In the video for her song “Try,” pop singer Colbie Caillat sings, “You don’t have to try so hard/ You don’t have to give it all away,” as women and girls of varying shapes and sizes lip sync along with her, staring forlornly into the camera.
“Wait a second, Why, should you care, what they think of you When you’re all alone, by yourself, do you like you? Do you like you?”
As they mouth the words, each woman, including Caillat herself, removes some artificial trapping of femininity: false eyelashes, wigs, hair extensions, lipstick, brow pencil, eye makeup. Hair color becomes less vibrant, teeth less white. There is even an un-photoshopping in which faces become less digitized with the sweep of the camera lens. The women, full of joy, are now to be read as more honest, authentic versions of their female selves. The video and others like it contribute to a genre of empowerment videos that aim to celebrate an authentic female identity, unadulterated by beauty products or synthetic enhancements. The “reveal” video argues that a woman’s attempt to disguise, improve, or enhance the female body renders her a fake and an imposter. Instead it proposes to locate authentic feminine identity in the unadulterated female body. Further, to manipulate that body, to play with its potential significations, is to betray all women in their pursuit of authenticity.
This paper will argue that the reveal video reestablishes a feminine identity rooted in an archaic biological determinism, and as a result reverts to a non-inclusive feminist identity that undermines women’s agency as well as contemporary attempts to achieve a more inclusive feminist ideology.
About the presenterBeth Anne Cooke-Cornell
Beth Anne Cooke-Cornell is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Wentworth Institute of Technology where she teaches Gender and Sexuality History, among other subjects. Her most recent research focuses on women’s sewing circles in Salem, Massachusetts from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.