Gwen Stefani: From Feminist to Fascist

Hey, everyone. I just got my ashes and I'm ready for Lin. It's going to be the most transformative lens of our lives. Check it out. God bless. Do you guys know Lisa from Blackpink? Mm-hmm. Yeah. She has this song called Rockstar where one of the lyrics in the chorus is, I'm going to do my best Lisa impression. Lisa, can you teach me Japanese? I said, hi, hi, little known fact. She's actually recalling an interaction she had with Gwen Stefani. No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Oh my god, I thought you were for real. I thought that was a real fun fact. I just, I just love the idea of Gwen Stefani being like, Lisa, can you teach me Japanese? Oh, okay. Hello, hello, and welcome back to a bit fruity. The other day, I saw a tweet from a one Gwen Stefani that absolutely stopped me dead in my tracks. Would one of you like to read this Gwen Stefani tweet because I feel like it needs the feminine touch? Wow. At Jonathan Roomey, you are a powerful inspirational human. What an enlightening, intelligent, beautiful interview. Thank you for being you, GX. The interview in question was one between Jonathan Roomey, an actor known for his roles in various Christian TV shows and movies, and a one Tucker Carlson. I was perplexed. I was shaken. I was paralyzed. Gwen Stefani, Gwen Stefani of, I'm just a girl. I've been, you know, you know, I'm sorry. I've spent as with the last 48 hours looking and listening to nothing except Gwen Stefani. And so it's really just like her kind of, just a girl, like the way she really kind of curls around certain consonants is front and center of my brain right now. But this was Gwen Stefani of no doubt promoting Tucker Carlson of the Great Replacement Theory. For the rest of the day, there were but four words running through my head. This shit is bananas. My day as I had planned it was over. I needed to know everything. I'd fallen into a sweet escape that felt neither sweet. It's so great. This whole episode is going to be proud. I'm really, I started writing the intro when I couldn't stop. I'd fallen into a sweet escape that felt neither sweet nor like an escape, rather a rabbit hole. So I went to Gwen's Instagram, now littered with advertisements for the "Hallow Daily Prayer" advertisements on which thousands of commenters are saying things like what happened to Gwen Stefani and bring back Gwen. I went on TikTok to find a viral video of a gay man getting his tattoo of Gwen Stefani's face removed, where too I found similar comments. Like, Gwen Stefani would hate Gwen Stefani. This feels like a recurring script in pop culture lately, especially for people in and around my age group. Pop culture fixtures that we grew up alongside, making as so many have, the MAGA pivot. In today's episode, I wanted to come together, Taylor, Kat, me, you the listener, to do what has become an unfortunate ritual lately. Morn a pop diva. Specific to Gwen, I want to figure out where and why the pivot from punk rock princess to perajuku culture vulture to tradwife occurred and draw from it broader conclusions about privilege, cultural appropriation, celebrity artifice, and whatever the hell is going on with that prayer app. As usually lately, I am joined by two of my best friends, Catten Barge and Taylor Lorenz. Welcome back to the show. Hi. Thanks for having us back again. And before we get into the meat of the episode, if you would like more of the show and/or to support the show, we are over on Patreon with some bonus episodes. I recently did a bonus with Transculture Critic, Fran Toronto, about Amelia Perez and the disaster that has come of representation politics. And I am doing some live shows this spring, which I would love to see you at. I'm so excited. It'll be just like the podcast live. We are doing shows in Toronto, Chicago, Philly, Brooklyn, Seattle, LA, and Portland, this May and June. So if you're interested in that, the link will be in the episode description. So before we get into the chronology of Gwen's life and career and see how it shaped up to be what it is today, I want to ask you guys, how are you feeling going into this and what is the mood given your personal and cultural relationship to Gwen Stefani? Well, when you texted us and were like, have you guys seen what's going on with Gwen Stefani? I was like, no. And then as soon as we started putting the pieces together and as soon as we started doing research on this, I was just like, I should have really, like, it all makes so much more sense now. And I almost feel silly for not realizing how transparent like the Gwen Stefani act has been. But I think a lot of people are in the same boat. So I'm glad that we're going to walk through it all. You know, the Gwen Stefani thing was so wild to me because I haven't thought about her in years. But she was such a part of my childhood, like, as a millennial, like, I think literally in like fifth grade, I definitely did not have one of her CDs because I was not allowed to listen to like that sort of music. But she was like popular, you know, she was so cool. I just remember having like young emotional relationships and like listening to her music and being obsessed. And she was so beautiful. And she had like the perfect washboard abs and like, perfect hair. And I mean, now looking back at some of her costumes, there's deeply problematic. But at the time, she just seemed so theatrical and cool and like emo and awesome. I remember there was a theme park in Cincinnati where I grew up where in like the kid section, they would always be playing The Sweet Escape by Gwen Stefani. Oh my god, sweet escape. That was a song that I feel like my friends and I would like blast in the car and the summers and like blasting it and like getting ice cream and like, it was such a, that was such a good song. Truly one of the best pop hooks of the 2000s that we who we who it's so instantly iconic and recognizable. Well, Gwen Stefani was born in 1969, a few months after Woodstock, notably, in Anaheim, a city in Orange County, California. And that's the end of our episode. Thank you so much for joining me. Taylor, as our resident Californian on the podcast, would you like to describe maybe the political significance of Orange County, California? Orange County, California is kind of weird because it's actually kind of a Republican stronghold like Huntington Beach and like so much of that area is mega. Like now it's pro Trump, but it's always been right leaning. A lot of big mega churches are down there like Irvine, like it's very Christian. It's very different than LA, even though it's right outside LA. It's like a suburb of LA practically, but like culturally, it's much closer to like this house or somewhere else. Like it is this like sort of different pocket of culture within California. Gwen's Italian American dad was a marketing executive for Yamaha motorcycles and would often go on trips for business too. Da da da da Japan. Her mother was an Irish American homemaker, Gwen had an older brother named Eric and two younger siblings. There's this great essay that I am going to reference a number of times throughout this episode. It's from 2018 and it's by a writer named Anne Helen Peterson. It's called The New Gwen Stefani is a lot like the old one. I'm going to link that essay in the episode description if you want to read it. But Anne wrote Gwen had grown up in a devoutly Catholic home, which over the years to come she would describe as the Brady Bunch family, church every Sunday. Her mom got mad when she used the F word on stage, but took solace in the fact that she didn't have any tattoos or piercings. Her dad was thankful that Stefani spent her teen years playing piccolo in the school marching band. Her family had once taken a trip to the Vatican, on which Stefani, then aged 21, was forbidden to talk to boys. In a different interview, Gwen said, "We weren't rich, but we definitely had whatever we wanted." That sounds like you're rich, by the way. Yes, it does. So Gwen really enters the public imagination as the front member of No Doubt. No Doubt was formed in 1986 as a scaband by Gwen's older brother, Eric, and his friend, John Spence. Originally, Gwen Stefani, I keep wanting to call her Gwyneth Paltrow. Jesus Christ. Different episode. Let me know if you want it. That is truly another episode. That is another six episodes. Gwyneth, Jesus, Gwen story. The year after No Doubt was formed, John