Small Words

Katy Perry’s new music video undermines its own pro-woman lyrics. You might think it’s an attempt at feminism, but the video tells a different story.

The pop star’s new song “Woman’s World” has created a splash among music fans and critics alike. USA Today reported critics throwing around some pretty… ripe words. “Garbage”, “cringe”, and “pandering nonsense” probably weren’t even the worst.

Cat Zhang (a critic) wrote a scathing but thoughtful piece (read Zhang’s article here) about Perry’s sink into vapidness, even despite Perry’s commitment to “purposeful pop.” Zhang finishes the piece by reminding us that “Women’s World” was produced by a man accused of sexual assault. Yikes! That’s not exactly uplifting women is it, K.P.?    

All that said, Perry says her song is a parody. So, let’s take her at her word and talk about “Woman’s World,” the song, and the video, as a work of satire.

It starts with a long list of what a woman can be: sexy, strong, and intelligent. It then moves to the things that women can achieve. She can be a champion, superhuman; she can be a mother. The song keeps returning to the refrain “It’s a woman’s world and you’re lucky to be living in it, cause, baby, we ain’t going away ”. Maybe this is a sort of pun – “women are the nexus to all life on Earth and, factually, each and every one of us wouldn’t be here without them” – something like that? It’s Barbie Movie-esque with a “women can be anything” message. You can read my Barbie review here.

This whole satire business would make more sense if there were some overt feminist slogans or something but the lyrics are so uncontroversial, we could imagine hearing it from any woman (grandmas, aunts, coworkers, other people’s aunts) at any function.

But Katy Perry says it’s a satire, I guess. Unfortunately, if we look at the video as satire – it’s worse. The insipid lyrics start to seem like they aren’t positive toward women at all. By having a sarcastic and sassy music video “Woman’s World” actually seems like it’s mocking women.

“Woman’s World” isn’t the first song to subvert its message in the music video. It’s following a trend of newly released pop videos that create a mismatch between the lyrics of a song and the song’s video. The art of these videos is that they do subvert their own lyrics. In Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” and “Please, Please, Please” she sings about relationships, flirtatious and feminine, but turns out to be felonious in the videos. Overturning expectations adds an exciting element to a spunky if tame, summer bop.  

But the difference between Carpenter’s character turning out to be a little bananas (maybe a lot bananas), and Katy Perry’s song is that “Woman’s World’s” lyrics seem to be ostensibly wholesome, something a grandma would say to their granddaughter on their high-school graduation. And why would we want to subvert women being positive toward other women?

So, if this is a satire who exactly is Katy Perry calling out; who is she ridiculing? The women who enjoy the lyrics to her song, the mothers grandmothers, and aunties of the world? And even if she is calling out male-gaze-hating, women-supporting, freedom-and-equality extremists like me – subverted feminism is just anti-feminism.

I’m going to give Katy Perry the benefit of the doubt that she wasn’t going for all-out anti-feminism with this song. But you know what? I still think it’s a pretty bad song.