Please Exile Me from Katy Perry’s ‘Woman’s World’

Katy Perry recently released the song “Woman’s World” as a preview to her upcoming album that is scheduled for release in September. The lyrics — if they can be dignified with that word — are merely a collection of girl-power inspired catchphrases. Here’s an excerpt: 

It’s a woman’s world, and you’re lucky to be living in it

Sexy, confident
So intelligent
She is heaven-sent
So soft, so strong

She’s a winner
Champion
Superhuman
Number one
She’s a sister
She’s a mother
Open your eyes, just look around, and you’ll discover you know

It’s a woman’s world, and you’re lucky to be living in it 

Perhaps the issue bigger than the trite lyrics is the music video. Katy dances at a construction site while dressed up as a pornified Rosie the Riveter, where she rips off a skimpy orange vest to reveal a sparkly star-shaped bra in an American flag print. The camera zooms in to show us Katy’s bouncy breasts. After sipping from a bottle labeled “Whiskey for Women,” Katy and her fellow dancers mimic men using urinals. To remind us that Katy really is a woman, she waves a vibrator in the air. An anvil falls and crushes her. 

But Katy survives. She wakes up in an apocalyptic city where women are playing chess and doing backbends on a car roof. (How else do you survive in a dystopia?) We see two men kissing and a pregnant woman, both rather odd occurrences in what is supposedly a “woman’s world.” Singer and internet personality Trisha Paytas, unburdened by her cartoonishly augmented breasts, appears pulling a monster truck with a rope. Trisha drives the truck as Katy is in the passenger seat attempting to apply makeup on the bumpy journey. Make no mistake: Their powerful vehicle is totally girly because there’s a sparkly uterus-shaped ornament hanging from the rearview mirror. Katy storms into a house and passes by a woman doing dishes, a role identified in the video credits as a “trad wife,” and proceeds to join a woman in the backyard who is filming a dance with her iPhone on a tripod that is shaped like the female sex symbol. Katy takes the tripod and is carried away by a helicopter. 

The cringeworthy production immediately received backlash, including criticism about “the intense use of American iconography,” complaints that the political message was outdated, and outrage that a co-producer is a man who has been sued for sexual assault. In response, Katy released a short statement explaining that the music video is “very slapstick,” “on the nose,” and “sarcastic.” She wrote on social media that “YOU CAN DO ANYTHING! EVEN SATIRE!”

As a charitable effort, let’s believe the music video was intentionally satirical, even though that might be an ex post facto excuse fabricated to deflect criticism. It isn’t clear what the parody targets. Feminism? America? A nebulous concept of patriarchy? The only identifiable joke seems to be Katy Perry. She reduces herself from an artist to a mere product; she is selling her enviable physique, not her music. 

I can disregard the vapid chorus because I don’t expect analytical philosophy in pop music. But I do expect women to have a bit of self-respect — and in today’s culture, I’m consistently disappointed. Whether performing satire or not, please present yourself in clothing that offers more coverage than a bathing suit; otherwise, you facilitate the “objectification” you claim to detest.

Watch it, if you dare.