Spence died by suicide, and Gwen's brother, Eric, slaughtered Gwen in as the lead singer. There's this an interview that Gwen Stefani does in 2004 with Vogue, where there are a lot of really insane quotes that I think are revealing of an attitude about what it means to be a woman that she's had for basically her whole life, including while she was in no doubt. In that interview, she says, I was very passive. My brother did everything. I was like, I'm just the sister. And then after that, I was Tony's girlfriend describing a relationship she had with a band member. And that was good enough for me. I never really had any ambitions or goals or dreams. - Listen, when I read that, I was just like, I was so mad because I was like, this is just so performative. Like whenever a woman tries to say, I have no inner life, like I have no ambitions, I have no hopes, I have no dreams, I have no goals. It's just not true, but it is something where it's like, very clearly you want people and men to have this idea of you, that you're very non-threatening. And I think that it annoys me, especially because it's like, Gwen Stefani here is creating a caricature of herself where she's dehumanizing herself. Like she's basically saying, I'm just a blank slate for you to project onto whatever your expectations of me, I can meet them, which is like a fallacy. And it's also something that only a very specific kind of woman can get away with. Like for a woman to be considered a blank slate, you have to conform to basically all of the most privileged aspects of being a woman. It only really works for her because she was like, a white, conventionally attractive and therefore non-threatening like type of woman who came from California, who could just as easily be like, edgy as well as the girl next door. Like it's very easy for her to take on whatever role, whatever the audience, whatever the person consuming her wants to see, she can be that person, but that in itself is a privilege and by sitting there and being like, and lying, because we also know that like she does obviously, like she's very clearly a very ambitious woman. And so it really pisses me off when women sit there and are like, I don't actually have ambitions. You see this so frequently with like women in conservative media, they're like, women should not have ambitions, women should not want to work, women should not want to like own anything. And it's like, shut up. You literally are like a multi-millionaire who runs her own media company. Like you're literally Gwen Stefani. Like don't call me that. You have no dreams or goals. (laughing) - Troutwave Gwen Stefani. (laughing) - It's ridiculous. - So no doubt they have sort of a following within California, but nothing national, certainly nothing international. Nobody really knows who they are on the world stage yet. And then in 1990, no doubt is signed by Jimmy Ayavine, who is the co-founder of InnerScope Records. Some years later in 1995, no doubt would release their smash hit album, "Tragic Kingdom", of which you are most definitely familiar with if not by name, then with the songs like "Don't Speak", "Spiderwebs", "Just a Girl", "Gwen Stefani" really takes on this, you know, feminist punk rock image. She kind of becomes the image of those things in the latter half of the '90s. Taylor, as the, I feel like Kat and I are both like Gen Z Millennial cussed. (laughing) - As the old one. (laughing) - As the old hag, as a man, pretty. (laughing) - Well, while we were talking on the phone last night, and you were kind of describing like, what Gwen Stefani meant to you as a middle schooler during this time. - She was just so cool and so independent. And I think also the lyrics, like obviously, I'm just a girl who'd been out for a while, but like, it was so pervasive, and it was, it felt like this independent anthem, because she, first of all, she's the lead singer of this like cool band, right? And at the time, so much of the pop music landscape, at least during my like, tween, and then later teen years was, it was like the Britney Spears era. It was the Christina Aguilera era. Like, it was all about these like, this sort of like hyper feminine, like pop star women, single acts, and then on the male side, you had like, blink 182, like, a racist was kind of like, I don't know, just like all these like male kind of like bands that I feel like guys were in two, and like they would listen to it, like the warped tour or whatever. And so like, when was this like kind of like gateway into that like more male world? Or like, she just see she actually seemed to be like challenging gender norms in a way. I liked that she had this sort of alternative version of femininity in my perception, because she wasn't just like, I'm a genius in a bottle or whatever, in which obviously like, you know, Christina's amazing, we love her. - We love her. - And they were forced to like, now we know so much about sort of like the way that the pop industry commodifies women, but I think like at the time it's, she seemed rebellious, like she would wear these like, low slung like big pants and like cool tops and had the chopsticks in her hair, which we can get into, but like, I remember I actually went to Soho in middle school, and there was this big, I can't remember the name, it was like this big Asian market. I think it's still there. Oh, Pearl River Market, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, it's like Soho Chinatown. I would always go to Canal Street to buy knockoff. I think I was trying to get like a knockoff Kate Spade bag on Canal Street and like we're walking around. And I remember my friend bought like of like, one of those like fake kimono type tops, because it was like in, because I think like Gwen was wearing it at the time, or it was like definitely part of that like late 90s, early 2000s style, which now reads as crazy cultural appropriation. But at the time seemed like alt and cool, and she seemed alt and cool. - She really took on this sort of feminist image that, you know, you read early interviews with her, and it definitely seems like she wanted to take the mantle that had been handed over by like, you know, a Courtney love type and make it softer. I think Gwen's image has always been attempting to hold two truths at once, which is on one hand this sort of like, creatively adventurous feminist type irreverent, creative soul with this like aspiring tradwife. And again, from that 2004 cover interview that she did, she was describing when Jimmy Iveen signed her to inner scope. Here's the quote, Kat, I feel like you're gonna love to hate this. But she said, Jimmy took me aside and said, Gwen, you are going to be a huge star in six years. I was like, first of all, who the hell are you? And second of all, I'm not going to be in this band six years from now. I'm gonna be having 14 children and be married. Then, practically to the day, don't speak was number one around the world. It's pretty spooky. We always laugh about that. - It's really funny because it's like, like you were saying Taylor, just listening to Gwen Stefani's biggest songs, you would think that she was, if not feminist, just simply an alternative. Like she presents this idea in her music, and she did this throughout various eras of her career, where she would kind of nod to the fact of misogyny, and how she's considered as a woman, also very similar to what Pink does. I feel like in a lot of her music at around this time, they're presented as a thing that you can still consume, but that presents a very slightly alternative view of womanhood, and it's ironic that that's what she presented in her music, but at the exact same time, she was saying, literally, I want to be a tradwife, I want to be 25 years old with 14 children on a farm, and I also think it's very interesting, the fact that Disneyland has played such an important role, like symbolically throughout her life, because she grew up in Anaheim, and she was part of the Anaheim youth who would spend so much time at Disneyland, which, as unfortunately, a Disney adult, someone who reads a lot of books about Disney history, I think it's really interesting that she grew up in this community that was very affluent and had the resources to spend a lot of time at Disneyland, which don't get me wrong. At the time, I think it cost $15 to go there, but still, tragic kingdom, they use Disney as a symbol, and sort of are rebelling against it, and