Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $” is going crazy viral with over 14.4 million views. Some people find it risky and even risqué. It is getting a lot of negative press, perhaps because it puts emphasis on perfect bodies and more emphasis on money as the measure of success. Perhaps it even stirs a prudish dislike for showing a little skin. Still, it is also wildly popular. The song and video are all about the bodies of financially upscale, famous hot mammas.
Kim Kardashian, Chrissy Teigen, Ciara, Tara Lynn, Angela Lindvall, Devon Aoki, Gemma Ward, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Amber Valletta, as well as Natasha, Poly and Isabeli Fontana, and Fergie herself are all featured in this campy and overall fun and funny video, according to Maxim.
Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $” creates a Stepford-Wives-gone-soft-core world of sexy young mothers like Kim Kardashian. This fictional world is full of impossibly perfect female bodies and one lucky milkman. The theme is a 1950’s nostalgic fantasy, with sexual overtones not acceptable in that time frame. It is not likely to be confused with 2016 reality.
Meghan Trainor warned us there would be days like these. A casual viewing of this production could be said to cause an infection of body shaming issues. While displaying that supposedly perfect minority, is Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $” making everyone else feel inferior? Meghan’s own nightmarish teen years of wearing sweatshirts all summer to cover a perfectly normal, healthy body remind women how awkward body image issues can be . Trainor told Entertainment Tonight of Canada about her struggles as a teen and young adult.
“I didn’t want to show my arms. I didn’t want to show anything, and I was just so insecure and uncomfortable, and I thought, ‘All right if I’m fully covered — I’m good.’ And that’s not what I should have been feeling, I see pictures of my face and I’m just — I’m like sad, and I’m in a sweatshirt and I’m in my room producing ’cause I just turned off the idea of, like, ‘You’ll be the face.’”
Is Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $” video the absolute mirror image antithesis of Meghan’s 2014, “All About That Bass” production? Isn’t this exactly what Meghan Trainor speaks out against all the time? Don’t images like the one’s in the “M.I.L.F $” video make women feel exactly the way she describes feeling in her adolescent years? Yet, isn’t there something bizarrely reminiscent of Trainor’s video in Fergie’s milk drenched mommy fest?
Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $” video is humorous, and a bit sexy, but some people think of it as harmful. Maybe those people haven’t looked hard enough or long enough. Some of those advocating for it haven’t had time to study it either apparently.
Defending Kim Kardashian and her ilk, Wendy Williams shocked her audience as reported by The Mirror . Wendy was quick to defend the perfect celebrity moms. Unfortunately, she did it by throwing some real life moms under the bus. Women who don’t have the option of liposuction or even 15 minutes to put on makeup while the maid watches their kid didn’t come out well in Wendy’s defensive rant of moms with supermodel bodies.
“We’ve become so numb to sexuality and what is provocative these days, but I have no problems with this. Personally speaking, I think the people are hating on this are moms who haven’t lost that last 20 pounds. Being a MILF isn’t about weight, so I’ll take that back. When you push the babies out a lot of people push their beauty out as well. Some women get more beautiful and other women just settle into the life of a mom. It doesn’t mean you’re not beautiful.”
Meghan Trainor should have been there to coach Wendy before she spoke out on this one. Pushing out the beauty? Ouch. A lot of things come out of a woman when she is pushing for her dear life, but beauty isn’t one of them, except of course for the beautiful baby, but not the mom’s beauty.
Defending Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $” caught Wendy Williams off guard, but Wendy is simply adored by her fans, so of course she is forgiven. Even so, it is hard to believe she ever had a baby, judging from her description . She has a 15-year-old son named Kevin though, according to the New York Daily News . She must have forgotten a few things about childbirth and being a young mom.
Kim Kardashian thinks this is just about whether or not she and the others got photoshop touch ups according to Us Weekly , but there are other issues involved that Ms. Kardashian isn’t addressing. Is this video really showing Fergie as the anti-Trainor?
Actually, Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $” makes Meghan Trainor’s point beautifully. Whether or not Kim’s curves are real isn’t the issue. The point is that the plot and scenes of the video prove nothing is real in the entire production. It is about being the opposite of real life in 2016. It is meant to look fake, to indicate fakeness or at the very least an ideal that does not exist in nature. Yes, Kim Kardashian exists, but she is so far from typical, in her overall shape, in her lifestyle, in her economic resources, it hardly counts. She is the rare exception, and statistically insignificant.
Kim Kardashian and the Fontana sisters don’t have to be photoshopped to seem plastic, impossible and unreal in this bizarre production of Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $.” Unreality, or altered reality, seems to be the whole point. The costumes, the color schemes, and the sets all reflect and call attention to an idealized unreality. This film obviously has nothing to do with real life. The opposite of real is behind every costume, every house, and every single prop in the whole production.
Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” is the very anthem against everything Fergie is saying in “M.I.L.F. $.” Yet in some ways, the “M.I.L.F $” video is bizarrely similar in format to “All About That Bass.” The comparison is not in the music, though there is some similarity in the rhythm and beat. The format is similar too.
Perhaps Kim Kardashian’s perfect waist and round hips, whether photo-shopped, liposuctioned or just natural variations were there to make a greater point. The dramatized point, though it seems opposite, could actually be the same as the more straight forward Meghan Trainor filming of “All About That Base.”
Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $” is a dramatization, not necessarily an endorsement of these behaviors. In the same way, a campy horror classic involving devil worshipers sacrificing a goat, in front of an upside down cross isn’t advocating goat murder but rather telling a story about people and society, perhaps “M.I.L.F. $” is a dramatic presentation that makes a different, maybe even opposite, point than the literal interpretation?
Maybe Fergie’s point isn’t to glorify those perfect M.I.L.F.s, or make them seem real, any more than Mick Jagger point was advocating for Satan when he sang “Sympathy For The Devil.” It is drama, in the same way as any movie, opera, or play and could be as easily intended to make an opposite point, to the one that is substantiated by the lyrics. How many people can’t wait to start using heroin after listening to Billy Idol’s “Heroin”?
Maybe Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $” is not glorifying adulterous mothers running a milkman out the back door, but rather commenting about how people justify those actions based on the fantasy and illusion of what they see in fictional scenarios on TV. Maybe she isn’t saying these supermodels like Kim Kardashian are representative of everyday women who work, go to school, take care of their children and keep house, and should all the while look fabulous. Maybe she is calling attention to the unrealistic expectations people have. Maybe she’s pointing out the fallacy in the fantasy. Whether or not that was her intention, the video makes that point glaringly. “M.I.L.F. $” is not about real life.
Is Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $” a very clever and extravagantly produced dramatic parody, not necessarily of Meghan Trainor’s work, but about modern perceptions? Is she advocating quite the opposite of what she is saying? Many rock songs do this. It always leads to massive misunderstandings by casual listeners eager to find fault, but those who listen carefully get it. If so, don’t hate the writer and director, hate the elements in society that inspired it.
Meghan Trainor has made a point in a very clear way, and people can think what they will about her statement. Meghan is against airbrushed beauties and photoshopped fakery that leads women to believe they have to look like a supermodel to be pretty.
Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $” video, by overtly glorifying the fake perception, makes its point as people revolt against the overt message. Is Fergie using a simple literary device commonly used in music lyrics? Isn’t the opposite message the very conclusion so many critics arrived at after viewing it, thinking it was their own idea? Apart from activism. though, the video is kind of fun, as is Meghan’s “All About That Base,” and isn’t that the larger point of music videos? So watch and enjoy.
The Fergie’s “M.I.L.F. $” video and Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Base,” could both be making a similar, not opposite point.
Meghan Trainor and Fergie [Photo by Frazer Harrison and Frederick M Brown/Getty Images]