Song of the Day 1/18: X-Ray Spex, “Art-I-Ficial”
Once upon a time, the goal of cosmetic surgery was to make a person look younger naturally. No more. You probably noticed what they call Mar-a-Lago Face, the exaggerated look adopted by so many MAGA women. Looking natural is passe. The whole point now is to make it obvious one has had a lot of work done, to show one can afford it – sort of the female mid-life equivalent of a balding guy’s sports car.
The aesthetic didn’t start with the Trumpies, but it’s been embraced by lots of their show-pony politicians and pundits, and not just the women – Matt Gaetz’ clumsy botox job was notorious. Before-and-after photos of Kristi Noem and Kimberly Guilfoyle, with puffed-up lips that outdo the Rolling Stones logo, are indistinguishable from the clickbait ads about Plastic Surgery Disasters.
Though there are signs that we’ve reached peak Mar-a-Lago Face, it seems to be getting even more media attention lately, ever since that Vanity Fair close-up of Karoline Leavitt’s puncture-pocked upper lip. If this look is what MAGA men like, no wonder they’re so upset by drag queens, who caricature femininity in much the same way.
Poly Styrene, lead singer and songwriter of the British punk band X-Ray Spex, was onto that game.
I know I’m artificial
But don’t put the blame on me
I was reared with appliances
In a consumer society
When I put on my make-up
The pretty little mask not me
That’s the way a girl should be
Punk’s foremost female practitioner first grabbed attention in 1977 with the group’s debut single, “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” which led to their only LP, “Germfree Adolescents.” “Art-I-Ficial” is typical of their sound, based on Styrene’s strident vocals and Laura Logic’s sax, an atypical instrument in punk.
X-Ray Spex broke up in 1979, but Styrene, whose real name was Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, proved influential on a generation of women in the Riot Grrrl movement in the early ’90s. She was only 53 when she died of cancer in 2011.
