I’ve got a hot-off-the-press issue of GQ in my hands, and guess who I see? Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, staring right back at me.
The article is titled “British Rule” (hmm…somehow so familiar, so soon) and it’s a style spread:
The hair, the sounds, the suits. For more than 40 years, the Brits have consistently defined the style of rock’n’roll. In this exclusive decade-spanning portfolio, photographer David Bailey proves that they’ve never looked sharper. [link]
David Bailey is, of course, an important figure in the music-fashion-celebrity matrix, seeing that a film was based on him and all. But who the hell are these musicians? Let’s see…we’ve got Pulp, and Blur. Beatles/Stones mentions: Eight. From the closest thing to a Brit OG (Paul Weller) to the youngest of the new tarts (Razorlight) everyone agrees that the Kinks were bloody marvelous and underappreciated. Sure, whatever….pleez. I could say more, but my fangs are already bloody.
Into this sea of insular uniformity they’ve thrown in the Sepia Idol herself, and she doesn’t disappoint:
DEFINING POP MOMENT: “Late ’80s Ragg and the pirate radio stations. It was great discovering music that never got played on mainstream radio.”
WANTED TO BE WHEN SHE WAS A TEEN: “Muhammad Ali.”
HER LOOK AT THE TIME: “Lace leggings, short hair shaved at the back like Sal-N-Pepa’s, and big hoop earrings.”
UNDERRATED UK ARTIST: “Gomez. I’ve always been made to feel bad about loving them.”
STYLE ICON SHE EMULATED: “Johnny Rotten – it lasted a week!”
The write-up on her, though, is nothing short of hackneyed, exoticizing, misinformed gibberish:
That awkward genre “world music” used to mean “music from a place you need shots to visit.” Globalization has changed that and the genre’s freshest star is British-passport holder Maya Arulpragasam – or M.I.A. The MC and producer epitomizes all the danger and glorious complication of the modern world. Raised in Sri Lanka, she fled that government because of the brutal government crackdown on terrorism. A minor irony is that her father is thought to be an officer in the Tamil Tiger terrorist movement, which inspired that crackdown. A few years ago, the art-school grad started performing the bouncy, grime-inspired tunes that make up her debut, Arular, which mixes unsettling references to terrorist warfare with saucy girl-tales of London street life. A thoroughly modern militant.
Glorious complication? Minor IRONY?! Modern MILITANT??!! This is exactly the sort of “I buy organic dogfood” perspective that MIA has railed against. Did this writer bother to read more than a press release about her? WTF!?
Oh, one more thing. She’s wearing a Gucci dress.
I’ll be in my room, mourning the imminent shelving of Pegasus earrings and home made jumpsuits. Please don’t come after me. I need a moment alone…yah yah heyyyyy?
i won’t do my “A+” schtick…this time….
i think everyone on both sides of the MIA arguement knew this might have been coming
no you should. She’s never rocked a T&A look before. And this is close to a crotch shot. ugh.
Oh, and by the way? She’s THE ONLY WOMAN.
Click on the link and see the slideshow.
Cicatrix, up until this very moment I hated seeing so many MIA posts on this site. With this post you have made me take pause. I salute you. 😉
thanks Abhi!
er…does this mean you understand the love? Or did I say something so briliant that I myself am blind to it? 😀
love the hair,
love the smoldering eyes,
love the green,
love the gucci,
love the cleavage…
hate the pale pink lipstick that all the blonde girls in seventh grade wore. that’s not a shade meant for brown girls. blech.
sigh. so close to perfection, yet…
hot body – check. tee hee. J/K.I thought she was pretty before, anyhoo.
She wore Chloe before (the pineapple or banana jumpsuit was not a homemade jumpsuit), and now she’s wearing Gucci – not that much of a stretch in terms of price; both in the thousand dollar price range. Although I like her unique style, this dress is also sexy for nightime, no? I don’t find it that crotchy – she’s a big girl (if she was 17, not 27 or another blue-eyed blonde it’d be another story…).
The article on the other hand…
Anna, I think it’s high-time we start Sepia Fashion magazine. I’ll take the photographs, and you can write the articles.
Wow: Cicatrix, I never knew Blow-up was based on David Bailey…that film is ridiculously with it, even four decades later…the sequence with the photographer and the two aspiring models who show up at his studio: “Exhibit A” for Kundera’s line to the effect that it is the ambiguous that makes something the erotic…
…which, btw, is also true for this shot of MIA…I think it’s great (few look at the camera in quite this way)…
I hope I’m not doing that “she’s mine! you can’t have her!” thing that nerdy music fans do when their obsession becomes known to a wider audience…. but I really liked her idiosyncratic style. Gucci is supposed to make you look good, you know? It’s a lot harder to rock clashing bits from a 80s yard sale and still look fly. Her lack of self-consciousness and unpolished, unmanaged way of shooting her mouth off. I’d just hate to see that change.
I don’t think at age 27, or 28, that can change just by showing a little leg. It’s a glamorous photo shoot – let her have her fun!
Umair, the scene in which david hemmings shoots Veruska? (the super tall, skinny model who was doublejointed or something cuz she moved like she had no bones?) … This GQ issue carries the pic of Bailey shooting Verushka that inspired not just that scene but the whole movie.
Kundera’s a tricky one when it comes to anything erotic though…he finds the ridiculous and absurd all too easily and suddenly it’s not erotic…just sort of funny/pathetic. But i’m thinking of “The Book of Laughter of Forgetting.” Maybe you’re off on another track?
glorious complication? minor irony? thoroughly modern militant?
I think the writer’s being sarcastic, the final line is a reference to Thoroughly Modern Millie, which essentially means he/she thinks MIA is an “adorable” spoof of herself and her politics.
But, yes, they’re going for the exotic on this one. Notice how the lighting-angle casts her in enigmatic two-tone. Most photographers would acknowledge that is intentional and most colonial minds would find that compelling (light skin for the mind, dark skin for body)…
I don’t know, I think she got played on this one and if I were her, I wouldn’t be happy about it.
I hate the pale pink lipstick that all the blonde girls in seventh grade wore. that’s not a shade meant for brown girls.
I like it (esp with the smoky eyes). I HATE when I go make-up counters and I’m pushed towards the same old tired 2 shades of brown lipstick. Enuff already! We all look like half-dead aunties in that ghastly brown
P.S. To add to the litany of MIA hearings – I clocked her twice on Entourage this season (or has that been discussed ad nauseum already?)
Actually it’s the sequence a little after that one, where these two teen girls show up at his studio, and he’d earlier not been giving them the time of day, and one thing leads to another and he makes a move on one of them, she tries to fob him off by saying he should go for her friend, one thing leads to another and there’s this madcap chase around his studio (punctuated by frenetic giggling and screams) that ends up with the two girls trying to get the photographer’s clothes off– the sequence ends with an implied menage-a-trois…I think the scene is brilliant because it highlights the narcissism and exploitation (of the photigrapher, but to a lesser extent of the two wannabes too), while at the same time giving rein to a playfully erotic space/moment (indeed one that is perhaps inextricable from the narcissism and exploitation)…
As for Kundera, I guess I was thinking of “Immortality” and “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” but I totally see what you mean, in that I think the later Kundera has, loath though I am to admit it, lost it. (The sex scene by the poolside at a party in “Slowness” must rank as one of the more “ridiculous and absurd…sort of …pathetic”) that I can recall…but I like to think the earlier Kundera wrote about “the erotic” with a sort of wise sexiness…
“…highlights the narcissism and exploitation (of the photographer, but to a lesser extent of the two wannabes too)…”
I meant exploutation BY the photographer, and to a lesser extent by the two wannabes…
Dogday: yes, I got the Broadway musical reference, and yes, I think she got played as well.
I’m all for snark, but it’s pretty clear that the writer couldn’t care less about her. Especially since the other musicians are treated with thoughtfulness and respect. There’s also something deeply unsettling about the fact that her Brit passport is mentioned right after the sentence – ““world music” used to mean “music from a place you need shots to visit.”
