Some spicy moves
The BBC solemnly tells us what to think about Sam Smith and his new video – well no they tell us what to think about “their” new video, but you know how it is, it’s hard to remember to use the “correct” i.e. incorrect hence hard to remember ProNouns.
And with their latest video, Sam Smith has certainly caused a bit of stir.
If you haven’t watched it, the singer spends most of it wearing a corset and nipple tassels while performing some spicy moves with backing dancers.
Is this the BBC or Pink News?
One scene in particular has upset some people – it shows Sam in that corset and nipple tassel look, posing suggestively while being showered with jets of water.
…
Youtube’s restricted mode blocks the video. But fans say it’s no worse than others released by artists, many of them female, containing suggestive imagery.
Songs like Anaconda by Nicki Minaj, S&M by Rihanna or even Call On Me by Eric Prydz all capitalise on it.
Therefore a pudgy guy is every bit as hot doing the same thing.
Except that it doesn’t work that way. What people find sexy isn’t really a matter for political agitation. It is a matter for political agitation when being sexy, especially being sexy to men, is made a criterion in realms where being sexy is completely beside the point. Women are more than familiar with that warped arrangement, and analyzing it and resisting it has been a big part of feminism for decades. It doesn’t follow that a pudgy guy who wants to be another Rihanna is doing something progressive or liberatory.
Those who think Sam has been singled out have a theory.
In 2019, the singer came out as non-binary and asked to be described with they/them pronouns. Their new album, Gloria, fully embraces LGBT culture.
There’s no such thing as LGBT culture. Sam Smith is not a lesbian. It doesn’t really mean anything to “come out as non-binary,” for the simple reason that “non-binary” doesn’t mean much. All this solemn hand-wringing is just silly, and makes the BBC look fatuous.
“If a female artist had done that exact same video, worn the exact same outfits, no one would bat an eyelid,” says drag queen Pixie Polite. “I think the outcry just smacks of this sort of homophobia, queer phobia and transphobia.”
Don’t forget non-binary phobia. The more phobias you can list the more prizes you get.
Sure, it’s true that a woman doing that stuff wouldn’t get people batting their eyelids, but that’s because men have been sexualizing women that way since forever. That doesn’t mean it’s transferable to pudgy guys in corsets and nipple tassels.
Kenny Ethan Jones, a trans advocate and writer from London, agrees that Sam is entering an era of “embracing their queerness”.
“It’s really nice to see Sam really step into themselves,” says Kenny.
Bahahahahahaha thanks for that.
There’s more but ça suffit maintenant as my French teacher used to say.
Actually, lots of women do say something when women do that, because it saddens us to see women reduced to nipple tassels and corsets. It also gives men the wrong impression of what women are, or what they should be, and leads to increased sexualization both in the workplace and at home. Sam Smith is contributing to that with “their” video, and “they” doesn’t care. In fact, “they” revels in it.
Oh please, Mister Smith thinks his performance is going to cause normies to panic in the streets?
He is so boring. He is not even the first one to try the golden shower attempt at being shocking.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood called – they want their schtick back.
I agree. Risque pop videos are old hat, and nobody’s actually shocked by the drag or the golden shower simulation – it’s all performative. The only reason anyone’s paying any attention to the video at all is that the ill-fitting corset and nipple tassels are a bad, BAD look on a pasty fat man, and that’s highlighted by how toned all the backing dancers are. It’s like his stylist secretly hates him.
I agree Southwest88. No-one except the most strait laced wallflower seeking to be offended will even blink. Hell, I was a young, white, straight teen living in a fairly conservative town in a society where being gay was still technically illegal when Frankie was around. Literally no-one was bothered. I mean, back then we still called people gay as a nasty slur and insult. It was worse if you were straight (I was on the receiving end of that a lot at school because I was a bit quiet and read books – it largely stopped when I started playing rugby). Call me cynical but this smacks of Smith living his particular dream, those around him leveraging it for everything it’s worth and a lot more as publicity, and TQNB ‘community’ using faux or imagined outrage as victim validation.
Either that or everyone was afraid to say “No, don’t do that, it makes you look ridiculous.”
YNNB: There’s a certain sort of person who wants to dress in ridiculous ways but lacks the chutzpah to deal with the fact that looking ridiculous leads to getting called ridiculous. So they invent an ideology that protects them from that consequence.
NIV: yup. And let’s face it, if a female singer of Sam’s age and physique floated the idea of wearing that outfit in that video, she’d be laughed out of the room. Wouldn’t happen. It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes, where only a bigoted fatphobic homophobic transphobic bigoty bigot is unable to see how subversive and spicy and brave it is, this bold groundbreaking display of transgressive queer sexuality, and nobody wants to be seen as a bigot so they’re pretending that they aren’t actually looking at a podgy bloke whose corset doesn’t fit.
Splunge!
https://vimeo.com/617393744
“see Sam really step into themselves”
So is Sam something I wouldn’t want stuck to the bottom of my shoe?
Or is he something he puts on the floor, steps into, and then pulls up?
I have a different take. People have been complaining about women being risque or hypersexual in music videos for a long time. From Madonna to Megan Thee Stallion’s WAP.
I see it as propaganda. “Transphobia! People only complain because he’s non-binary” is just the latest attempt to position tRans FolKs in the public imagination as the most marginalized, the most despised, the most powerless and oppressed group EVER.
But shouldn’t non-binary people have their own phobia? Why aren’t they recognized with their own special form of oppression? If “non-binary identities are valid,” as the afterthought-like tail end of the Boilerplate Trans Mantra repeatedly reminds us, then the “phobic” response to them should be too, otherwise, you’re erasing their persecution and and suffering by lumping it in with the Trans! (We’ll just overllok the fact that trans-genderism and non-binariness are, conceptually, pretty much mutually antagonistic. Trans identities (because they’re still within the masculine/feminine binary*) are a part of the binary that non-binariness ostentatiously rejects. Whatever. Who cares. Nobody joins or follows this movement for the quality or rigour of its logic. What’s one more contradiction in the steaming bowl of incoherence that is Trans Ideology? Safety in numbers, right? Besides, kick up too much fuss and the T will dump the non-binaries’ sorry asses in a flash. Afterthought it is. Make that one (self)serving of Transphobia to go, please.
*We’ll ignore the whole Baskin-Robbins 31 flavours of gender identities lunacy; everbody knows that the really important ones are still the Big Two, pace a-gender, demi-boy femme soy latte gender people everywhere.
And of those, it is clearly only the TiMs that count. Even the TiFs are an afterthought, brought out when they’re needed to make a point for the TiMs and then shoved back into the closet to whine among themselves. Only the TiMs get to spend so much public whining time (except Chase Strangio; she managed to gain a very big stage).