I Continue to Feel Horrified by Katy Perry’s New Single

This past weekend, I felt different: New York was hot and when it got too hot, my shoes fused with the pavement; but the news fused my brain with my shoes – and I was sexy, confident and oh-so-intelligent! This goal seems quite simple but still, I went for a walk in my neighborhood, and it was as if I was waking up from a deep sleep. I could barely believe what I discovered: Why, so many women, that is what one can see here. The first personal pronouns were used in a very concrete and literal manner as there was a winner, a champion; I saw a superhuman, a sister and a number one, and a mother was also mentioned. I realized I was getting emotional and I could feel my hairs stand on their end as I tried to identify what exactly that I felt was coursing through me as a curse. Joy? Indeed, but that was not all. Pride? Yes, but something else as well. Luck…? Yes. It was luck! I was feeling lucky, deeply, wildly, orgasmically lucky! Why? But on Friday Katie turned into Katy Perry, who unapologetically said It is a woman’s world, and we are blessed to be in it. 
 
And that is—this is I suppose what Perry had in mind when she set ‘Woman’s World,’ the drearily simplistic first track of her as-yet unreleased sixth studio album, ‘143,’ onto the world. The track—if we can still honestly call it that—, and the music video made available for download on Friday was so savaged that Perry felt the need to upload clips of the making-of where she comically informs the camera that she is only being sarcastic and mocks, “You can do anything! Even satire!” 
 
“Girlboss shit! No you can do it! You go girl! You were born to shine!,” Perry mocks. But “Women’s World” is not singing about some clichéd idea of female strength and independence in the privacy of a studio while wearing a bra and knickers, it is singing about the philosophically challenged chorus of a pop song while wearing a bra and knickers. But then again if she actually is mimicking herself…. does that mean she is also plotting to tell us that she equally despises this song? Do(es) she know what she is mocking?? 
 
The music video is sort of satirical if you want to look at it from that angle while being Tipsy. It begins with Perry as seductive Rosie the Riveter, who puts on a tool belt, drinks whiskey, and twerks with sex toys while dressed in a brief denim number; the reveal in a shimmering stateside bikini top capped with sparklers does not include the smashing of the breasticles on the camera. A spark plugs then falls on her which is, to a certain degree funny and then she then wakes up in what I believe is a feminist paradise of the USA where she replaces her USA bikini and Daisy Dukes for a white bikini under boob and lots of butts and robot legs. In short, she transitions from becoming a Republican man’s dream to becoming Elon Musk’s dream, which if we care to analyze literally, is more or less the same – with the man probably having a preference towards accessorizing with the metal leggings. 
 
“And with this set, it’s like oh wait, we don’t care about the male gaze at all, nope, not at all, definitely not while I get to wear two different bikinis which are currently on my body, hey, stop ogling because I’m about to get wrecked,” she remarked. The second portion of the music video is considerably less blatant than the first in terms of the portrayal of gender, she is clad in clothes no less revealing, she is drenched in body paint, and at one point, Milton inserts a gas nozzle into her buttocks. To the untrained eye, yes, but we are not actually flipping them the bird and overthrowing sexism here, Katy! You have to get this or we are in trouble!!! 
 
I am quite sure that Perry released this song because she had a chance to present the outcome of her new FoodIntake or training schedule; this song serves as the mere material for the provocative video in which Perry flaunts her belly, and dances wearing a bikini. Understand, I am not at all attempting to body shame here! If she’s feeling herself right now, then go off girl—but just post some thirst traps on Instagram like a normal person, do not shove “She is heaven-sent” / “So soft, so strong” into our faces. We already have endured a lot this year and there is all the reason to expect that there will be more suffering to come. 
 
It being Perry, the overall sound is West Coast pop and perky – it’s just that ‘Women’s World’ lacks the punch of ‘Firework’, the exuberance of ‘Teenage Dream’, the empowering sass of ‘Roar’ – in fact, it is so simplistic it can be considered borderline condescending. On Monday, Perry put out five more versions of “Woman’s World,” including the “Naked Woman version” (which is just these godforsaken vocals) and the “Doing the Most version” (an over-produced dance take), which led Jezebel staff writer Kylie Cheung to declare: “The political violence has got to stop. ” And that is actually the subject of this song is so horrible that even in most of the reviews on it, which includes this, they do not reach the fact that she recorded a ‘women empowered’ anthem with Dr. Luke, the producer who Kesha accused of raping her while she was passed out. Was that her goal? To create a song so dumb, that people pay attention only to the words (or the lack of them) and not the ‘abuser’s’ producer she was? Girlboss shit indeed. 
 
It rains heavily in Chicago; there are asteroids in New York; people are offering AR-15s at the Republican National Convention; the termination of our rights of reproduction; We are sweaty, exhausted, fed up of all of it. My kingdom for a women’s space where Katy Perry learns the signs to read the damn room