Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

I’ve been meaning to write a post about this video since last week. It’s “Like a Boy” by Ciara and it reminds me of The Good Person of Szchewan. This was going to be a short post, but there’s just too much to talk about with this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFRuUJR4LPI

In the song, Ciara sings about how sometimes she wishes she could act like a boy within a (heterosexual) relationship, which includes things like having a secret bank account and staying out until 4 in the morning. Here are the lyrics of the chorus (copied from some lyrics website):

What if I?...
Had a thing on the side?
Made ya cry?
Would the rules change up?...
Or would they still apply?...
If I played you like a toy?...
Sometimes I wish I could act like a boy

Acting like a boy within the relationship is only negative in this song. And Ciara wishes she could act like a boy so she could act the same way towards her boyfriend as he acts towards her. Apparently, as a woman, she could never act in these ways. And in the video, she dresses in drag. I think it’s very similar to Shen Teh, who is restricted in how she acts by needing to be a “good person,” so she develops a male persona that can be rude to people and can keep them from taking advantage of her.

In the video, Ciara both dresses like a boy and as a boy. There are four Ciara’s. One is dressed in women’s clothes (with bracelets, earrings, and heavy eye makeup), singing the song to her boyfriend. The second is dressed in men’s clothes, but still presenting herself as a woman (for example, her long hair is still prominent). This Ciara wears a tank top, baggy pants, and sneakers and has tattoos on her arms. She leans back in her chair and grabs her crotch. This Ciara cites male ways of walking, gesticulating, and dancing. She also mocks masculinity in certain dance moves (for example, a bodybuilder pose). Her backup dancers are women similarly dressed like men. At one point, they lie on the floor while Ciara seems to control their limbs by gesturing.

The last two Ciaras dance together on a raised stage. They are both dressed formally. One Ciara is wearing a white dress and extremely high heels. The other is Ciara in drag, wearing a suit and braids. The two dance with each other. Most interestingly, the male Ciara gives the female Ciara articles of his clothing – his hat and a handkerchief. She puts on the hat, which she was expecting from him with her hand out. She throws away the handkerchief.

Of course, I can’t resist mentioning the digitally altered voice. In this case, it’s a voice that sounds chopped & screwed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopped_%26_Screwed). It sounds like a male voice, but I think it is Ciara’s voice chopped & screwed. The voice sings “Can’t be getting mad/what you mad?/can’t handle that.” I read this as the boyfriend’s voice, probably saying what he says to her when he does something that makes her mad. Later in the song, Ciara sings the same lines back to her boyfriend, presumably after she has started acting “like a boy.” It appeals to me to think that Ciara is performing both parts, and using digital altering to sing the male part, but I certainly don’t know for sure that that’s the case.

This video is interesting to me both for the way it parallels some of the comments on gender in Good Person, but also for how Ciara performs gender and how clothes represent gender. It’s nice to hear a popular song that questions male behavior in a relationship in a way that gets at gender. And it’s fun to see a pop star who has been rumored to be a lesbian or even a male-to-female transsexual dressing up as a man in her video. In the end, though, I think Ciara is reiterating gender roles and not doing anything particularly radical. After all, the video ends with her kissing her boyfriend on the cheek.