So Soft, So Strong

Katy Perry, The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders & The Illusion of Hot Girl Empowerment

Katy Perry just released a new single titled “Woman’s World”, and the song seems to self-identify as pop feminist, despite the album being produced by alleged woman abuser and rapist Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald. The song’s chorus claims “it’s a woman’s world, and you’re lucky to be living in it!”

The “Woman’s World” music video has a bikini-clad, unrealistically toned, tanned, body hairless Katy dancing with a (brand sponsored) vibrator on a construction site, pretending to pee in a urinal, and driving a monster truck, as her lyrics “sing” out: 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… It's a woman's world and you're lucky to be livin' in it!

Katy ultimately portrays herself as half-machine in the video (still wearing a bikini of course) and fills her literal ass up with gasoline before stomping through her “woman’s world” and stealing a ring camera from another woman who is in the middle of filming a Tik Tok dance. Katy holds out the ring camera and…. GASP!… it’s in the shape of the female gender symbol!!!!!!!!!

I think her message is that we’re living in a woman’s world because women are not only soft, but also strong, and we do soooooo much. We constantly contribute to our surroundings in our efforts to survive and be accepted. In the words of Phaedra Parks confronting Pilot Pete at the Traitors round table, “I do too much because you [men] do too little.” According to Katy, women are sexy, confident, intelligent, heaven-sent (virginal, devoted), soft, strong, winners, champions, sisters and mothers and ultimately, women are “superhuman” machines fueling ourselves to, above all, be hot!!!!!

I don’t judge the desire to be hot, or dance around in a bikini, by the way. I can’t judge that. I spent the first sixteen years of my life begging my parents for a nose job and insisting I could not be happy or successful until I reveived one. I have fallen into the post-breakup thirst trap cycle and spiraled to the point of perfectly filtered, insufferable insanity. For a solid year, I was unable to be present in any environment without clocking its photo ops - a mirror for selfies, a baby to hold as a prop - friends became creative directors and story replies became my drug of choice, leaving me depleted and empty on the other side of every high. Pursuing hotness above all else felt more sickening than empowering for me, but the bigger problem I have with Katy Perry’s “Woman’s World” is that the women she sings about don’t just need to be unrealistically attractive, they need to be superhuman.

Trisha Paytas, a YouTube personality who has admitted to building her prolific following by making controversial statements for clickbait—

—is featured in the “Woman’s World” music video, and before its release, she posted a BTS instagram of her live reaction to hearing the song for the first time, using the AirPod knockoff headphones that Katy Perry has a spon con deal for:

As she listens, Trisha says the song makes her “so proud to be a woman, mother, sister, influencer” and exclaims: “Women, we do so much! Oh my gosh. I’m gonna cry. Three weeks after giving birth.”

I can’t speak for all women, but if this world was in fact mine, women would not have to be on a music video set with their tits out and full hair and makeup three weeks after giving birth. We wouldn’t have to be sexy AND confident AND soft AND strong AND win AND be champions AND have kids AND THEN still have a six pack AND wax all our body hair off so we can pose in a bikini with a brand sponsored item to make additional income AND transcend being human to accomplish all this. We would definitely not be symbolized by a ring camera - a device created to flood our faces with enough artificial lighting to hide human lines, blemishes and pores.

If it was a woman’s world from my POV we could all just relax. We could be mothers, or not. We could be champions, or not. We could have pubic hair, or not. We could go to the gym, or not. We could be mediocre, at will, and still make a decent living. We wouldn’t have to transcend humanity and outperform at home and in the workplace and in a bikini on instagram all at the same time just to be accepted.

Katy Perry’s “World” seems to have risen from the same sandalwood scented primordial ooze of another world I entered recently. A world that initially feels like a jump backwards in time, to a different era, but is in fact a pretty accurate representation of modern womanhood. I’m talking about the world of Netflix’s America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

The show documents the audition process and training camp of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. I wasn’t aware, but apparently they’re the most iconic cheerleading squad in the NFL. Throughout the seven episode series, it is reiterated over and over again that there are only 36 spots on the team, that veteran team members must audition all over again with no special treatment, and that these women are expected to be “ELITE”. In this world, elite means strong, smart, kind, Jesus-seeking, bubbly, friendly to all strangers but able to protect themselves and take care of their own safety, extroverted, popular, charitable, fun, light-hearted, constantly aware of their facial expressions, and of course, above all - BEAUTIFUL AND THIN.