how they posture it, but at the same time, she has spent her whole life frequently going to Disney. Today, she's known as a celeb, who is frequently spotted at Disney, which takes her kids there, and the juxtaposition of Disney as the ultimate symbol of American capitalism, the ultimate symbol of being consumer-friendly, consumer-safe, non-threatening. Like, I just think it makes a lot of sense that in the same way in her music and in her persona, she's combining these two things, and that makes sense to me that that's part of her aesthetic. - Do you guys know about the 1995 Roe vs. Wade anniversary shell appearance? - Okay, so this is something that is written about in that 2018 essay, but basically in 1995, as no doubt is exploding in fame with their album, "Tragic Kingdom," they're asked to perform at a Roe vs. Wade anniversary show, where Gwen gets on stage and says, quote, "If I got pregnant right now, I wouldn't get an abortion, but isn't it cool that nobody can tell me what I can and can't do?" And the organizers of the show were like, we did not know that she was going to say that. - I think it's so interesting how she's always actually been consistent with her conservative values, but I guess maybe because the conservative movement didn't have the same sort of like cultural capital and power, it was so not perceived. - Mm. - Like, she's doing these things that like, now, today, imagine that on Twitter, you know, we would immediately sort of contextualize her differently, but I think also just the media climate was so different the media climate was so misogynistic back then, she could maintain that like hyper-feminist independent image, despite her repeatedly saying all of this stuff that makes it clear that that's not who she is. So what this reminds me of is how in this I feel like cultural period where it's like post-row, well, Rose Bill exists at this time and like within like the popular discourse around abortion, you see this weird sort of thing emerge where it's like in twilight, the whole end of the twilight series is about how like Bella Swan wants the choice to not have an abortion essentially. And like the word abortion does not appear in the twilight series but this was a conversation at the time was like why would you have a narrative that's so focused on a woman who like wants to choose to keep her kid and not like have an abortion. And Gwen Stefani is saying this at this like abortion centered event. I'm like she's literally she's doing like the Stephanie Meyer, Bella Swan thing. I am so appreciative of the breadth of your references. You're just like Gwen Stefani is Disney. Gwen Stefani is Bella Swan. It's so aspirational. Cultural appropriation is obviously a huge throughline in Gwen Stefani's entire career. And it starts really early with Gwen Stefani if you recall during the no doubt era wearing a bindi. Yes. Which is if you're unfamiliar, it's a jewelry or a mark often a red dot worn by a lot of South Asian women specifically in India. As usually a spiritual symbol evoking the concept of the third eye. And Gwen started wearing this, you can see it like in all of her music videos and photoshoots and performances. Gwen who again Irish American mom Italian American dad. She was in a relationship with her bandmate Tony in no doubt who was Indian and whose mother wore a bindi. So Gwen Stefani would go to their house for you know a family gatherings and she was like I'm just trying to imagine like Gwen like being like I love that you know I think I got one of those and then she did she just like she went to like Claire's or something and she bought some stick on jewels and she started wearing a bindi. Yeah this was so part of her aesthetic back then also like I mean it's interesting how she was always tied in with like Asian cultures you know and I don't remember any discourse around it. I feel like they sold those bindi's I mean people replicated that like that was a accessory. Yeah I feel like any pushback in the 90s and early 2000s to cultural appropriation was like there since there was no Twitter there was not a way to communicate it to the masses really quickly in the way that discourse around cultural appropriation would later evolve and I feel like people who did speak out early on about it were oftentimes just like really easily dismissed. Where would they even speak out too? Totally like there's barely a mechanism to do it. One of I feel like the hallmarks when we're talking about cultural appropriation because people always love to say oh well you know appreciation versus appropriation what's the difference meow meow but I feel like one of the hallmarks of cultural appropriation is the relative political power of the cultures which are being borrowed and which are borrowing and in this case it's you know a well to do white woman in America borrowing from cultures that outside of like you know aesthetic costume value are not celebrated and are often you know denigrated and discriminated against in American culture it's about you know this white woman ultimately being able to profit and then discard accessories and looks from these cultures and Gwen really does that a lot throughout her career and Helen Peterson wrote no matter how much Stefani borrowed from other people and cultures to create her look it was framed as uniquely hers when Madonna showed up with her hand I thought this was crazy when Madonna showed up with her hands henna at an MTV music video awards in 1998 entertainment weekly suggested she was cribbing Stefani's look Stefani's response was quote I was a little shocked by that but whatever I'm sure there are things I nicked off of her from the 80s zero self-reflection which is also a through line also didn't quite if the culture was sorry to bring it back to her but didn't she say she invented yoga or like popularized yoga so I feel like this is a kind of like a thing that white women celebrities especially in like the lifestyle or like cultural trend setting space are like that was my thing and it's like it's literally not at all and it's just like to such an offensive degree when we talk about Gwen Stefani and cultural appropriation we often relegate it to things like the bindi and the way that she would seriously mooch off of Japanese and her duke culture which we are about to talk about but when I was outlining this episode and I was looking at really just like the through line of who Gwen Stefani is and perhaps always been I think it's helpful maybe and you tell me what you think but I feel like it could be helpful to make sense of her sort of like feminist punk rock era as another cultural costume and maybe the one that resonates with people the most because that's the one where she entered public imagination yeah it is so funny because I don't even know that it's something that she embraced as much as like it was sort of put on her maybe by like the public and by the music industry and sort of trying to position herself as different and just like again being the front woman of this band at a time when that was seen as like sort of subversive and like you said she's like sort of alternative and cool but it doesn't seem like she ever embraced it herself it's funny like you said that it's it's everyone's first impression and first impressions are always our lasting impression because it's how we're introduced to this artist and often it's very hard for artists to like evolve past you know what they're originally known for but it's just kind of funny because it doesn't even sound like it was something that she really embraced from that vote 2004 interview Gwen said the scene that I grew up in with female artists like Bikini Kill and Whole and all these more punk rock girls I always had the pressure of you've got to be a feminist and you've got to hate guys and you've got to cuss and be tough and I was never like that I grew up like a Catholic good girl that always kind of scared me the pressure of having to be so cool or like fuck you to the world but I kind of got over that and realized that yes I love to dress up and I love to wear makeup and be myself I like being a girl I like having a door open for me I like all the traditional stuff and I won't deny it so it's like basically in order to sell herself as counter-cultural rather than do something authentic because authentically she is not counter-cultural at all so in order to market herself and sell herself the clearest path for