Fans of alt-pop and alt-media have had a big day. Last Friday, L.A. Weekly ran a “column” about model turned musician Sky Ferreira, whose sophomore album is coming out this summer, that’s basically a masturbation session masquerading as pop culture criticism from writer Art Tavana.
It is the latest entry in the “Tavana vs. the World” files, which the paper classifies as “a monthly column in which L.A. Weekly‘s angriest (and nerdiest) music critic, Art Tavana, takes on his many nemeses in an ambitious quest to boldly go where no other critic has gone before.” For this installment of his column he chooses to write about the importance of Ferreira to pop culture by comparing her to “a freshly licked lollipop” and praising her “user-friendly sex appeal.”
Unfortunately, praising a woman for her “killer tits” (actually) and turning her into a fetish object is so far from bold and so thoroughly trodden ground for men talking about women (especially on the internet) that this article, called “Sky Ferreira’s Sex Appeal Is What Pop Music Needs Right Now,” amounts to nothing more than tedious misogyny.
Honestly, we didn’t want to publish anything about this article, because we didn’t want to feed L.A. Weekly and Tavana with more clicks. If there’s one thing online outrage—and this has engendered plenty—is definitely good for it is enabling bad decisions by giving bad decision makers more attention than they deserve. L.A. Weekly is a damn good pop culture periodical, which is exactly why the Ferreira story shouldn’t have been given the room to breathe. To the publication’s credit they have issued an apology to their readers and Ferreira and admitted, “It was offensive.”
But then Ferreira went live on Twitter last night to shut it all down. Publications like LAist and Jezebel published their own scathing critiques of Tavana’s story, but Ferreira taking aim at those who would reduce the meaning of her art to the value of her physical presence is by far the most satisfying takedown of all. Here are all the tweets:
And then there’s this:
