Imma be up front here. Ke$ha’s songs are dumb. They’re vapid and silly and they don’t make sense (“kick them to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger?” Girl, have you SEEN Mick Jagger?!) Behold:
<— That’s him. You can change your mind now.
But despite her bad taste in men, I think the girl might be a witch. All I know is when “Tik Tok” starts playing, I start flailing and everyone has to back up about 5 feet so I can get my dance on. Clearly, I cannot be held responsible for my body responding so ecstatically to such shitty music, so I can only conclude she has evil magical powers.
Thus, if Ke$ha is a witch, the next logical assumption is that she is also a feminist. (Thanks Pat Robertson!) And okay, that makes sense if we want to boil equality down to the lowest common denominator. So we’ve got 3OH!3 singing: “Shush girl, shut your lips/ Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips” and we’ve got Ke$ha reciprocating: “Coming out your mouth with your blah blah blah/ Just zip your lips like a padlock and meet me at the back with the jack and the jukebox/ I don’t really care where you live at just turn around boy and let me hit that/ Don’t be a little bitch with your chit chat just show me where your dick’s at.” FEMINISM FTW! Oh wait, you mean, objectification’s still trashy even when a girl’s singing it? I see. (Also, logistically speaking, I’m really curious how she’s going to hit that if he turns around. Just sayin.)
There’s definitely an argument to be made that it’s cool that Ke$ha is co-opting the sexually objectifying language a lot of men in pop culture have been using about women and throwing it right back at them. It’s like she’s saying: “See, girls can have fun, no strings attached sex too!” (Well, more accurately: “See, girls can be assholes about sex too!”) But I really have trouble celebrating the fact that women and men can be equally douchebaggy. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying Ke$ha’s desire to have sex in a bar is problematic, I’m saying the fact she’s calling the dude she wants to have sexy times with a “little bitch” and demanding he produce his penis is problematic. Ke$ha’s “re-negotiation of acceptable feminine acts” is really just Ke$ha sexually objectifying men and sexual objectification should be rejected no matter who the recipient of it is.
In any case, I’ve listened to “Blah, Blah, Blah” four times during the course of writing this. I’m doomed to love terrible music.
