After being universally panned, Katy Perry has retroactively revealed that the music video for her new single “Woman’s World” is meant to be satire.
“We’re being a bit sarcastic with it,” explained in a video posted to social media on Saturday. “It’s very slapstick, very on the nose. And with this set, it’s like we, ooh, we’re not about the male gaze, but we really are about the male gaze. And we’re really overplaying it, which is like a reset for me, and a reset for my idea of the feminine divine.”
As our own Mary Siroky wrote in her review / excellent takedown of “Women’s World,” “Connecting with the feminine divine doesn’t mean co-opting traditionally masculine spaces; ideally, it means celebrating the unique joys of womanhood. Feminism isn’t about proving we can do everything men can do — these days, the road to empowering women shouldn’t be centering men at all. Plenty of women drink whiskey and know how to operate power tools, but that’s not even the core of the issue here. It’s that this is the most baseline, tip of the iceberg, generic attempt at feminism, and the result is Perry never actually saying anything of substance.”
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As for the satire angle? Well, as professional satirist Krang T. Nelson noted of Perry’s explanation, “one of the hallmarks of great satire is when you release a long followup video that explains in detail specifically how you are being satirical and why you chose to do it.”
YOU CAN DO ANYTHING! EVEN SATIRE! pic.twitter.com/aHFTqcvCVm
— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) July 13, 2024