Day 4: Androgyny as Ambiguity

Whiteley ch. 11 "Mannish Girl: k.d. lang - from cowpunk to androgyny"
Stella Bruzzi

This article outlines how k.d. lang managed to escape being put into a box of sexual identity. Musically, through her career lang transitioned from country music, to the genre more widely known as easy listening. Her sexual identity followed a similar path. In the first stage of her career, lang was know for her irritatingly conflicting messages or implications of sexual identity. It is understood that there are many facets of an artists identity such as image, lyric, sound, etc. With lang however, correlation between these different realms did not exist. Through toying with the relationship between visible and implied, lang managed to create a very confusing and intriguing sexual identity. Lang's drag, similar to cross dressing, challenged the originality of sexuality as it clashed with the very prevalent and defined gender roles of country music - all the time not actually coming out as homosexual. lang, as well as Madonna, and Annie Lennox were leading figures in the breaking down of gender stereotypes. However, lang was different because there was never any sense of completeness or coherence. While Madonna and Lennox were constantly changing, for at least one moment they at seemed to be complete in their identity.

                           Masculine Madonna                                       Hyper-feminized Madonna

  

The second stage of lang's career began when she came out as lesbian. Through this process, lang transitioned from this conflicting sexual image, to one of androgyny. She switched from a journeying away from femininity, to an aspiration of masculinity. In this process she became androgynous meaning that she had no masculine characteristics and no feminine; completely neutral. It has been argued that this is the ultimate triumph over gender stratification - succumbing to neither masculine characteristics, nor feminine. But Bruzzi argues that her "frustrating universality and tentative equivocation could be construed as absenting rather than presenting her sexuality." This the point that Bruzzi is trying make: that this loss is a mere denial or fleeing from the problems lang has with gender rather than addressing them directly. This same ambiguity and denial can be seen in her lyrics when she refuses to use clear pronouns such as "he" or "she."

Discussion Questions:

1. Do you agree that androgyny is an inadequate response to issues of gender?
2. What could be some of the positive effects that icons such as lang have on societal perspectives on sexuality? Negative?
3. Does this discussion take a different form if we come at it from a Christian perspective? How so?