her to do that was to just deal from another culture and we'll get into it more but I think the way that she presents Japanese culture in itself is so deeply problematic it's like she's trying to create edge where there is none so she's going about it by just pilfering from Japanese culture I also obviously like it's just the way that she perceives feminism is so warped and just to pick me type attitude of like I'm not like those other female artists I like to have the door open for me and that's why I'm not a real feminist like it's bizarre I would just like to take a quick break from the show to thank factor for sponsoring this episode and making this podcast possible I have personally just felt life kicking into high gear lately between ever evolving personal responsibilities and new work stuff like these live podcast shows which I am so excited for but it does reach a point like there is a great chance that the podcast episode you are listening to or watching right now was edited at four in the morning which is to say I am looking lately for more places in my daily life where I can take some thoughtful shortcuts and factor is one of those shortcuts factor is a meal delivery service that offers a huge range of chef-made gourmet meals that make eating well easy and quick because every factor meal is ready to heat and eat in just two minutes every single week factor has 40 different meal options and eight different meal preferences to choose from my go-to is protein plus I know I know the twink gym rat which has all sorts of delicious protein rich meals that I first of all cannot cook because I have not invested the time into learning how to cook them and second of all honestly just don't have the desire to make the time for because for me if I have an extra hour in the late afternoon to either cook or nap I am so sorry Gordon Ramsay but the lights are going out if you would like to try factor you can head over to factor meals dot com slash factor podcast and use the code factor podcast for 50% off your first box and free shipping that's factor meals dot com slash factor podcast with the code factor podcast thank you so much to factor and now let's get back to the show something really interesting about this point in her career when she's transitioning out of no doubt and transitioning into herself as a solo act I've been listening to the song what you waiting for a lot recently and I watched the music video multiple times we can't play it but I'll sing because I know that's what everyone wants what you wait and what you wait and what you wait and what you wait and what you wait and all right that was really good so is this song and specifically I think the music video is really really interesting because one of the things that stuck out to me about the lyrics in the song is there's a part where she's like I know it's so messed up how our society all thinks about women like that's the implication and so listening to it I was like is this like a feminist anthem slay and then I went and watched the music video and I was like this is racist because in the music video the plot of the extended music video is that Gwen is preparing to launch her solo career and she does not know what type of song to write she doesn't know what type of aesthetic to have she doesn't know what to do or sing about and she's like like the pressure is really like ticking down because I have this huge record deal and I need to come up with something that's gonna define my solo era so I need to get some inspiration and in the music video she like goes to a doctor's office and like takes this pill then has this fantasy where she's doing like an Alice in Wonderland scene but all of the people are Japanese in the background of the scene like all the different characters besides her are Japanese people and this is like a very market entrance I think into this era where she particularly appropriates from Japanese culture and it's literally presented to the audience as like Gwen didn't know what to do so she took inspiration from Japanese culture and it's going to make millions of dollars off of it like that is literally the narrative that underlines the entrance of her solo career you know like you mentioned Katta I don't think that she sees women of color as equal to her like even in that video that you're talking about when I was just rewatching it it ends and she's just sort of like performing in this room in front of this group of like four women of color where they're sort of like passively staring at her and she's like this beautiful butterfly you know that's emerged and is superior or something can now like fly out of the Wonderland it's like she views Asian women and Asian people as very one dimensional but by taking from them it's like she views herself as more of a three four dimensional person so as we've been getting at in 2004 Gwen goes solo with the release of her solo solo debut love angel music baby or lamb this album has all of the hits hola back girl bubble pop electric rich girl what you're waiting for and the entire concept for the album was based on Harajuku Harajuku it's an area in Shibuya Japan which is known for its youth fashion culture Harajuku as a style it's very colorful it's lots of layering vibrant colors maximalism more is more it has a huge influence on fashion today like even on tiktok she says of this album that her dad who again was that Yamaha motorcycles executive that he would come back from business trips from Japan when she was a child he would tell her stories of the street performers there and then when she could finally travel on her own she says she went to Harajuku in 1996 when she was on tour with no doubt and she became fixated and so part of a huge part of perhaps the part of the album rollout the album imagery the tours the promo was her Harajuku girls the Harajuku girls were four Japanese and Japanese American backup dancers that Gwen Stefani hired to promote the love angel music baby album this is like not new like I'm basically just describing this because I always like to give context for what I'm talking about and also there are some listeners of this podcast who are either too old or too young to remember the Harajuku girl era these four women they were with Gwen everywhere they were at her performances they were in her music videos they were at her like red carpets where they famously would not speak they were instructed to be totally silent and just stand there Gwen also would sometimes introduce them as her and I thought this was crazy imaginary friends she named these four women who are might just reminder real women love angel music and baby there's this one lyric from rich girl the song which I think I think encapsulates her concept of these women and of the album at large really well she says I'd get me four Harajuku girls to inspire me and they'd come to my rescue I'd dress them wicked I'd give them names love angel music baby hurry up and come and save me I mean this is dark well I just think it's like it's shocking how she had these women dress so she has these quote unquote Harajuku girls dressed up as like through a parody of like gaysha women where they have their faces often like where they're wearing like very like white makeup they have the red circles painted on their cheeks they have the little narrow lipstick of just sort of like just the middle of your mouth color the high eyebrows the thin eyebrows like it's just it's such a parody of I think what a lot of people in the West view as Japanese culture or sort of traditional Japanese aesthetics one of like the harms of what Gwen Stefani did with her portrayal of Harajuku girls and Japanese culture is that because she had such a huge platform in popular culture her portrayal of Japanese people and of Japanese women in particular is the wide most wide spread portrayal that a lot of her listeners and people in her audience received so for example as like a white tween girl growing up in suburban Ohio I was not exposed to authentic respectful portrayals of Japanese culture that were made by Japanese people as much as I was exposed to what Gwen Stefani was doing and how Gwen Stefani was portraying Japanese people that was what I had the most exposure to and so even though like I didn't walk away from it having a worst view of Japanese people the view that I had was this Americanized appropriative version and it wasn't until I was much older that I