I have just listened to my first ever Justin Bieber song, complete with video.
And despite having taken all the lesbian-Bieber spoofs and hair-theory with a pinch of salt, I cannot help but gape at the sheer androgyny of the whole thing. Voice, face, hair, clothing: all of it. Now, that must just be the way contemporary adolescence looks, and power to it. The more gender bending the better.
But when that face is singin' songs about gettin' and keepin' his first best girl, in a manner reminiscent of every single stale male love ballad ever, one can't help but be confused. It's not the androgyny that's bothersome, it's the fact that the meticulous confusion of gender achieved painstakingly over decades of role-resistence has, with early-onset skinny jeans, been swiftly put to the service of corporate romance.
At the end of one of his videos, Bieber and Baby step off an escalator onto this weird, deserted inside/outside plaza (a mall? a street? a set?) with a neon revolving pizzeria sign, and a Starbucks logo in the back, and I'm thinking...
This is where romance happens?
Seriously?
And despite having taken all the lesbian-Bieber spoofs and hair-theory with a pinch of salt, I cannot help but gape at the sheer androgyny of the whole thing. Voice, face, hair, clothing: all of it. Now, that must just be the way contemporary adolescence looks, and power to it. The more gender bending the better.
But when that face is singin' songs about gettin' and keepin' his first best girl, in a manner reminiscent of every single stale male love ballad ever, one can't help but be confused. It's not the androgyny that's bothersome, it's the fact that the meticulous confusion of gender achieved painstakingly over decades of role-resistence has, with early-onset skinny jeans, been swiftly put to the service of corporate romance.
At the end of one of his videos, Bieber and Baby step off an escalator onto this weird, deserted inside/outside plaza (a mall? a street? a set?) with a neon revolving pizzeria sign, and a Starbucks logo in the back, and I'm thinking...
This is where romance happens?
Seriously?
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