After making it through the first grueling day of auditions, a large group of girls is sent to continue auditioning at a training camp where their appearances are harshly evaluated on and off stage, and in America’s Next Top Model-style makeover sequences.

The girls are criticized by coaches and judges for “looking sick” or “fatigued”, for having “disproportionate torsos” and too many inches of stomach showing between their tiny uniform shorts and their belly buttons, for opening their mouths in the wrong shape, for having slightly-too-dark eyebrows, for having “no butt” and also for being “curvy” or gaining weight in between seasons, and the list goes on.

Cheerleading is a sport, and I understand that all athletes need to be the best at what they do to go pro, but male athletes are solely required to excel at their skill and they get paid adequately. It does not matter what they look like or how friendly they are to strangers. The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders used to get paid $15 per game, and now get paid around $15 per hour. Most of the women auditioning for the cheerleading squad also have full time jobs to make ends meet - one is a nurse, another works in medical device sales, one is a pediatric orthodontist and practices cheers in between appointments.

Their job doesn’t stop and start on the field, they also do television appearances, charity events, hospital visits, calendar and magazine photo shoots, merchandise sales, meet and greets, autograph signings, and of course have to stay in “elite” shape in between games. Once the season ends, they have to start preparing (unpaid) for the next season’s auditions. Many of them also have to receive surgeries and tend to sports injuries in between seasons because the kicks and splits required by the team cheers are notoriously dangerous. The documentary filmmakers asked the coaches and Charlotte Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Brand Officer of the Dallas Cowboys, about the way the cheerleaders are compensated, and their overarching sentiment is that the women should feel lucky to call themselves a cheerleader and it’s more of an honor than a career.

Yet, to receive the “honor” of being a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader, the women auditioning have to make it their career. Preparing for the audition is a full time job. These women fit Katy Perry’s vision - they are sexy, intelligent, confident, pious, champions and winners because they have to be. But are they living in a world of their own control? They all hold multiple titles, have built layered and complicated lives, yet during the audition process their future depends on the judgment of men who only need to be one thing - a boot designer, a “wellness influencer” and a weather man (well, to be fair he’s also a shin tzu owner).

In order to meet the criteria of the cheerleading “honor” they have chosen, these women are expected to be the best in every sense of the word, to possess inhuman stamina and flexibility, to have the right personality and friend group, to lead and to follow, and of course, the judges admit, their destiny will mostly be made or broken by their physical appearance. Their dreams could be crushed by their torso dimensions.

I really credit the America’s Sweethearts filmmakers for documenting the toll this process takes on some of the women, like Victoria—

Victoria returns to the cheerleading auditions after taking a year off to go to therapy and process the impact of an adolescence built entirely around earning the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader title. Her mother was a cheerleader and Victoria got rejected the first time she auditioned, based in part on the judges’ opinions of her physical appearance. Victoria tries to return triumphant, but the hell of getting bullied by the coaches and judges and excluded by some of her teammates yet again triggers her depression. She ultimately decides it matters more what she thinks of herself than what they think of her and “hangs up her pom poms”, and I’ve never been more happy for anyone in my life.

I deeply admire Victoria and all of the other women I watched audition for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. I understand why they consider this the greatest achievement available in their lifetime. It makes sense to me that after all their tears and sweat and exhaustion, they want to audition again and fight to be considered sexy, confident, intelligent, heaven-sent, soft and strong enough to go out onto the field on game day, and earn minimum wage. They’ve been conditioned by the same misogynistic systems that lead me to pin my survival on the privilege of achieving a smaller nose. I even understand the coaches Kelli and Judy, who direct and choreograph most of the body shaming and unrealistic expectations of the cheerleaders audition process. They presumably went through the same hell when they were cheerleaders themselves, and landed in powerful positions within the male dominated NFL organization. They may not know any better than to repeat the cycle, based on that old sorority hazing value, “we had to go through it, so you do too.”

In a news segment about his daughter, Charlotte Jones, and how she ascended to become one of the most powerful women in the NFL, billionaire Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones reduces her to just “a face for our game”. This hits on the one lyric of Katy Perry’s “Woman’s World” I can agree with - men like Jerry Jones are definitely lucky to be living in it. All he had to do was step into a job at his daddy’s insurance company to become one of the most powerful people in the world, and now hundreds of women starve, injure and overextend themselves for minimum wage so that their bodies can earn him more revenue. Someone get me a FEMALE ring light to brandish because I’M FEELING EMPOWERED!!!!!