Meghan O'Keefe

I briefly checked tumblr’s “Lana Del Rey” tag to see if anything amusing would pop up and I found someone’s long text post criticizing the silly Lana Del Rey article I wrote for Hello Giggles that was only posted an hour ago.

It was really amusing to see how someone who is not me (and who has disabled all asks and fan mail options, thereby making it impossible to start a real dialogue) saw the article. 

It’s completely true that my article keeps in the tone of Hello Giggles, which means it’s not critical, not mean and skews undeniably girly. That’s the audience that reads Hello Giggles and that’s the audience I have to write for when I write for Hello Giggles (and I choose to write this way because I like fun, silly challenges). As writers for that specific site, we’re not supposed to be snarky or cruel. It’s a challenge when you want to criticize a public figure, but it’s also a fun creative challenge to find a way to comically address a popular topic without resorting to the usual negative banter.

Writing about Lana Del Rey was specifically difficult because there’s a lot about her you can cruelly make fun of. I mean, in the article I mention her disaster of a Saturday Night Live performance, her probable lip enhancement, her inane lyrics, and her melodramatic videos. However, I was unable to take the most infamous parts of her public image and use them against her. I had to mention the topics, but in a kind sort of way.

I chose to base the article around the idea that I was having cocktails with Lana Del Rey because it is my belief, that no matter how much you dislike a person if you had to sit down face-to-face and have a drink, you’d try to be polite and you’d try to form a human connection. Also, ladies be liking cocktails. I also tried to use the conceit that I was getting drunker and sillier as a narrator to my advantage. Therefore the fool in the piece is me, not Lana Del Rey. Still, as I mentioned, if you enter the article disliking her, I allude enough to her failings that you will still hate her after reading it. If you like Lana Del Rey, you’ll still like her. If you’re indifferent, you’ll probably just laugh at how awkward my persona in the article is.

It is a very stupid and very silly piece. It was not intended to be an intelligent critical work on Del Rey. For that, you should visit Sasha Frere-Jones.

Finally, here’s something I would proffer to people who dislike the tone of Hello Giggles: stop reading it. It’s not meant to offend anyone. It’s meant to offer a fun, friendly, supportive online resource for women who just want to decompress for fifteen minutes. To suggest that its very existence as a site should be scorched from the internet because it betrays some lofty ideal you have of womanhood and feminism also suggests that there is only one acceptable manner for a woman to be a woman or a feminist.

I was having dinner last week with someone and I told her that one thing that really jars me as an adult woman writing in lady blog world is this idea that there’s a perfect way to be a feminist woman—or that one blog is superior to another merely based on tone. I was raised in a household where I had a single mother, three very different older sisters and all female role models. My mother encouraged all her daughters to make their own choices for themselves in life. We could play sports, excel in math and science and put on a pretty dress for prom. Or, we didn’t have to. I’m just saying you should take my Lana Del Rey article for what it is: fluff written on a deadline. And as a woman, I’m allowed to write fluff and other women are allowed to read fluff. You’re allowed to be offended by it and other women are allowed to enjoy it.

For the record, my actual opinion on Lana Del Rey is this: she is a silly pop star. She is a piece of fluff. I am offended by some aspects of her persona, and amused by other parts. Ultimately, she’s fun to talk about. That’s what the piece was supposed to be about: fun.

Do you know what’s more important? The silliness that Newt Gingrich is offering up as serious debate in the Presidential primaries. That’s why I actually worked it in with my silly Lana Del Rey fluff. Because I want the women who are looking for fluff to skim over it and then later equate ridiculousness in politics with ridiculousness in pop music.

There’s a method to my girly madness.