actually learned more about Japanese culture from Japanese people I think about the artist Rina Saewanama who talks about this and makes art about this and about being like a Japanese British woman and about how Japanese people are portrayed as a stereotype and about how that is so difficult to navigate and I think that the way that Gwen had the hairdo girls stand behind her silently in the way that they were objectified and the way that ultimately they were sexualized because they were supposed to be like really cute girls who were playing into this album image that was ultimately sexy and that in particular is really damaging to Asian women Japanese women and Asian women are already infantilized and sexualized particularly in the Western image of their culture and so I think that Gwen Stefani 100 million percent not only does she contribute to this but if you just look at how massive this cultural impact was I think it's like it's a part of her history that she has never apologized for or owned up to and it's she should she has to the harm has not been undone it has not even been acknowledged I think also I mean like that you mentioned her impact on like suburban America and like women's fashion was wide like this is a woman who especially back then was considered this trendsetter this like style icon she was so ahead of her time and I think that you saw this ripple effect too where you just had a lot of other suburban white American girls cosplaying Japanese people like or their perceptions of Japanese people right it was like going to get the like kimono style top from Delias or whatever I saw this when we're talking about this episode that Gwen Stefani debuted a Harajuku mini line for kids for Target yes again it just shows like she was just commodifying this other culture that she had really no connection to and then selling it to the masses in America very successfully well she had kids lines but she had an adult line she had a fragrance line called Harajuku lovers where there were five different fragrances one for each of the women and one for her I think Forbes estimated that between 2007 and 2008 between the merchandise and the tour I believe she made 27 million dollars wow it's also I think you know looking at what Harajuku is like right now everything that I read about it talks about how Harajuku in particular has become so commercial since the time when Gwen Stefani first went to Harajuku versus now there's like massive overtourism in Japan generally speaking I just didn't article about this for wired looking at how like TikTok has influenced people in particular to like go to Japan and it's led to massive overtourism so Harajuku today it's incredibly crowded and the people who are there are often times western tourists looking to capture some of what Gwen Stefani was talking about in like her early arts music but the culture that she was stealing from is now actually eroding and disappearing in part because Harajuku has been taken over by American corporate brands like if you go to Harajuku today there's like a Nike store there's like all of these like American brands that have taken this very valuable space and part of like why American tourists want to go there has to do the fact that Gwen Stefani popularize Harajuku to such an extent. Something that you'll hear come up a lot when people talk specifically about Gwen Stefani and the Harajuku era was this idea that, you know, conversations around cultural appropriation were not in 2004 what they are today. And I think that's a complicated idea because while it's true that cultural appropriation, the conversations about it were not, like, busy the way that they are today. There were especially Asian women at the time who were very vocal about the fact that they were not okay with what Gwen Stefani was doing. And I was reading some essays from those women, and I wanted to quote them. So, in 2005, this journalist named Miheon in a salon article called Gueni Hana wrote, "She's even named them love angel music and baby after her album and new clothing line. The renaming of four adults led one poster on a message word to Muse. I didn't think it was legal to own human pets, but I guess so if you have the money for it." Stefani fawns over Harajuku style in her lyrics, but her appropriation of this subculture makes about as much sense as the gap selling anarchy t-shirts. She swallowed a subversive youth culture in Japan and barfed up another image of submissive giggling Asian women. While aping a style that's supposed to be about individuality and personal expression, Stefani ends up being the only one who stands out. Another really scathing article was actually from comedian Margaret Cho, who on her blog in 2005 wrote, "I want to like the Harajuku girls, and I want to think that they're great, but I'm not sure if I can. I mean, racial stereotypes are really cute sometimes, and I don't want to bum everyone out by pointing out the minstrel show. I think it is totally acceptable to enjoy the Harajuku girls, because there are not that many other Asian people out there in the media really, so we have to take whatever we can get. At least, it is a measure of visibility, which is much better than invisibility. I am so sick of not existing, that I would settle for following any white person around with an umbrella, just so I could say I was there. Even though to me, a Japanese schoolgirl uniform is kind of like blackface, I'm just an acceptance over it, because something is better than nothing. An ugly picture is better than a blank space, and it means that one day we will have another display at the Museum of Asian Invisibility, that groups of children will crowd around in disbelief, because once upon a time we weren't there. Wow. That like took my breath away, because it's so sad. I'll link that to in the episode description. I'll link both of those essays, and not to just like knock your socks off, but Gwen Stefani responded to this Margaret Cho essay. We're actually, we're going to get into a few of Gwen Stefani's responses to these types of criticisms over the years. And the first of those responses comes in 2007 to Margaret Cho in an interview that Gwen Stefani did an entertainment weekly. She said, and I am so sorry to be reading this. Margaret didn't do her research. The truth is that I basically was saying how great that culture is. It pisses me off that Cho would not do the research, then talk out like that. It's just so embarrassing for her. The Harajuku Girls is an art project. It's fun. What an abhorrent response. Margaret Cho doesn't need to do research on being Asian. So Gwen should be doing her research, and frankly has expressed no interest in actually researching this issue or learning about the nuances of these cultures. And I think that that sort of responds in that dismissiveness. And her continued insistence on doubling down. It just shows that she has no interest in self reflection. And she fundamentally has no respect for these cultures. Because here is a incredibly prominent Asian woman telling you educating, doing the actual work to educate you and writing so thoughtfully. And in such a beautiful nuanced way. And I mean, her reaction is to just dismiss it. It's wild. Yeah, I think her response is honestly evil. Because it's like, if you didn't read Margaret's piece and you only read Gwen's response, which is like two sentences and much easier to digest, you would walk away with like, it's basically like disinformation. Because she's like, oh, she just doesn't get that I, my intent is not negative. And it's like, that's not the question on the table. Intent doesn't matter if the end result is harmful. And I also don't think that Gwen went into this with good intent. Like even if the argument is like, I appreciate the culture. It's not true. You don't appreciate the culture. She fetishizes it in order to commercialize it and sell it back to people for profit. Exactly. It's the exact opposite of appreciation. It's exploitation. Seven years later in 2014, Time Magazine didn't interview with Gwen Stefani where they once again asked her if she regretted how she went about the Harajuku era to which she said, no, there's always going to be two sides to everything. For me, everything that I did with the Harajuku girls was a pure compliment and being a fan. You can't be a fan of somebody else or another culture. Of course, you can. Of course, you can celebrate other