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Thursday, June 12, 2003
New York London Paris Munich posts the following about TaTu:

For the male gaze to work, it requires men. The genius of tatu dyking out is that they are not directed to men, their gaze is to each other, their innocence is amusing, and their politics are suspect. The lust that boys show for them seems not to matter a whit. They are gender theory having fun, and the rumours about Jenna Jameson tounging Britney's quim are as irrelevant as the pseudo naughtiness of Xtina. The two gals from Russia mocked both of them into submission. All of this came to a head at tonights MTV Movie Awards, where their post-queer spectacle reached amazing new heights. 137 girls in school girl uniforms stormed the stage some grand sapphic revolution. They danced and stripped and made out, and it was a bacchanal, but a bacchanal that suggested two things: one; that their was no need for boys, and two that the youth were taking over in a new sexual revolution directed towards their own pleasure. They may be accused of being fake but looking at them you wished happiness, like you would on any young and handsome revolutionary, on the way to the struggles.

Man, there's nothing better than when men use feminist rhetoric to justify their guilty male pleasures. Look, guy, I'm with you on the "lotsa hot girls making out is awesome" thing. But to say that it implies that "their [sic] was no need for boys" is just dumb, since everyone and their lesbian aunt knows that TaTu is orchestrated by a male pop Svengali, so obviously there is some need for boys. It's also not post-queer or anti-male since, as he sort of avoids saying at the beginning of the article, Tatu is designed to appeal to all men and closeted (or out) teenage lesbians, which means the message is not "no boys" but "hey, maybe you could join in sometime?"

I like TaTu--girls kissing+europop=me likee--but I don't think appealing to Girls Gone Wild-level lesbian fantasies exactly constitutes a sexual revolution. Ah, embarrassingly overblown critical rhetoric.