Between Katy Perry‘s four outfit changes, Nicki Minaj‘s Japanese steez and Beyonce‘s pregnancy confirmation, folks who care had plenty to talk about at the bus stop on the way to work the day after the VMAs.
Those topics are old now, though.
Today we’re onto Lil Wayne and Lady Gaga, two totally different musicians who are leading the discourse on gender, which proved that the VMAs weren’t as lame this year as we thought.
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Yesterday it was revealed, to the chagrin of his followers and haters, that Wayne performed in skin tight leopard print jeggings by Tripp, a design meant for the ladies.
“Ohhh! Lil Wayne cross dressin,” some blogs screamed as disses flowed from Twitter. Tha Carter IV album failing to live up to expectations didn’t help Wayne either.
My take? *Joy Behar Voice*: So what, who cares!
It’s the 21st Century, men’s fashion has plateaued, men are looking for new silhouettes and patterns to style themselves.
I’m not particularly inclined to wear jeggings of any kind, but more power to Wayne. And Kanye. And Kevin Hart. And Lady Gaga. All of whom are playing with gender and fashion.
Their actions are an old story written with a new pen.
The interesting thing is that of the four artists mentioned above, three of them are straight Black men who have been assigned this ridiculous cage of masculinity and manhood by strangers. Which may signal a coming shift in the cool pose of the perceived straight Black male.
Gaga, as a white female from and of privilege, on the other hand, is parading as Jo Calderone, her male alter ego who may or may not have been stolen from Annie Lennox, who performed in male drag at the VMAS in 1985, way before Gaga was born. The characters look eerily similar. Maybe Gaga pored over hours of old MTV footage and decided to model the character after Lennox’s, I dunno.
I’m wont to believe that Calderone was created in response to the public’s questioning of Gaga’s gender, so much so that, in order to prove that she was female, Gaga was photographed while menstruating, an act that bordered on bad taste. Naturally, the media and the public loved it.
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We’re at a point in human history where things like clothes shouldn’t determine a person’s perceived sexual and psychological proclivities but, alas, the blogs prove differently.
As we hurtle towards the destruction of our civilization and our planet, people who live their lives in 140 characters and listicles are failing to realize that it’s OK to think and dress away from their assigned gender roles. Especially Black men whose notions of masculinity are totally skewed and handicapped by absent fathers and mass media overdoses of hyper-masculine images.
If Wayne, and not some stylist, picked out his own clothes, I’m sure he saw an item that looked fly. Just like Kanye may have thought when he wore that blouse by Celine last spring at Coachella. Why can’t a man wear a shirt with that material and that pattern and be a man or masculine? Ditto Kevin Hart and his A.L.C leather jacket.
Musicians and artists are no strangers to women’s or odd fashion, some of which border on the bizarre. That guy from Funkadelic wore diapers on stage. KISS wore face paint. Prince wore heels.
Aside from his delusion that he’s a rock star, there’s nothing wrong with Wayne and his choice of clothing. He’s an artist.
The problem could be with Wayne’s detractors who believe that what Wayne and Kanye did is wrong. That thinking does not scaffold masculinity. Rather, it promotes misogyny, the hatred of women.
Wayne’s condemnation is akin to saying only white people are smart. Stupid, right?
—Cacy Forgenie