cultures. That's what Japanese culture and American culture have done. It's like I say in a song, Harajuku girls. It's a ping pong match. We do something American, they take it and flip it and make it so Japanese and so cool. And we take it back and go, whoa, that's so cool. That's so beautiful. It's a beautiful thing in the world. How her cultures come together. I don't feel like I did anything but share that love. You can look at it from a negative point of view if you want to, but get off my cloud. Get off her cloud. Get off her cloud. I love that. I started this episode with like talking about Tucker Carlson and the prayer app, which we are going to get to that shortly. But I wanted to go through the entirety of her career to demonstrate something that I think is really well encapsulated in quotes like this, which is that like I think she's always been conservative. Yeah. I think she's always been conservative. Like I think she's, you know, like honestly, like always been kind of a white supremacist and has worn various costumes to artistic critical acclaim and made a ton of money doing that kind of thing, but it's never been out of respect. And it makes sense that ultimately like the return to form is this tradwife selling prayer app subscriptions. I also think her use of the word fan is really interesting because I think she's using it interchangeably with the word consumer, which is to say that like the only way you can interact or engage with Japanese people and their culture is to, in her case, profit from it, but otherwise to buy it. And I just think that it all kind of makes back to this idea where one pillar of her conservatism is just the desire to profit and consume. And I think that that in particular is so harmful when you look at cultures through the lens of consumption and capitalism only because it's exactly what she's doing. She's erasing the foundation and the vast majority of Japanese culture to distill it down to this thing that you can literally go to target and buy for your children. And now that conservatism and her specific brand of conservatism and tradwife culture is becoming more culturally dominant and there is like a way to profit off that. She's able to lean further into who she always has been and just further her profit. It's sort of like, oh, okay, well, I buy it at my time, dipping my toes into all these other cultures, doing all these other things to kind of profit, like you mentioned, Kat. But now she doesn't have to pretend. She can shell her prayer app. She can be who she always has been, but more openly and not suffer any sort of financial setback for it. Because if the perception of her was as this tradwife sort of anti-feminist back a decade ago, she wouldn't have been able to make the money that she was making. And of course, she's telling us who she is obviously through these interviews, but I think also the marketing teams around her and how they're able to position her and the her business team, which, you know, she runs, they can do the prayer app deal, right? Like they can do these things now where it's like, all right, this is mainstream now. And guess what? She's always been around. You know, every single time she's given the opportunity to apologize or reconsider the Harajuku era, she always goes into this diet tribe about like, but cultural diffusion is so amazing. Again, like never acknowledging the varying degrees of power and the flow of power that cultural appropriation entails. But it's particularly egregious when you consider something that was unearthed on Twitter about a year and a half ago by this account called Tokyo Fashion. They brought to like this legal document where when it's Paltrow's legal team actually tried to tell how much fuck we're Gwen Stefani's legal team actually tried to trademark the word Harajuku in America under her brand. And the trademark examiner was like Harajuku is a place you can't trademark that. And they were like, but the only reason anybody knows it in America is because of Gwen Stefani, which is just like if you're actually interested in like organic, vibrant, cultural exchanges, why are you trying to trademark Harajuku? It gives the whole game away. Like like you said, Matt, this is white supremacy and action. Like if you're basically insinuating that Gwen Stefani is the only reason you're saying that she's the only reason people know what Harajuku is, you've just given the whole game away. In a trademark application, like that's so on the nose. It's it's a clear and direct desire to profit off of an entire place that is not yours that does not belong to you, but you believe that it should. And to control the consumption of that culture and to ensure that you always profit from consumption of that culture. It just goes back to like her earliest days, you know, when she had that feud with Madonna, right? Where it's like, well, I'm the one that mainstreamed Indian culture. So, you know, she should be thanking me. People should be buying my line of bindi's or whatever. Because she sees herself as the one bringing these like exotic cultures to American suburbia. And she kind of did do that, right? Like, but the problem is is that that's bad. This trademark thing really gives it's like the jigs up. You can really see just how explicit it is. And so I think we have to also recognize that she knows what she's doing. And I think maybe she's in denial because she has these fundamentally conservative beliefs, but it's very transparent what's happening. Quick break from the show to give a shout out to Blue Land. Blue Land was the first sponsor this podcast ever had. And they are still riding with it. Thank you so much to Blue Land. Did you know that over five billion with a B plastic bottles of hand soap and cleaning supplies are thrown out every single year? And most of those cleaning solutions are over 90% water, making them unnecessarily heavy to ship, creating more carbon emissions in the journey from the factory to your home. I say unnecessarily because there is a cleaner way with Blue Land. 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Gwen Stefani is given yet another opportunity in 2023, another nine years after the Time Magazine interview from 2014, to a tone for the Harajuku era. She does this interview with a lore magazine, the Beauty Magazine, with a journalist named Jessa Marie Kallur, who is a Filipina American journalist, who asked her about the Harajuku girls. This is one of the craziest things I have ever read. Here's an excerpt from that interview. As an adult, Gwen was able to travel to Harajuku to see the Harajuku girls herself. I said, "My God, I'm Japanese and I didn't know it." As those words seem to hang in the air between us when continued, "I am," you know. During our interview, Stefani asserted twice that she was Japanese, and once that she was, quote, "a little bit of an orange county girl and a little bit of a Japanese girl and a little bit of an English girl." I mean, this reminds me a lot of the White Lotus episode that just came out with that man who was clearly having some trans identity thoughts and was wondering to myself, "Am I an Asian girl?" That was literally Gwen Stefani in 2004. Yes, and it's so egregious, and I think it just really reinforces the fact that two Gwen Stefani identity is so one-dimensional because for her, she can afford for identity to be one-dimensional. In reality, Gwen Stefani is just a woman from Orange County. She's not a woman from the UK and she is certainly not a Japanese woman, and it is so easy for her as a White woman from Orange County who is very rich and very famous, not really threatened by much and perceived as non-threatening to others. It's very easy for her to say, "Oh my God, I'm Japanese." She carries none of the baggage or the stigma or the experiences of racism that come along with being a person of color in America. And so it's incredibly offensive for her to say this. The fact that she's speaking to an Asian woman, the journalist who she's speaking to, and the fact that she's saying this, and the journalist is clearly writing out, "These words hang in the air between us," and then she just says it again. Like Gwen Stefani has, on one hand, the lack of self-awareness to conduct herself responsibly and respectfully in this conversation, but she has enough awareness to know that what she is doing reinforces what she's profited from and what she has benefited from all of