked the most boring state of course it was boring,” quoth she. “I’m hoping Denver will be better!” (That’s where next season’s happening.)
As dating shows go, Love is Blind is not the worst. That would be, if you ask me, The Bachelor, or maybe The Bachelorette, which is particularly aggravating because, despite the fact that the woman is at the centre of the show, and choosing, each week, from an array of suitors, come the finale episode it’s still expected that the men be the ones proposing. Ultimately, the woman in question must still stand in front of a camera crew and cross her fingers that the mediocre man she’s left with has decided to choose her.
But Love is Blind is still terrible, not just because the proposals are still left up to the men (with one notable exception, season one’s Giannina Gibelli), meaning the women are competing to be “selected” by the men for the next stage of what is, let’s face it, a competition show – but also because of the slightly dystopian auditioning-for-love vibes given by the whole premise.
This has never been more clear than it was during this most recent season in interactions between Madison Errichiello and the two men she was “dating” in the first batch of episodes, Mason Horacek and Alex Brown (who’s facing some different issues of his own, allegations swirling online about his propensity for younger – much younger – women1).
At the show’s reunion episode – shot a year later, the contestants regroup and reconvene on-stage with hosts Vanessa and Nick Lachey to “tell all” about what really went down, which seems like something of a misnomer as we’re supposed to have seen how it really went down (hence, “reality” TV…) – Errichiello was accused of changing her personality depending on who she was talking to, talking candidly about sex with one while keeping her other relationship pretty PG, something she both acknowledged and defended, pointing out that we all interact differently with different people, depending on what positive or negative feedback we get from them, not to mention their general “vibe”.
And while she’s not wrong – I’m not the same “version” of myself with my family as I am with my friends, say, something I started to think about recently when I realised that my husband is the only romantic partner ever to get to know the version of me I am here, in Fort Wayne, in proximity to my older sister, and away from my parents and school friends – there’s something more to it in the context of Love is Blind which, of course, is not just depicting “ordinary” interpersonal interactions.
It feels, in essence, more like watching an audition play out than watching a date, and in that sense Love is Blind has always reminded me of Louise O’Neill’s novel, Only Ever Yours, summarised thus (by Goodreads):
“Where women are created for the pleasure of men, beauty is the first duty of every girl… Women are no longer born naturally, girls (called "eves") are raised in Schools and trained in the arts of pleasing men until they come of age.”
There are scenes in Only Ever Yours that I can easily imagine playing out on-screen in an episode of Love is Blind, where the girls are meeting up with their prospective future husbands, spending time with them, one on one, giving them the opportunity to impress these men, to convince them of their marriageability — that they should be chosen as wife, rather than left to become a concubine or (and this seems worse somehow) a teacher.
The performances we see as these women speak to these men are a study in adaptability; the merest hint of disquiet from the men and they shift tack, leaning into their more nurturing sides, and away from the overt sexuality that had been on display a moment before, or vice versa.
In season eight of Love is Blind, it was Errichiello in whom we saw this shift most transparently, as the edit showed her speaking, in turn, to Horacek, then Brown. With Brown, their conversation focused on her background and upbringing, the trauma she had experienced with her parents’ addiction problems and the overdose death of her stepfather, while with Horacek she was less vulnerable and more flirtatious.
The shift, to viewers, may have seemed jarring, but the show is carefully produced and edited, the conversations exponentially longer than the snippets we are privvy to, and in any case, who, among us, has not leaned in to whatever version of ourselves we think a prospective partner wants to hear about?
Still, the fact that amped-up sexuality is one of the surest ways these women choose to “market” themselves — and this is marketing, of a sort — whether they’re searching for a partner or pursuing a spot on the Billboard Hot 100 seems to speak to a lack of progress in the culture of entertainment and, indeed, of relationships themselves (although I accept that the relationships in Love is Blind are not exactly representative of romantic relationships as a whole; they can’t be, not juxtaposed with the promise of post-reality-TV-show stardom and all that it entails).
The frustrating part of it all is that these women are, in the cases of McRae et al, insanely talented (in Errichiello’s case, I don’t know about her talents, or lack thereof, but her intelligence shone through in every interaction, whether she was playing the vamp or the virgin) — so why isn’t that talent enough? Why do they feel the need to use their bodies and sexualities to market themselves, when their music could well do the job on its own?
There is a sort of obvious argument to quell any discussion here: that this is how they want to dress; this is how they want to present themselves; they are reclaiming their sexuality from the clutches of the patriarchy, much like the early noughties saw the rise of raunch culture and girls behaving badly (or, just as badly as men) in response to what was seen as the prudish, sexless, bra-burning feminism of the 1970s and 1980s.
As an argument, it would be easier to accept if it was a sexuality that was not being played for the male gaze; Madonna, for example, has never shied away from showcasing either her body or her sexuality, but it’s hard to find a Madonna performance that is clearly designed to appeal to the desires of the (straight, cis) male gaze. Ditto Lady Gaga.
Even Sabrina Carpenter, while yes, being what one’s parents might describe as “scantily clad”, has a kind of tongue-in-cheek vibe. Her style is more pinup than Playboy, and her performances veer closer to vaudeville than voyeurism. Like Madonna and Gaga before her, Carpenter seems to be trying to appeal more to the gals and the gays than to anyone else.
But let’s be clear: appealing to the male gaze is not the same as appealing to men, and we’re all shackled by the same patriarchal standards that lead us to find aspiration in the bare midriffs and sexed-up lyrics of today’s pop princesses.
I’m not sure whether there’s a conclusion to be reached about all of this — or, if it’s a problem, whether it’s one that has a solution. Will we ever be released from the limitations of femininity and female sexuality imposed upon us by the patriarchy (without being released from patriarchy itself, something that I’m increasingly doubtful will happen in my lifetime)?
It’s all very depressing, for want of a better term. And before you tell me to stop watching Love is Blind, or watching McRae’s performances, I don’t think the solution to objecting to what’s happening in the culture is to avoid the culture altogether. Although when it comes to Love is Blind, I might have to divest, for the sake of my sanity.
Like many reality TV shows featuring cishet men, Love is Blind has had more than one man throw up more than one issue, and it seems as though the producers have yet to solve the problem of, well, men.