For a solid few years now, the Y2K obsession that has had social media in a chokehold returns to three villains, which can be ranked by perceived degrees of misogyny:
· Eminem, who dared beef with Mariah Carey – rehabilitated Christmas queen.
· TMZ, Perez Hilton, and the tabloids in general, who have rightfully been pinpointed as the decade’s cultural villains
· P!NK.
And that last topic is the one that’s the topic of today’s newsletter. Every few months, a post will go viral about the nastiness of her song ‘Stupid Girls’ off the 2006 album ‘I’m Not Dead’. The song is a socio-political landmine of mid-noughties feminism, an ode to the Hilary Clintons, the Tina Feys, the…P!NKs. Dressed as Jessica Simpson, Lindsay Lohan, and a hip hop video vixen, the song is as biting as it is poorly aged.
In many ways, this is clearly a joke song. The video is an obvious tell, the slapstick comedy throughout. So much of this persona feel reminiscent of fellow 2000s pop culture villain Eminem, emphasised the campy effects and obvious pop culture references. She includes a mid-song scene where she portrays a vapid woman who is purging in the bathroom. It’s then followed by a hilarious scene where she inflated her breasts for male attention.
How very SNL.
The decade’s sense of humour should be understood as broad, and this was not a woman with any sense of subtlety when it came to jokes. Granted, nothing in the video is as bad as Christina Aguilera pulling out a blow up doll to represent Britney Spears while on tour with Justin Timberlake, but P!NK was no stranger to mocking her peers on stage either. Every performance of the song featured her dancers performing as “stupid girls”, in styles reminiscent of socialites and celebrities like Nicole Ricci, Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton (known Trump voter and my enemy).
Hilton, by P!NK’s own account, was extremely unhappy with the song. During an interview on ‘Watch What Happens Live”, she quoted the 42-year-old influencer as defending herself around the song’s release;
“I just want you to know, I get it. Like I’m not dumb, I just play like I’m dumb.” – Paris Hilton
In response, the singer reiterated that that was her point.
This is the sin of P!NK, and Avril Lavigne, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, ect. through the 2000s. Looking back, with the current wave of pop feminism, the grift itself is not just understandable, but iconic and legendary. At least, that’s the current reading of nostalgic teens. Hilton revitalised her career off revealing her secrets to success. “The baby voice is fake” she repeats in every interview, rebranding herself as some marketing genius. Those that did not find the act impressive, or even found it harmful, are looked back as spoil sports.
Tabloid culture in the 2000s was at its peak, but it was also arguably already on the decline. Much like all journalism, tabloids initially flourished under the internet boom of the 1990s, and were hugely influential under early blog culture. Websites like TMZ and the work of Perez Hilton made it incredibly easy to access what used to be a weekly magazine update. Inversely, that need for content allowed people to fill in those gaps. Some willingly, some unwillingly.
During an interview conducted by Andrew Denton, P!NK spoke the five words that best describe the issue she has with these woman; “I think it’s an act”. To her, these are not stupid women, they’re simply exploited women making a buck off the act. People who are colluding with the misogyny of the era. They’re in the know, and she cannot respect that.
There’s a weird juxtaposition in how she discusses her ideals versus her actions on the record, and P!NK publically acknowledged it.
“Sort of what I was doing with ‘Stupid Girls’ goes against my idea of feminism, because feminism is support other women, first and foremost. But the problem that I have – where the conflict comes in– is that I can’t support that.” – P!NK, 2006
Now, I’m not about to give an affirmative answer as to what the true feminist way to deal with Y2K and tabloid obsession is. Quite frankly, that isn’t what we do here, and I’m a man. I know, boo all you want, but it’s true. But I do find the backlash a little interesting in what it says about current values.
If P!NK valued authenticity in 2006, and found it lacking in her peers, what exactly are we valuing with this wave of nostalgia?
Glamour is an obvious answer. Pop’s rebrand to faux-autobiography has meant that, in many cases, glitz and fun have been replaced by something just as staged but not as compelling. If the 2010s has a pop icon, it’s not a candy floss Katy Perry, but the cracked glass of Pepsi that is Lana Del Rey. Lorde’s brand of achingly sincere and slightly bitter teen angst has been the driving force of pretty much every starlet who is looking to cross over, and several who want to remain seated. The switch from obvious product to somebody posing as real. Taylor Swift went folk, Selena Gomez only earned a number one single with a spare ballad, and Billie Eilish became one of the biggest stars in the world with a whisper and a giggle. If you were listening to the biggest names in pop music through the 2010s, you’d be forgiven for believing that nobody throws parties anymore.
Which, in retrospect, makes both P!NK’s output post-‘I’m Not Dead’ humorous in it’s seeming lack of sincerity. An inability to tap into anything in the zeitgeist. While that album feels like an honest effort of someone desperately trying to sell out without losing themselves (while mostly failing), something like ‘The Truth About Love’ (2013) sounds like someone clawing at relevance. The formula for what P!NK did and does for in her music was set here, only really uprooted by the Trump administration, which pushed her to somewhere politically flaccid and emotionally weak.
‘What About Us’ positioned itself as a cry for help, but felt hollow for who was singing it. The lyrics are confusing in context, leading you to ask if she’s talking to a political party, the American public as a whole, or just…God? But what’s worst about the song is the Sam Smith-esque emotion without passion. It’s a clean, impressive, detached style of performance that sits oddly.
‘Stupid Girls’ is angry at the state of women in 2006. ‘What About Us’ is defeated at politics in general – but pretending otherwise.
I’m not saying that ‘Stupid Girls’ is actually, morally good. It’s just a pop song with a pretty broad message about a culture that doesn’t really exist anymore. One that people keep valorising nowadays because they like the colour pink. There is no curtain between the act and the performer in 2023. Nobody is pretending to be “stupid” for attention. Or at least, the audience is too keenly aware to have it be that simple.
I think that’s what frustrates me about these weird, black-and-white readings of 2000s pop culture. This idea that you either take it as it stood, or reject it for being dated. We’re so close to the era that the victims of these mistakes are not only still here, but still relatively young. The women in that music video are in the early stages of middle-age. That isn’t old, and neither is P!NK.
But how is this any different from a song like ‘Royals’, which 7 years later responded to the vapidity of late 2000s pop culture in similarly biting (if more mature) lyrics, condemning the party culture in favour of grey toned, sour fun?
I don’t want to make the case that “we’re so aware now”, because that shit was overdone in the 1990s, and complaining about irony poisoning is itself, ironic. But in looking back, we have to find a place for the pop culture that makes us feel uncomfortable about the stuff we treat as comfort food. If ‘Stupid Girls’ has aged poorly, it is because it had to respond in the moment, and we have the ability to contextualise. One young woman who thought the world could be better and tried to will it so. A twitter user doesn’t have skin in the game for stuff that’s almost 20 years out of date, but she did.
But also, I did compare it to SNL. Take from that what you will.