It’s a funny, grabby first line…but it needs another sentence, somewhere, to balance out its inherent sneering condescension. That never comes. She’s not part of this self-referential club, and the writer doesn’t do anything to alleviate impressions of tokenism. Dizzee Rascal, the only other non-rocker, (bending the definition to include Belle&Sebastian and Brian Eno) gets a tiny picture, but his write-up isn’t bad….
i like pale lips with a smoky eye, too. who doesn’t? christina aguilera? bah. still, that exact shade of pink does nothing for me. it looks like chalk.
believe me, i’m with you, i don’t wear brown lipstick. ever. it’s either red or porno lipgloss for me.
re: counters. there’s a reason why i shop at sephora, where i can grab and go without being molested by the clown-vultures. i know what i like, thanks, and “corpse” ain’t it.
Gucci dress eh, so much for all that anti-establishment rage. When her website splash image was edited to include the more appeasing Sri Lankan flag than Tigers and guns, I had a feeling it was all going to hell. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.
Anna I am calling you out on this. I seem to remember that on our Friendster profile there is a picture of you wearing pink eyeshadow that was taken in South Park, CO.
Gucci! Perish the thought, even though it’s a spread for GQ.
Pray tell, what “anti-establishment”, rage-expressing outfit would have been appropriate in your opinion?
Why, her usual 80s yard sale ones of course with the female militants, tigers, palmyrah trees, guns and other bastardized exotic iconography! Now, that would be making a statement to the GQ readership but no they said jump, she did.
oh, abhi. sigh. THIS is why we divorced. your rugged, adventurous lifestyle and passion for science leave you with no patience for learning about the difference between eye and lip makeup. i tried. i went everywhere with you. i learned about your world. but you…you never grokked mine.
even though i can jump in and out of jeeps in 4″ stilettos, if you can’t tell the difference between the lip and eye crap i’m applying in the mirror i had to install myself on the passenger-side visor, it’s not enough my love…why, oh why did you have to remind me of what…was lost.
/bites fist, while choking on tears
She made a lot of those clothes herself. Generally speaking, when someone is in a fashion mag, it’s so they can model the creations of OTHER designers, right?
damn. she fine.
i’m glad there are women reading this blog who are alright with women reveling in their beauty in a public way.
i don’t we should write MIA off as having gone “mainstream” so quickly. i plan to let her music do her talking…
Generally speaking, the sky is blue, women bear children and sepiamutiny rocks. Generally speaking of course. But why do we fight CR, why? I forgive MIA, we all have our moments of minority angst but will I forget? No, not so much.
what’s the “A+” schtick ?
Are we that surprised to see an attractive black woman appropriately dressed (I say, she scrubs up well!) being served up for the delectation of the Gentlemens Quarterly audience? It happens occasionally, the gentle reader ‘knocks one out’ over a dark, dangerous and possibly treacherous girl (thank goodness for glossy pages). It’s only fashion, music and business; it ain’t going to change the world!
MIA as a L’Oreal or Revlon girl is coming up next. Or maybe we’ll see her in a Gap ad doing an acoustic version of ‘Galang.’
That would not rock.
SOLD OUT, hey its 2005, i’m not going to hold it against her and no one really should, because 95% of struggling artists would sell out if someone was willing to make them famous. The mighty mos says it well “MTV, is runnin this rap shit Viacom is runnin this rap shit AOL and Time Warner runnin this rap shit We poke out our asses for a chance to cash in Cocaine, is runnin this rap shit”
I don’t particularly like MIA that much, although i’m glad she’s getting some press. We need someone else reppin’ desi who doesn’t need to be one of the most beautiful women on the plantet before she gets any credit, not to dogg on aishwarya, she’s gorgeous, but shit why the fuck do i have to look like a ken doll before i can become famous to all these yuppie white folk.
cicatrix, I just want to be a wisea$$ and point out that MIA thinks Gomez is underrated. 😉
Brimful!!! I reeaaally hoped no one would bust me for that!
