American singer Lady Gaga, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (Francois Berthier) Image from Sunday Times article

Certainly Gaga was ripe for this sort of critique. When someone puts herself — or a persona — out there as much as Gaga does, criticism and discussion is (or should be) the point. And, Gaga is less of an easy target to call out than say Taylor Swift.

I really like a lot of Gaga’s songs for a fun pop danceathon, but I do think she takes herself a little too seriously. The first interview I read with her she talked a lot about how it was all performance art. As Paglia points out:

There is a monumental disconnect between Gaga’s melodramatic self-portrayal as a lonely, rebellious, marginalised artist and the powerful corporate apparatus that bankrolled her makeover and has steamrollered her songs into heavy rotation on radio stations everywhere.

Where I wish Paglia hadn’t gone was to insult Gaga’s appearance. True, when one’s appearance is a big part of the act, it, too, should be up for critique. But Paglia goes beyond questioning the choices that Gaga makes (“For Gaga, sex is mainly decor and surface; she’s like a laminated piece of ersatz rococo furniture”), and insults her directly:

Drag queens, whom Gaga professes to admire, are usually far sexier in many of her over-the-top outfits than she is.

Gaga may indeed favor style over substance, but I would hope a leading critic would focus on substance and comment on that — or lack thereof.

In college for papers I’d often use compendiums, especially for Shakespeare. So, for example, I once wrote a paper on the use of the word “strange” in The Tempest, so I went to the compendium and found a listing of every single time the word was used. If ever a compendium is made for The Hunger Games, I’d love to see how many times food is mentioned. It makes sense that Katniss, who has had to struggle for every bit of food that passes her lips, would wax ecstatic over the bountiful food of the capital.

I was most interested in the bread.

I had a professor in college who was fixated on the use of bread in literature, specifically whole grain versus white. White is of course refined, while whole grain is more natural. He argued that you could tell the whole outlook of society by how they described the bread. If white bread was a luxury, then refinement, manners, and social class were highly valued. If instead it was disdained, and whole grain got the nod, then this was a time in society that valued the working class, was back to nature, and avoided pretense. So I loved that each district had its own style of bread.

Yes, it’s a New York Times bestselling sensation, and I’m focused on the bread.

I’ve heard that there’s some Team Peeta vs. Team Gale style rumblings (incidentally, listening to the audio, I thought the reader was just mis-pronouncing Peter for most of the first book). I’m Team Gale for what it’s worth, though that probably has more to do with his having less screen time. He’s capable, moody, and doesn’t have a chance to utter the cheesey lines that Peeta often does. But really, I’m Team Katniss. Witty, resourceful, stubborn, kind, and skilled, she’s a perfect heroine.

When you hold a belief so centrally and firmly, it’s bound to reveal itself in your writing. Feminism does make its way into Secrets of Truth & Beauty. Most centrally, I believe that weight bias is a feminist issue. However, sometimes an issue can overtake the writing, as it did in the following deleted scene. While I agree with Dara’s sentiment that feminism does not mean replacing one set of rules for another, in the end, this exchange came off a bit forced. I believed in it philosophically, but creatively, it never quite worked for me. So I cut it out. Only to resurrect it after the break. Enjoy!

(P.S. The town of Hollis was originally called October Grove)

A woman walked by carrying a canvas tote and muttering to herself. I was ready to let her pass, but Owen called out, “Mrs. Winslow!”

The woman looked up. First she saw me, and she frowned, but when she turned and saw Owen, a smile broke out across her face. She bustled over to us. “Owen Moon! I thought for sure I would never see you again. I thought you’d just shoot out of this town and never look back.”

“I like October Grove, Mrs. Winslow,” Owen said.

Mrs. Winslow cocked her head to the side as if she had to work to understand what Owen had said. Her gray hair swung over her shoulder. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Dara Cohen. Rachel’s sister.”

Mrs. Winslow nodded. “So you’re selling cheese for the summer. That’s an interesting way for a boy genius to spend his summer. Selling cheese.”

“And feeding and milking goats,” Owen added.

Mrs. Winslow pursed her lips. I could tell she was unimpressed with our lives.

“And,” Owen said with great emphasis, “I was helping Dara with the Miss October Grove pageant, but then she dropped out…” Why he felt the need to tell everyone about the pageant was beyond me, especially now that I had dropped out.

Mrs. Winslow sniffed in. “I am sure I don’t need to tell you how I feel about pageants.” My cheeks grew warm. Though she said there was no need to tell us how she felt, she went on just the same. “Sexist. Objectifying. Debased. I really don’t understand how any intelligent young woman would decide to participate.” She looked me up and down trying to decide, I gathered, if I had come to my senses, or if I were still a vapid pageant girl. She went on, “You know it’s fitting that they hold the pageant at the country fair. The judging of the women is no different than the judging of the animals.”