these years. I really think her behavior in these interviews and in response to Japanese women and Asian women is so egregious because I really think that she is intentionally doing this. Like she knows exactly what she's doing. She knows she can get away with it. That's why she keeps doing it. Every five years, it's like, Gwen Stefani, have you changed? Have you evolved? Will you apologize? And each time she's like, "Absolutely not. Why would I do that? I don't have to." Like, there's no consequence for her behavior. So she just relishes in it. Yeah, Jessica writes later in that piece in her own voice. Between March 2020 and March 2022, there were 11,467 reported hate incidents against Asians across the United States, 917 of them toward Japanese people. Stefani has often spoken up about her deep love and appreciation for Japanese culture, but to Alure's knowledge, she has not publicly expressed outrage or made any statements of support during this cycle of anti-Asian hate. Japanese culture for her is only one thing. It's the thing that is attractive to her and that she can profit from, but hate crimes against Japanese people and hate crimes against Asian people. That's not part of what Gwen Stefani loves about Japanese culture. That's not the thing that made her think I'm Japanese. It's because of the one dimensional nature of what being Japanese means to Gwen Stefani. And I also think that it's no surprise that she's zeroed in on the hair's youth fashion culture because what she's not including and sort of what the culture that she appreciates about Japan is like the actual culture and history of Japan. Because that would require her to actually be invested in what Japan is as a country, what the history of it is as a place, and what its people have experienced. That would be difficult. That would be nuanced. That would not be palatable to the average American consumer. And so when people ask Gwen Stefani if she's sorry, or if she feels regret for anything that she's done, why would she? She's just sat here and profited from all of it. Like I think a lot of people and I think even myself included as Gwen Stefani has been in the background of my life have just given her kind of a benefit of the doubt that she has involved along the way. And I think this is a benefit of the doubt that is particularly given to white women, even when they have done absolutely nothing to deserve it. And in fact have done the exact opposite. And so I think it's really important not to view Gwen Stefani as like someone who was culturally progressive or politically progressive before and has had this sort of like de-evolution because she has been this person all along. And to act as if there is a market difference between the Gwen Stefani of two decades ago and the Gwen Stefani of today is dishonest. It imagines that she's a better person than she actually is. The fact that people do give Gwen Stefani the benefit of the doubt, the fact that people don't view her as problematic as she actually is gets to the heart of why she's been able to get away with this and why this is so appealing for her. And so appealing for so many white celebrity women to put on cultures and then drops them once the baggage becomes too heavy. I would love to say that this is the end of the Gwen Stefani cultural appropriation timeline. But unfortunately dear listener, I cannot say that. Are you familiar with the 2012 no doubt comeback album? No, I'm not. No, most people aren't. So in 2012 no doubt puts out a comeback album called Push and Shove. One of the singles from which is called Looking Hot. Looking Hot is a song that first of all isn't good, which is fine. Bad music is just bad music. But it's also as so much of popular music was in 2012. It's not really about anything. And I mentioned that only to say that they could have made this music video anything. And yet they chose to make it about Cowboys and Indians. After backlash it was swiftly removed from like it's official release on like Vivo or whoever was putting out music videos at the time. But the video still exists online. And it's exactly what you think it is. It's just it's like I almost said Gwyneth Paltrow again. Jesus Christ. I'm going to need to get like electric shocks. But it's like Gwen Stefani wearing like you know a Native American headdress and like Cowboy and Indian. It's it's crazy that every time Gwen Stefani has had a new project like has any culture has any minority culture gone through Gwen Stefani's career unscathed. I don't know that alone like speaks to kind of this like thing about white mediocrity because it's like we're getting to the point where where you're like we're now reaching peak Gwen Stefani in terms of like her current evolution and who she currently is. But how do we know that that was Gwen Stefani at the beginning? She would never have become the global superstar that she is today. Like the real Gwen Stefani if you strip it back to just her is not successful enough. Like it's not the successful Gwen Stefani that we all know and love. In order to reach these career heights she has to put on a costume because just Gwen Stefani doesn't sell. Gwen Stefani only sells when she's like stealing from someone else and using that as What is marketable about her and I also Also, that's why I know that she knows what she's doing, that's why I know that she's known all along, that this is also offensive, and she keeps doing it anyways, because it's been called out to her over and over again repeatedly. And she keeps doing that because I think she's kind of a one trick pony, but the trick is like trying on these different costumes and cultures. And we now fast forward just a little bit more to 2015, where she goes through a divorce from Gavin Rossdale with whom she had three children. And later that year, she romantically links up with a one Blake Shelton, the singing in this episode is like so amazing. Yeah, I like to imagine. I don't know. I wish I had like a monitor in their house to hear what's like, hey, Blake, did you make the coffee this morning? I love, I'm sorry, this is kind of a Gwen roast, but I really do love like her voice. She just, she's, Gwen somebody has such a singular voice, not even like a singing voice, but like how she sounds when she speaks again, it's the way she like really curls around the consonants. It's like, hey, Blake, Blake. I feel like it's so Southern California. Yeah. 100%. But so Blake Shelton is this country star. And if you recall from the time when they first get together, and I think still a big part of their image is this like Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton, what could they possibly have in common? Like alternative feminist rock chick with this like hillbilly country guy. But I think you the listener can already get a sense for what I'm about to say, which has been such a theme of this episode is like they have everything in common. Yeah. And the voice has brought so much evil onto our planet. Like revisiting this era like this 2015 era for her when she released the album that was like, why do you have to go and make me like you? And also the other one, um, make me like you, make me like you. Or no, that's the same one. She can't do it. I don't remember what they are. But like so this era, she was like trying to like do like a musical comeback as well. And she was not appropriating cultures like as far as I'm aware. I haven't watched the music videos so, you know, from the lyrics alone. Can I name three songs off the album? I am not an authority on who has ever listened to any music, but I will tell you that no, I cannot. And I think that that kind of also gives the game away, which is like once you lose all of the personas that Gwen Stefani has put on, the end result does not sell nearly as well as when she's doing cultural appropriation. Like that's the version of her that was so commercially successful. And now that she's older and even with all of the cultural clout and capital that she's accumulated over the years, her return to music was not a big success. I won't say it was like a total flop. And when I was listening to the lead singles, I was like, I think it's fun. I like the beat. But they weren't hits. They didn't, they were culture defining. And it would have never, if Gwen Stefani had come out swinging with the type of music she started making around the 2010s alongside Blake Shelton, it would have never established her