This is the part of Katy Perry that you are never gonna ever take away from her.
But how long has it been since Katy Perry has stood alone to brace the torrential downpour, unprotected by her hive of worker bees or billion dollar image or succinct and catchy stage name? Because as it might surprise you, no one names their child Katy Perry or Lady Gaga or Madonna.
That’s showbiz, baby! And what else is showbiz but an escapist’s paradise for idealisms? We have our heads shoved so far up the Kardashian family’s assholes that we might as well stay put and hibernate for the winter.
You might think the opulent and outlandish lives of like 30(?) different Armenian-American women sporting a collection of first names that all begin with the letter ‘K’ living together in a variety of Calabasas palaces is so relatable as you shove microwave popcorn into your mouth on your weathered futon in the middle of central Oklahoma during an E! Network marathon of K.U.W.T.K. on a mundane weekday night, but ultimately that’s all the Kardashians are – opulent and outlandish. In the real world, you don’t relate to them at all. And that’s the attraction, or rather, the distraction.
The media is a holding place for our sense of reality to sit and sputter and idle until the last fumes of our human nature trail out the end pipe and die. We suffocate in the garage, choking on carbon monoxide and the mirage of show business.
Because even though Katy Perry means well, and even though the infamous music video where she shaves off all her hair in a convenient store bathroom is compelling, the music video is, nonetheless, staged, ghost-written, and backed by a mountainous Hollywood budget.
Beneath the elaborately planned, created, executed, and produced performance of a born-again Katy Perry army crawling through muddy ravines sporting her camouflage fatigues and Mulan-inspired haircut, is a hidden ensemble of writers, stylists, agents, actors, visionaries and industry workers who have literally designed this music video to tug at your heart strings and pull at your sense of pathos.
I tried to apply the same empowerment into my own life, but when I took a wrench to my body and unscrewed all the bolts and bits and pieces, I was left with nothing more than a pile of spare parts on the living room floor. I have spent so much time trying to decide which seemingly ordinary part of me is the Part of Me that you are never gonna ever take away from me, but humanity isn’t built in a day nor by hand.
Of course Katy Perry would feel empowered on the set of a potential Billboard chart-topper, but if you’re not a beautiful and illustrious celebrity, can it really be so easy to stare down the faces of your enemies and flash them two confident middle fingers?
I’ve been wondering recently if there would be nothing. If you took a spare part from me, and then another, and then another, and then kept stealing spare parts one by one, would any last part remain?
What if you could take every part of me?