February 18, 2011

Superstar Meets Supermom

It’s not easy to perfect a formula to encourage human aspiration, but two very different women in the headlines think they’ve done it. Lady Gaga, who just won a Grammy for best female pop vocal performance, and the Tiger Mom, whose controversial book on “parenting” became an instant best-seller, are cut from the same cloth to make a splashy costume. Both have cleverly manufactured a personal story, sensationalized its message and packaged it in a way that sells to the insecure, the overanxious and the ill at ease. Superstar meets Supermom.

Though backgrounds, methods and measurements for success may be different, they both understand that we live in an age where frustration is the mother of invention, and as with the oyster, irritation is crucial. They get a pearl even if it’s fake.

It’s not easy to perfect a formula to encourage human aspiration, but two very different women in the headlines think they’ve done it. Lady Gaga, who just won a Grammy for best female pop vocal performance, and the Tiger Mom, whose controversial book on “parenting” became an instant best-seller, are cut from the same cloth to make a splashy costume. Both have cleverly manufactured a personal story, sensationalized its message and packaged it in a way that sells to the insecure, the overanxious and the ill at ease. Superstar meets Supermom.

Though backgrounds, methods and measurements for success may be different, they both understand that we live in an age where frustration is the mother of invention, and as with the oyster, irritation is crucial. They get a pearl even if it’s fake.

Lady Gaga, born Stefani Germanotta, was angry when she didn’t get the adulation and attention she thought she deserved as a classically trained pianist with a pretty face and dark hair who sang in high school musicals.

In interviews, she glibly describes her younger self (she’s now an aging 24) as an insecurity freak. She tweets how she got upset when she was called “rabbit teeth.” (Poor bunny.) Before she was Lady Gaga, Stefani had a hard time selling herself as marginalized, since she attended the same Catholic private school for girls as Paris and Niki Hilton on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Then she discovered that by carefully cultivating “outsider” status, she could offer therapeutic hype to those who feel vulnerable among the multicultural – gay, black, white, beige and chola who perceive themselves as wounded by life’s arbitrary darts and arrows. “Whether life’s disabilities left you outcast, bullied or teased/Rejoice and love yourself today.”

Her fans look upon her as a goddess who walks among them, and if not on water, on 10-inch McQueen stilettos, a paragon for our time. If Lady Gaga can be comfortable “in the religion of the insecure,” they can be, too: “You are a superstar no matter who you are!” (Sure you are.)

She’s a pop preacher woman in the pulpit of performance art. At the Grammys, she hatched herself from inside a super-sized translucent egg, wearing a plastic see-through body suit that rendered her as looking like an alien with pointy shoulders, outstaging, updating and outfoxing Madonna. Critic Camille Paglia suggests she represents the end of the sexual revolution. Elton John calls her new song an “anthem” for gays. That about covers it from A to B, which is about as far as any performer has to go these days.

Amy Chua sings another kind of song in “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom,” a handbook for mothers who want to act like the wicked fairy-tale stepmother with the questionably benign purpose of making sure their offspring learn Mandarin, understand particle-beam physics and perform in Carnegie Hall, no matter what the sacrifices. You could call her technique metaphorical foot-binding.

Born in the Midwest to Filipino immigrants of Chinese descent, Chua also characterizes herself as an outsider with childhood angst. Today, she’s a Yale law professor who wishes she could have had an ordinary bologna sandwich “like everybody else.” But there’s lots more here than obsessing over bologna deprivation. Chua knows she’s tapping into every mother’s guilt for “not doing enough.”

In these times of two-career families and microwave dinners, of soaring college tuitions and overwhelming competition to get into the elite universities, she reaches into Everyparent’s anxieties. Her book coincides with studies that show American students as way short of the math and science scores of their Asian counterparts, exposing a dangerous decline in learning.

By making herself a tyrant – rejecting her daughters’ handmade birthday cards, forbidding girly sleepovers and play dates – the Tiger Mom enables the reader to feel superior to her emotionally, while at the same time forcing a debate over the best way to train the next generation. Her Jewish husband – they’re raising their daughters Jewish – offers “Jewish-mother” balance. Both parents are well accomplished, suggesting nature as well as nurture, that genes as well as discipline is at work. Like Lady Gaga, Tiger Mom characterizes other mothers as like herself. “I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify, too,” she says.

Both Lady Gaga and the Tiger Mom are smart, talented and slick. No one – well, not everyone – begrudges them the big bucks they’ll earn from their hard work in music halls and motherhood, in composing and writing. But we should be intelligent critics, not easily duped or naive, and recognize that their message is hyped for the hard sell, dumbed-down and sensationed-up, over-generalized, overwrought, overdone and overrated. Buyers beware.

COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.