Rogueish

The controversy about Katy Perry’s apparently inappropriate cleavage on Sesame Street is a good reminder of the US’s prurient puritanism (and not just the US; wasn’t there a controversy a few years back about one of the Blue Peter presenters’ overly prominent breasts? Quite what she was supposed to do about this I don’t know).

The controversy also made me realize something that makes it double bizarre: how extraordinarily asexual Katy Perry is, which is actually quite odd and interesting. This isn’t like Lady Gaga, who frequently inhabits the role of sexualized popstar in a way that draws attention to the grotesqueness of that performance (but which is also, inescapably, an attractive woman performing sexy). Perry, on the other hand, seems to be doing everything demanded of the sexy young female popstar; but the performative, somehow, fails.