#74. Katy Perry's "Woman's World" is not brat

We wanted more Brat, but instead we got this 🙃

There are several songs on my list for “song of the summer” this year. “360,” “Von Dutch,” “Espresso,” “Close To You,” and “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” are currently at the top of my very long list. I’m sure it comes as a surprise to absolutely no one that Katy Perry’s new song, “Woman’s World”–an embarrassing dance-pop “ode” to female empowerment written by six people, four of whom are men–isn’t on it.

Let’s get the first thing out of the way–this song kind of sucks. Listen to “360” followed by “Woman’s World” and try not to laugh. It really does sound like a cheap knockoff of Lady Gaga’s “Stupid Love” (a certified banger). If Katy insisted on re-hiring an extremely morally questionable person like Dr. Luke (“Since U Been Gone,” “I Kissed A Girl,” “Circus,” “Party in the U.S.A”), at least make sure the song slaps. You know?

The lyrics are truly asinine at best. Perry and her five co-writers couldn’t come up with more than two identities for a woman (sister and mother, lol), nor could they convince me that there were even two women in the room when this song was conceived. These lyrics sound like what a 14 year-old boy might say about his mom.

A few of my favorite quotes from various media outlets include:

• “Rarely has someone so misread the room.” – Rolling Stone

• “It’s mystifying why Perry would have chosen to mount her comeback with a vaguely political song—you just get the sense that she just doesn’t really like or care about this stuff.” – Pitchfork

• “Perry’s solo return is a dated attempt at writing a feminist anthem about how women really can have it all! It’s a song that made me feel stupider every sorry time I listened to it.” – The Guardian

Make no mistake: I love how weird Katy Perry is. Teenage Dream changed my life and gave us some of the best pop music of the century. She’s finally back after a three year hiatus, and this is what we get? Both my 21 and 35 year-old selves are crying cotton candy colored tears.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum of female-empowerment pop, I’ve been sleeping on Charli XCX for years, apparently. Brat is easily the best pop album of the year, with my apologies to Ariana Grande and eternal sunshine. Brat has also now entered the cultural zeitgeist in a way that I don’t think anyone could have predicted.

The internet (and eventually Charli XCX herself) was quick to anoint Kamala Harris as “brat” last week when Joe Biden dropped out of the race. (If you don’t know what “brat” means, here’s some light reading.) Just so we’re keeping this all straight, Brat is now associated with America’s first female Vice President (and very possibly our first female President), and “Woman’s World” was co-written by an alleged (male) rapist. Got it.

Though neither are my favorite songs on an absolutely A+ album with no misses, Charli delivered not one, but two songs this summer that, to me, beautifully reflect the lives of women in their 30s today, “brat” or not (Charli is 31, Katy is 39).

I mean, have you heard “The girl, so confusing version with Lorde” (if you didn’t tear up the first time you heard Lorde sing “Cause I ride for you, Charli,” you’re lying) or “I think about it all the time”?

I think about it all the time
That I might run out of time
But I finally met my baby
And a baby might be mine
'Cause maybe one day I might
If I don't run out of time
Would it give my life a new purpose?
I was walking around in Stockholm
Seriously thinking 'bout my future for the first time
It was ice cold, playing demos on my iPhone
I went to my friend's place and I met their baby for the first time
How sublime
What a joy, oh my, oh my
Standing there
Same old clothes she wore before, holding her child, yeah
She's a radiant mother and he's a bеautiful father
And now they both know thesе things that I don't
And they're exactly the same, but they're different now
And I'm so scared I'm missin' out on something
So, we had a conversation on the way home
Should I stop my birth control?
'Cause my career feels so small
In the existential scheme of it all

I mean, wow???? Obviously I am sensitive to the idea of being seen as “less of a woman” by deciding not to have children (which is a question Charli mused on in an interview with Rolling Stone), but what absolute poetry. I think Charli has captured the experience of so many women on Brat in a way that actually feels real.

(I would be remiss not to mention that Kamala Harris never had any biological children herself, which also feels very brat!)

So here’s to you, Charli XCX, for creating an album that embraces the messiness and complicated nature of being a woman these days. If she doesn’t win a Grammy I’ll riot.

“Should I Be a Mom, or Should I Stay a ‘Brat’?” by Shannon Keating for The Cut

For more thoughts on Brat and “I think about it all the time” from a 32 year-old writer who is also wondering whether she should have children:

”Charli is 31, a year younger than I am, and I’m weirdly comforted to learn we’re experiencing the same kind of millennial ennui. I’m also an insecure jangle of nerves at one moment (“Guess I’m a mess and play the role”), then confident I’m hot shit the next (“It’s alright to just admit that I’m the fantasy”), as well as desperately curious about what parenthood must be like — though I’m afraid, like Charli, that a child would “make me miss all my freedom.” (Among a million and one other terrifying things.)”

“Bad Advice” by Anne Helen Petersen for Culture Study

Anne Helen Petersen

wrote about the “advice column as personal essay” and how good advice is contextualized, while bad advice is universal:

“The vast majority of our parents’ and grandparents’ generation never thought of “do I want to have children” as a choice. It just happened: because it was the only way out of your parents’ house, because it was the only way to be a part of mainstream society, because you didn’t have any other way modeled for you. If you didn’t have children, it was rarely because you didn’t want them; it was because, for whatever reason, you couldn’t. Plus, your parents and grandparents are pretty crappy sources of wisdom, as all of them in some way became parents themselves, and even if they did regret the decision, it’s still very difficult to tell your actual children as much with any amount of grace. Sometimes good advice requires more information (and, by extension, intimacy); in this situation, you actually need less.”

“J.D. Vance Wants to Take Women Back to the 1950s” by Laura Bassett for The Cut

If you don’t know much about Donald Trump’s running-mate, this article sums it up nicely:

”Trump has chosen the younger and sharper-tongued J.D. Vance, 39, to run with him. Vance’s selection may suggest Trump’s campaign is trying to get with the times and maybe even peel off some suburban women voters who were turned off by Biden’s debate performance. Yet Vance’s policy ideas are actually quite dark for women: He has compared abortion to slavery; he advocates against no-fault divorce, preferring to trap women in potentially violent marriages; and he seems to loathe working women, describing the child-free among us as “miserable cat ladies” and the working moms who require child care as bad mothers who aren’t “normal people.”

Somehow we’re already halfway through year???? I’ve been doing a lot of re-reads lately on my search for comps for my novel, but A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas is the best new book I’ve read so far in 2024. Sigh, the first book in the series is pretty good, but this book is stellar. I wish I could read it again for the first time.

ICYMI, providers in blue states can send abortion pills to patients who are less than 12 weeks pregnant in both blue and red states thanks to “shield laws” that protect them from prosecution. It’s almost like American women will start to rebel if you try to control us and what we do with our bodies! Read more here.

This series is campy as hell and knows it. It took me a few episodes to calibrate, but you know what? This historical romantasy about Lady Jane Grey is actually one of the best things I’ve watched this year. Jane is a smart “don’t fucking tell me what to do” kind of gal so, naturally, I love her. Watch it on Prime.

That’s it for me this week! Don’t forget to leave a comment before you go, but please, let’s keep it clean. 😇 This is not a political newsletter, but being a woman is inherently political, so!!