I'm like a stupid, promiscuous bird

Continuing on the theme of pop music for a while, have you had a chance to hear Pink's song, "Stupid Girls" yet--or see the video? It's a lot of fun and more proof that pop music can do more than just pop, hiss, fizz, and fade--that is, become an earworm for a while as you can't get that song out of your head, then quickly disappear from your consciousness.

In "Stupid Girls," Pink sings about the poor role models for girls and young women out there these days:

Go to Fred Segal, you'll find them there/
Laughing loud so all the little people stare/
Looking for a daddy to pay for the champagne (Drop a name)/
What happened to the dreams of a girl president/
She's dancing in the video next to 50 Cent/
They travel in packs of two or three/
With their itsy bitsy doggies and their teeny-weeny tees/

Where, oh where, have the smart people gone?/
Oh where, oh where could they be?/

Maybe if I act like that, that guy will call me back/
Porno Paparazzi girl, I don't wanna be a stupid girl/
Baby if I act like that, flipping my blond hair back/
Push up my bra like that, I don't wanna be a stupid girl/

"I'm a Slave 4 U" this ain't.

While Pink makes her points, and makes them strongly, she manages to do so with a sense of humor.

In the video, she has even more fun--and gets her message across in an even less didactic, more outrageous way by parodying some of the ilk who pass for role models these days--namely, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Mary-Kate Olsen, Jessica Simpson, Hilary Duff, Nicole Richie, and several other A-, B-, and C-list celebrities. I think it's no revelation that these six chicks, the mean girls of the new millennium, represent the anti-Christ and his/her crafty minions. It's just that none of us wants to get close enough to any of them to find out which one has 666 tattoed on her scalp.

Many of the scenes in the video are edgy and in-yer-mug--as well as quite hilarious. In one, Pink drives down a crowded street, latte in one hand, cellphone in the other. She manages to run over a couple of people on her way--bodies flying up and over the hood and windshield of her convertible--and screams in horror at what she has done . . . only to be distracted by her own reflection in the rearview mirror, checking to see whether she has lipstick on her teeth.

In another, more graphic scene, she strolls into a ladies room with friends, complaining in a lah-di-dah, Valley Girl voice about the fact that she "totally had more than 300 calories today . . . that was so not sexy!" Then she borrows a toothbrush from a friend, using the blunt end to, let's say, "encourage a purge." She ralphs into the sink, groaning between technicolor yawns, "I . . . WILL . . . BE . . . SKINNY!"

And in still another scene, Pink's character is "caught in the act" of making a homemade sex tape, but she's so interested in showing off for the camera that she doesn't care that she's being filmed for posterity--or, said another way, that her posterior (and other body parts) is being filmed. Heck, she isn't even interested in the guy she's with--she just wants to show her stuff on camera. Is Paris burning? Yeah, but it's probably just from an STD.

So both the song and the video are funny, crude, and maybe even vulgar in parts, but they've got a healthy message to convey--that maybe women (and I would argue, by extension, all of us) might aim for something more than to be constantly noticed and remarked upon for their bodies, clothes, and lifestyles. This is some of the same fertile ground that Maureen Dowd tilled in Are Men Necessary? Not bad company to be keeping for a twenty-something pop star from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, who's gone through musical styles like she's gone through hair colors.

It may be overstating the case to say that pop music can change the world. Nonetheless, there recently was a song on the top of the British charts, Sandi Thom's folky-rocky, "I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker," that made that claim by paying lyrical patronage to the songs of the late '60s and the late '70s, when pop music and pop culture seemed intent on changing our perceptions and behaviors.

But before I get too excited over the coming Pop Cultural Revolution, comrades, working out an earnest dance routine for my disco version of "The Internationale," donning my psychedelic Mao jacket and matching cap, let me tell you what knocked Sandi Thom off of the top of the pops--the new stupid girl national anthem, "Maneater" by Nelly Furtado:

Everybody look at me, me/
I walk in the door you start screaming/
Come on everybody whatchu here for?/
Move your body around like a nympho/
Everybody get your necks to crack around/
All you crazy people come on jump around/
I want to see you all on your knees/
you either want to be with me, or be me/

Maneater, make you work hard/
Make you spend hard/
Make you want all of her love/
She's a maneater/
Make you buy cars/
Make you cut cords/
Make you fall, fall in love/
Wish you never ever met her at all/

"Move your body around like a nympho?" Whoa, Nelly. You're stepping dangerously close into Stepin Fetchit territory--without benefit of the latent street cred.