(good catch :D)
dogday, great observation.
interesting point
if you go by what debeviour said, wouldn’t you say that the original other is woman? and so from that point of view women of color have it “double bad”
no, I didn’t.
nice name
apology to anyone who thinks this is harsh.
the name Lord Kitchener should be known by desis…
Commissioned in the Royal Engineers, in 1886 (Lord) Kitchener was appointed governor of the British Red Sea territories and subsequently became commander in chief of the Egyptian army in 1892. In 1898 he crushed the separatist Sudanese forces of al-Mahdi in the Battle of Omdurman and then occupied the nearby city of Khartoum, where his success saw him ennobled in 1898.
In 1900 he became commander in chief of the Boer War, where he fought the guerrillas by burning farms and herding women and children into disease-ridden concentration camps. These ruthless measures helped weaken resistance and bring British victory.
On returning to England in 1902 he was created Viscount Kitchener and was appointed commander in chief in India.
Whoa, this lighting as colonial compelling native stuff is reading way too much into it. I’ve got a fair bit of experience with photoshoots involving brown subjects.
GQ are a high quality publication, so a typical shoot for them will a multiple light set up with, just guessing from the picture, a key soft, fill, hair/highlight and back. I don’t then they used a kicker.
The key is always concentrated on the face, so it naturally looks lighter – as you can see MIA’s arms and sternum are lighter than her legs as well. And don’t forget makeup. Whilst it’s not uncommon for makeup to applied all over the body in shoots, it’s unusual. Shoot makeup is heavy stuff and it naturally lightens the skin.
I find it counterproductive to look for ‘colonial’ slurs where they don’t exist. But if you’re convinced, hey it’s your opinion.
Yeah Dizzee was there! I touted MIA as the female Dizzee last year (so did a lot of other people), but he’s gone quiet as of late. If you want to hear a CORKER of a track, get Lucky Star by Basement Jaxx feat. Dizzee Rascal and a rather foxy Indian girl I forget the name of. Great tune.
This is exactly on the mark. I have exp with this as well, brown or white, the results are similar.
whoops. *then = think.
You a photographer Ang? I’m glad you agree cos portraits are not my strong point.
Yes and no. Without going too much into my private life details over this very popular blog, I’m in marketing, but I regularly work very closely with art direction for photographers over the years. Being artistic, I naturally fell into it myself and learned over the years. Love, love, love photography, and I love this sultry photo of MIA.
hell yes!
its just something people might like to know, who Lord Kichener was…nothing to do with MIA’s skin color
although i do think there’s something to looking at the inter-sectiob of beauty/color/race/the other/the female body/colonialism
Bah, M.I.A. was on Live 105.3 this evening as one of Madden’s Obsessions (he was plugging for Bucky Done Gone as a good stadium song, better than what they usually play at Giants Games) and I was like, d’oh, missed my chance to buy the CD before it was totally mainstream.
Anna, those wedding photos are awesome. I demand a 12th year anniversary rematch? I bet you could sell tickets.
anyone interested in colonialism, color, and the body should read about mestizos in South America
I find it counterproductive to look for ‘colonial’ slurs where they don’t exist. But if you’re convinced, hey it’s your opinion.
I agree with the technical aspects of what you’re saying, Bong Breaker, but if you think the photographer and photo-editor didn’t notice the two-tone and didn’t intend for you to pay equal attention to detail in the upper and lower halves of the shot… No disrespect to you or Ang and your respective backgrounds, but pick up a Maxim or Stuff and compare its women of color shoots to this GQ and you’ll see a similarity that you won’t find in any of the fashion magazines, from Vogue to YM… The two-tone is an enduring archetype of colonial portraiture, which is tied to colonial views of sexuality, which I assume has some place in a discussion about a cheesecake-shot of MIA and a cheeky article titled “British Rule.”
Cicatrix: I’m with you, the writers and editors at GQ are getting a kick out of this one; I think MIA gets more out of having her music in a car-commercial.
interesting on the subject….read about “la pintura de castas”
very interesting ideas