Some of our more established feminist rock icons, such as Kathleen Hanna, Kim Gordon, and Ani Difranco, emerged as role models in a different time, a time of Riot Grrrl and “girl power”; the 1990s. Catherine Vigier, in a piece discussing Lana Del Rey and post- feminism, describes the atmosphere of the ‘90s: “Women’s liberation seemingly came down to a series of choices about image, lifestyle, and sexual expression. The important thing was to ... abandon any image that suggested victimhood.”(2)

In 2016, in popular culture especially, there’s still the idea that feminism is like this and only this: self-actualized, optimistic, smiling, empowered, go get ‘em. Del Rey doesn’t fit this model and has been harshly criticized as a result. However, we should not be misled. There are other modes of subversion available even to commercially successful pop stars. In that feminism is a way of relating to the world and making sense of that relation, Lana Del Rey’s music is compelling.

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Critics’ reception to Lana Del Rey’s work has been dismissive. Perhaps it's because she’s awkward and for some reason they don’t believe her when she tells us how she sees herself and they can’t believe her lyrics to be true fictions. Criticisms of Del Rey include the perceived fakeness of her lips, having gone to private school, being shy, having changed her stage name, and the fact that she is signed to a major label. Criticisms of the work itself focus on what can be read as submissiveness or self-destruction, the use of stereotypical tropes of femininity, and generally being indecisive. If you like her music, you have to be prepared to defend it, or her, or merely concede that she’s allowed to be lame if that’s what she really is. As she herself says in the first line of her most recent album, “We both know that it’s unfashionable to love me.”(3)

For one, Del Rey, unfortunately, has said on record “feminism is just not an interesting concept.” (6) And her depiction of hustling is not working extra hard, but the more vulgar meaning, slowly singing “I fucked my way up to the top.” (7) She consistently chooses a laconic gauzy floating loner aesthetic, instead of the typical defiance almost required of pop songs sung by women today. Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Beyonce’s “Who Runs the World” are but two of many such uptempo battle cries. Lana’s lyrical visions do not celebrate independent ambitions. She’s got white middle-class privilege to protect her from urgency, but her cynicism also runs deep. In the song “Flipside” she is icy and expectant: “Are you going to hurt me now, or are you going to hurt me later.” (8)

Her cynicism also prevents her work from suggesting that striving for the position of white men, i.e. a CEO, is feminism or freedom. There is no sense that honest hard work could free a woman, nor is it possible to self-actualize above society’s constricting expectations. Her work revels in alienation, victimhood, and gloom -- these modalities not only de-emphasize but actively negate the commercial success she has achieved. Again, unlike most popular performers, Lana declines to appear triumphant at all costs. The music industry is especially cutthroat, but on the subject of being a boss or a bitch or a feminist or self-aware or an artist, she leaves us doubtful.

This presentation rings true to me. Empowerment should mean more than the equal opportunity to completely submit to capitalism. Besides, as scholar Treva B. Lindsay asks, “Do we even know what an autonomous female looks like in pop culture? What does control even mean in such a corporatized mass-media space?” (9) The unmoved pessimism that is characteristic of Del Rey’s work is a very appropriate response to this question and the world we live in.

I'm just a girl, I'm just a girl in the world. That's all that you'll let me be... I'm just a girl, what's my destiny? What I've succumbed to is making me numb. Oh I'm just a girl, my apologies. What I've become is so burdensome. (12)

Stefani’s sarcasm is overt and her obvious coolness and talent signaled to me that she had not yet succumbed and that she was expressing the power to rise above her destiny as “just” a girl. The music video shows Stefani’s male bandmates rocking out together with their instruments in a grungy garage-like space, the other half of the screen shows her frowny, angst-ridden, and alone in an orderly and confined domestic room. This sarcastic, frustrated Gwen is what I imagine when Del Rey sings “I got that summertime sadness” (13) and “This is what makes us girls” (14) and “They judge me like a picture book by the colors, like they forgot to read” (15) and “I like you a lot”, (16) where her own layered voice mocks the phrase as she says it. Lana is also obsessed with a forever love, but anyone actually dreaming of a forever is in denial. Either they aren’t reckoning with climate change or can’t understand institutionalized racism or see no connection between acts of terror at home and abroad. There will be no honeymoon. Personally, every time I hear Lana singing about “forever”, which is a lot, I hear sarcasm. Ahmed describes this space in her discussion of “feminist killjoys”: “You cannot always close the gap between how you do feel and how you should feel. Behind the sharpness of this ‘cannot’ is a world of possibility. Does activism act out of this gap, opening it up, loosening it up? Not to close the gap between what you do feel and what you should feel might begin as or with a sense of disappointment.” (17) Lana’s sarcasm is indicative of a disconnect, of a rift between what she is supposed to do, think, say, or feel, and her frustration with those expectations.

Del Rey is not a boss and she doesn’t think of herself as feminist.

And, unlike the icy distance Lana Del Rey has cultivated in her work, the music of Hole is overtly angsty and immediate. A home video clip is not the same as a music video.... Unless the music video is a kind of home video. Which is the case for the song “Video Games;” arguably the launch of Lana Del Rey’s career. Whatever the facts of their lives, there is an audience, and not only do they know it’s there, they’ve invited it, making us wonder what is scripted and what is not.

However, it is not up to us to decide which of Courtney’s or Lana’s stories are real. They are adept, consciously and not, at maintaining opaqueness with their audiences. It seems as if they both share the ability to shun our expectations, being out of control or daft, while simultaneously fulfilling our expectations, playing drama queen or girly girl. They are well aware of the artifice of fame and femininity. If they act manic or icy, isn’t it only appropriate, necessary for survival? If they seem vulgar or trapped, are we not rendered sympathetic? Or do we forgo our sympathy because, unlike most of us, they are unafraid of the consequences of seeming vulgar and trapped?

The coincidence of their pairing on tour is not that Courtney Love appears to live a life Lana Del Rey sings about. The coincidence is that they present the same foil to popular feminism as well as misogyny. Hole’s career defining album is called Live Through This, claiming life as something to be endured. It isn’t easy and it isn’t pretty, and for all their perceived posturing, exaggeration, or submission Lana and Courtney don’t pretend otherwise. Alienation is a part of feminism and their work represents this concept well. The suggestive contradictions and masterly indifference they each employ are very compelling approaches to self- expression and self-preservation. Also, whether they rage or mope, they act out from a place of disappointment with the status quo, which can threaten the status quo.