Another Take: Fergie’s Girl Squad Is The One We’ve Been Waiting For & The One We Deserve (Sorry, Taylor Swift)
Last year, Taylor Swift originated a new method of propping up a mediocre pop song: The already legendary celebrity girl squad cameo. When all the usual auxiliary mechanisms — repetitive 4 chord melodies, over-produced visuals, product endorsements — fall short, then there’s only one thing for it: Recruit a small army of Insta-famous, go-getting girlfriends, shoehorn them awkwardly somewhere into your music video and watch your view count grow! Huzzah! She found the secret formula.
Swift’s “Bad Blood” video was admittedly painful to watch. It feels like she was left in charge of sending out wedding invitations and panicked so much about leaving someone out that she ended up inviting the whole town, right down to the groom’s cousin’s mother-in-law’s new babysitter (just in case she got offended). As a result of trying to cram two dozen “characters” (and I use that term loosely) into the “plot” (again, very generous vocabulary), the video ended up feeling like nothing more than an extended credit sequence. She was widely criticized for the shallowness of the concept. It was akin to saying, “Look how many hot, skinny, rich girlfriends I have!! Aren’t you jealous?”
The newborn girl squad movement seemed doomed to an early death when Madonna attempted to take up the mantle soon after, and again, fluffed it. Her “Bitch I’m Madonna” video in 2015 made for even more uncomfortable viewing than Taylor’s. This time, Madonna couldn’t even convince co-stars Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Beyonce and Nicki Minaj to share a set with her. Their cameos consisted of what seemed like webcam videos of them woodenly mouthing lyrics, without any Madonna in sight. Apparently they couldn’t be bothered making the journey to be there in person. Gee — I can really feel the sisterly love!
The ideology behind the girl squad is initially promising. In an industry which consistently pits female artists against one another, it is actually quite subversive. The idea that competing musicians in a saturated market would team up and endorse one another’s work purely on the premise of sisterhood is kind of a beautiful thing. It is feminist and anti-patriarchal. It’s just a shame that it was so badly executed in its debut. Swift’s storyline involved ganging up with her girlfriends…in order to wage war against another girl, and her respective girl squad. The convoluted morality of embracing your sisters in order to take down another sister is hardly heart-warming.
However, things took a turn for the better in the New Year. In 2016, we’ve been gifted with two fine examples of fully realized, feminist, girl-on-girl collaboration. Beyonce’s Lemonade album was awash with fierce women supporting one another through betrayal. Bey’s incarnation of the sisterhood was a beautiful counterpoint to the cynicism and coldness of Swift’s, because not all of Bey’s girlfriends are even famous. Serena Williams makes a memorable appearance, but throughout her visual album, she showcases women of color in all their forms — young, old, large, thin, known and unknown. Her message is that all black women are welcome to the squad, regardless of their appearance or position. Her “Sorry” video, where she drives around in her party bus full of her friends, just having a good time, actually interacting with each other on the same set (take note, Madonna), is something we can all get on board with.
On week ago, Fergie continued to drive the positive evolution of the girl squad, dropping her “M.I.L.F. $” video and slaying our collective life. In the video, she is joined by Ciara, Chrissy Teigen, the Kardashian sisters and more. What does all of her cohort have in common? Motherhood.
Fergie’s new venture is exciting and subversive on many levels. Quite simply, the fact that the singer dares to assert a mother’s right to be an independent sexual being at all is kind of revolutionary when the belief that women should somehow shut down sexually after child birth still lingers insidiously in our society. “M.I.L.F. $” is all about mothers being seen as hot, sexy, beautiful and desirable. Their sexiness is not in spite of their motherhood, but goes hand-in-hand with it. There is no paradox, only harmony. They are P-A-I-D because they are hot, successful moms, and they’re damn proud of it.
The video is extremely sexual, but still manages to retain humanity and warmth. The girls are very much sharing their space in the video. They take selfies together, drink milkshakes together, dance together, rub up against one another and laugh. At one point, Fergie summons them into a military row and they advance on us, baby stroller in tow! Sexuality is mixed with pride is mixed with friendship is mixed with determination. They have a clear purpose, and are acutely self-aware but are having fun. Each star gets extensive camera time, which feels respectful — it doesn’t come off like Fergie just got her manager to call their managers and then ignored them the whole way through filming. There is a genuineness there.
The video also depicts Chrissy Teigen breastfeeding her baby. There has been significant controversy in western countries for years surrounding the issue of breastfeeding. It is symptomatic of the misogynistic hypocrisy underpinning our society, that female nudity is acceptable on the cover of a magazine, but not in a restaurant at lunchtime on Monday. This video challenges the warped reality that so many people are uncomfortable with seeing a mother in her 40s breastfeed a child in public, but are fine with seeing a nude 18-year-old girl sprawled across the cover of Playboy. Fergie’s passing depiction of breastfeeding is suitably casual; it sends the message that this is something that every woman does, it’s no big deal, and you don’t get to tell them it’s un-sexy or inappropriate.
Fergie’s girl squad is the girl squad we’ve been waiting for, and it’s the one we deserve. Not only do her sisters demonstrate affection and warmth to one another, but they also highlight and subvert instances of ongoing oppression, including ageism and anti-breastfeeding sentiment. Hopefully, this will counteract the man-handling that the concept underwent in its prototype, T-Swift days. The girl squad, rather than being a cynical exercise in ego-massage, could turn out to be an edifying and feminist alternative to marketing mechanisms like the male rap verse.
For decades, male rappers have been featured in women’s tracks in order to make them more saleable and appealing to a wider audience. It’s a marketing ploy that panders to toxic masculinity. If a male rapper is on the track mouthing off about how he’s playing/fucking the woman singing the vocals, it makes a man of fragile masculinity less insecure about enjoying those aforementioned vocals. The teaming up of artists capitalizes on the pooling of fan bases and thus assures a wider reach. In short, it makes sure that men will still buy music from female artists without feeling their masculinity threatened, and the combination of two artists’ brands boosts the song’s signal. In most of these verses however, the male rapper seems to feel the need to say something sexually degrading about the woman on whose track he is the guest. Ridiculing the woman behind the song seems a hefty price to pay just to make it more marketable. Also, why should we pander to such ridiculous fragile masculinity? A woman doesn’t need a man to feature on a single to make it chart, like some sort of bizarre musical chaperone.
This new trend of women featuring women — women sharing success and fame to breed yet more success and fame, without bowing to masculinity at any point in the process — is exciting. In this shifted paradigm, women can pool their own fan bases on a much larger and more lucrative scale, boosting one another’s careers and muscling out the men who still dominate the lists of highest paid musicians. There is a wonderful sense of boundaries being broken. Why stop at one cameo? Why not have ten? Why just invite guest vocalists? Why not invite models, actresses etc? In this model, badass women stretch their hands out to one another across genre, field and medium.
If done right, the girl squad could reform pop music and make it a more respectful and feminist place for everyone. Let’s hope Fergie can teach everyone how it’s done.
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