I'd like to think that La Frittata is getting the joke--and is under the watchful eye of a chiropractor for that "neck cracking" problem. But being that her first U.S. release from her new album, Loose (yes, Loose--why not just call the album Ho Bag or Skank and be done with it?), is a little ditty called "Promiscuous Girl," performed recently on Saturday Night Live with the ubiquitous stupid girl accessories (a bare midriff, a gyrating booty, and a rap star), I'm not even sure Nelly can read a newspaper, let alone locate the funny papers. The joke is lost on her. It probably fell down her top. Oh wait, tee hee, she forgot to wear a top.

The Misguided Miss F., as you may recall, did a good imitation of hip-hop/hippie glamour a few years ago, twirling up the charts in jersey dresses, dangly earrings, and oversized sneakers with the supremely annoying, musk-laden, "I'm Like a Bird." Then she did some other equally irritating songs. Then she went quiet for a while.

But now it's 2006 and . . . she's baaaaaaaaaaaack. And she's now apparently a slut.

It might as well be 1979, with Nelly Furtado acting like a "Let's Get Physical"/"A Little More Love"/"Make a Move on Me"-era Olivia Newton-John. Way back then, Livvy tried to prove to everyone that she was no one-note, Sweet-n-Low songbird. Even if she was in her thirties, even if her grandfather had been a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, even if she was famous for songs with titles like "Have You Ever Been Mellow?" and "I Honestly Love You"--she could tramp it up with the best of 'em. You go (away), girl.

Tune in today, and you'll find Nelly trying to prove to everyone she's not your average, one-note, Grateful Dead (or for you moderns, Phish) camp follower-songbird--but a blow-up doll come-to-life! One that sings and dances in the video with Fifty Cent . . . erm, Timbaland! And, under the right circumstances, one that might put out for you! So, guys, like, buy my record already!

It's all not-so-vaguely reminiscent of Mad TV's Debra Wilson's take on a crazed, boobs-out-in-front, rappers in the back, Mariah Carey in the fake music video, "Love Muffin." (Editor's note: Unfortunately, I could only find an edited version of the parody on YouTube.com; the full version is worth seeking out on Mad TV reruns on Comedy Central.) And that parody was made way back in season 5 in 2000 or so. So Nelly Mae can't say she wasn't warned--but clearly she was too busy at that time drenching herself in essential oils and trying to make sure her tanktop showed the right amount of cleavage to pay attention.

None of this is to say that I think all female pop stars and "it" girls must start acting like characters from a Mother Angelica-penned romance novel, nor do they need to dress in "compound chic," all braided hair, calico prints, and ankle-length denim skirts, like Chloë Sevigny's character in Big Love. (Nor, I should stress, do they need to become polygamists either.) I'm all for flirtation. I'm all for a little skin every now and then. I'm all for sexiness and sexuality. I'm all for Kylie and Dannii Minogue.

I'm all for everyone being able to express and enjoy themselves . . . within reason.

Within reason because I'd like to be able to walk through a mall or across a college campus, watch TV, read a newspaper, enjoy my share of oxygen, or do or not do just about anything you can think of without having to endure the megaphonic mating cry of the perpetually under-dressed and over-sold.

At times in this culture it's like living on the set of that Volkswagen Passat commercial about ego emissions:

"Look at me--Daddy never hugged me!"

"Look at me--my parents make more money than yours!"

"Look at me--the more people notice me, the more I love myself!"

"Look at me--I'm compensating for my shortcomings!"

"Look at me--isn't my hair fabulous today? Don't you just love this outfit I'm wearing? Am I not sooo hot?!"

Where, oh where, have the smart people gone? Oh where, oh where could they be?

Hopefully, they're not spending too much time listening to--or writing about--Nelly Furtado's oeuvre.