I looked over at Owen. He was grinning, but looking at the ground. So that’s why he had mentioned Miss October Grove – to get her going.

“There was a time,” she continued, “when young women protested these sorts of events. I was at the protest of the 1968 Miss America Pageant.”

“Did you burn your bra, Mrs. Winslow?” Owen asked.

“They didn’t let us! They wouldn’t give us a fire permit.”

“So?” I said.

She turned to face me, her face pink with the excitement of remembering those days on the Atlantic City boardwalk. “Excuse me?”

It was as if Melissa had teleported from Belgium into my body. “So they didn’t give you a permit. So what? You go there and disturb the whole thing, but when the man tells you to settle down and not set anything on fire, you sit back and listen?”

Owen’s smiled had disappeared and now he looked at me with wide eyes.

I stood up straight with my right hand on my hip. “People do pageants for all sorts of reasons. Some girls want the scholarships. Some like to perform. Yeah, some girls just need someone to tell them they’re pretty. But what do you care? What’s it to you?”

“Young lady, I’ve been a feminist for my whole life. It’s thanks to women like me that you have the opportunities that you have.”

She was right, but she was not all right. “You’ve just traded one set of rules and restrictions for another. That’s not feminism. Feminism is each woman making her own choices, doing what’s right for her.” Yet again, I was quoting Mr. Fitz. Katie North had proclaimed herself anti-feminist and he had just about fallen over himself to declare his own feminism.

Mrs. Winslow made a harrumphing sound. “Third wave,” she muttered.

“And if I want to do this pageant, that’s my choice. It might not be the choice you would make, but you have to respect my right to do it.”

“I most certainly do not,” she said, her face twisted up like she smelled something rotten.

“Then you’ll always be angry, and you’ll never be free.”

Mrs. Winslow was red by this point, with her lips pursed together so hard I thought her cheeks might burst. She turned to Owen. “This girl has a lot to learn,” she said. She pivoted, and left our stand.

Before she was out of earshot, Owen started laughing. “No one has ever spoken to Mrs. Winslow like that.”

“She’s a bigot,” I said.

I thought about Mrs. Winslow and about Mama Cass. All Cass Elliott had wanted to do was perform, and she had to fight every single step of the way because of how she looked. She was the real feminist, as far as I was concerned.

I looked Owen. “I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll do the pageant, but I’m singing Mama Cass.”

I tried to think of a message-book where the message didn’t get in the way of the story, and at first could not think of one. There are issues books (“problem novels” in the old parlance), where the issue is front and center, but I think an issue-book is different than a message-book. True, image-books can also be done badly. They can also be done really, really well, like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak.

As I kept trying to think of message-books that worked, my mind went to the classics: The Great Gatsby (the dangers of excess), The Lord of the Flies (why order is important in society), To Kill a Mockingbird (the importance of justice). I’m still struggling to think of modern, YA books that have a message — a definite point of view — without feeling like the message was all that was there. Part of the problem, of course, is that you can never really know, without asking, what the intended message was.

I have struggled with this in my own work. I am a feminist. One of the few things that makes me sad about “kids today” is that so few identify themselves as feminists. So, in an effort to show why feminism is important, and my views on what it means to be a feminist, I inserted a scene into Secrets of Truth & Beauty in which a teacher questions Dara’s participations in pageants. Dara responds that people do pageants for all sorts of reasons, and if it’s a choice you aren’t being objectified (yes, I know what else that is used to defend, and yes I felt it was a specious argument even as I wrote it). Dara’s big point in the scene was my central belief which is that feminism does not mean exchanging one set of rules for another. It means that there is enough freedom in our society that both women and men can make choices without limitations. A good point, I think, but the scene fell flat. It was too message-y, and I cut it.

Then I read E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and realized she had captured the sentiment so much more naturally. And yet I am hesitant to label it a message-book because it is so much more than that. Maybe the message is something that just seeps in, as you are writing, and the more you try to force it, the worse the situation becomes.

Meghan has a great response on her blog at the Daily Beast.

But here’s the thing that really got me thinking. When I saw her picture, I thought, “But she’s so pretty! Why are they picking on her?” And in the end, isn’t saying we shouldn’t criticize her because she is in fact attractive playing into the same game? It’s still making the discussion about her looks rather than what she has to say. Yes, she is pretty, but she’s not competing on America’s Next Top Model, she’s making an argument about politics.

I wrote a whole book with body image and prejudices at its core, and I’m as susceptible as everyone else. Not a big surprise, of course, but something I will keep working on improving.