as the superstar that feminist punk music and then this sort of like Harajuku-inspired look made her. What is also really interesting about the voice era Gwen Stefani is that it reflects like the voiceification. I think I'm the first person to say that. The voiceification. The voiceification of our culture. I think like what Gwen has sort of retreated into at this point in her career, which sets her up so beautifully for what she's doing now is she's retreated into like, it's not really retreats the same thing. What's happening in suburban America right now, like what will get the suburban American listeners to appreciate me Gwen Stefani? And so she goes for this route that is very comfortable, like it's the opposite of being edgy. It's stuff that's like palatable in a different way. It's stuff that like isn't going to cause a conversation about cultural appropriation, because now that in this period of time in the 2010s and in the 2020s, those conversations are now happening. Like social media is now a thing. If Gwen were to try to do like a Harajuku rebirth, it would cause a lot of issues for her. And so I think she knows that. And so she is kind of retreating into like this more openly conformist sort of career model. And at the time that she gets the divorce and she's already co-hosting with Blake Shelton, it makes so much sense for her in terms of like, you look at how conservatism has had this cultural swing in relevancy, which is what I feel like we talk about on this podcast over and over again. It's like you can track politics in America through the careers of these like white celebrity women. And with Gwen Stefani, it's like, okay, now what's going to be profitable, what's going to be popular, what's going to be successful. It's like cookie cutter, TJ Maxx, shopping, white suburban America. I'm an American country star. And I think that her relationship with Blake Shelton actually makes so much sense because she's always just writing the wave of what is mainstream and what is popular. And people don't want to admit it because we have taste. But like, what's popular? We on the a bit prudy podcast. We like to think. We like to think we have at least gay taste. But like, the voice was like one of the most popular TV shows in America. And Blake Shelton is one of the most popular people in America. The voice draws more viewers than RuPaul's Drag Race. I wouldn't know. It's not, it's not on my radar. But when I go back to Ohio to like see my parents, they have it on their t-boat. Well, this kind of brings us to Gwen Stefani today. And I would like to talk about how low the prayer app a little bit. I know you've been waiting for it and you've been sitting very patiently, my dear listener. Cat, have you seen the advertisements? I have now. Because I sent them to you. But we're going to pretend that you haven't yet so that we can all be on the same page. I think this is insane. Okay, here it is. Hey, everyone. I just got my ashes and I'm ready for Lent. This year, I'll be doing Hallows 40 Day Lent Prayer Challenge. It's going to be incredible. Check it out. God bless. You're looking to grow closer to God, this Lent. I'd loved to invite you to join me and pray every day, leading up to Easter on the Hallow app. I'd love this app. And I use it every day. You'll join millions of Christians around the world, including the incredible Mark Wahlberg, Jonathan Rumi, Father Mike Schmitz, and so many more in meditating on Jesus's way to the cross. It's going to be the most transformative Lent of our lives. This season has always been my favorite time of the year. It's a season that we get to celebrate the birth of our Lord. This year, I'm excited to share that I've partnered with this amazing prayer meditation and music app called Hallow on their 25-day prayer challenge leading up to Christmas called Advent Pray 25. Join me in millions of other Christians around the world as we celebrate together the truth that God still loved the world that He gave us His only Son. I, the first time I saw this, I thought I was hallucinating. What exactly is the Hallow app? Well, I'm glad you asked. It is a daily prayer and meditation app that you have to pay for, which I've always just found it interesting when things that are supposedly purely about religion and faith and God are also like, and here's your monthly subscription. But, you know, never mind that. It has raised tens of millions of dollars in investment funding and is backed notably by gay, right-wing activists and billionaire Peter Teal and JD Vance. Our Vice President. Our Vice President. It has a number of celebrity faces, including racist hate crime committed and sometimes actor Mark Wahlberg. One of its spokespeople is Jim Caviesel, the QAnon activist and actor from Sounder Freedom. The prayer app is so interesting to me because it really does get back to her roots. Like, we're seeing the real Gwen Stefani here. She's finally emerged back as her like Catholic tribe self. My biggest thought about this is like, religious people are really good targets for scams because religious people have already trained themselves to submit authority on what they do with their money, what they do with their time to people who they view as authorities in their church or their religion. And so, religious people are really easy to scam for money. And that's kind of like a defining factor of religion. But when you see stuff like this, it's just so transparent in a way that it hasn't been in the past because of like, the emergence of digital technology. Because obviously, you can just pray. You don't need to buy an app to pray. You can just do that. So, people have been doing since the invention of prayer. You can like take out your Bible and you can read it and you can pray. And so, the fact that they've invented a new thing, like, they've invented a new spiritual need for people to have. And that itself, I would argue, is also sacrilegious. It is ridiculous. And people in Gwen's comments like called this out, were like, why are you profiting from like spiritual spirituality and prayer? That's unethical and counterintuitive to religion. But I think in reality, it makes a lot of sense because I think that a lot of religion and reality actually is about sort of financially exploiting people. And I also think that like the fact that this is run by Peter D. and has investment from Teal and JD bands. Like, that's not surprising at all either because if you look at everything that's wrong with modern society and you're like, who has a hand and everything that's wrong with modern society as we know it, it's Peter Teal. (laughing) - I love Peter Teal lashings on this podcast. It's like my favorite Peter Teal and Sam Altman because I hate billionaires and I really hate gay billionaires because I feel like I have something in common with them and that is embarrassing. (laughing) - I also think that in terms of the celebrities who promote this app and the fact that you have these right-leaning celebrities, these very overtly conservative people, but then you also people like Gwen Stefani, who still is considered someone in liberal America, I also think it's probably really easy to get liberal celebrities to switch sides because so much of what they have preached over the years has always been at the end of the day like capitalist and so it's not so much like they were really strongly believing in social progress as much as they were really strongly believing in whatever the mainstream majority would like and therefore financially support them. So now that that's switched, there's nothing to hold them back from switching over to literally Trump's administration because they were always kind of doing this. They were always kind of just looking for things that they could sponsor that fell in line with like the biggest possible paying audience. - Vice did a write up about the Hallow Prayer app where they shed some really interesting insights. Here's one quote from that article. The app features voices known for their conservative stances towards sexual and reproductive health rights. Lila Rose delivers prayers on the app who is a president and founder of Live Action, an anti-abortion advocacy group with a significant social media presence, which has recently been protesting outside drug stores that disperse abortion pills. Her prayers on the app are mainly focused on the Virgin Mary as well as a litany for life, which she says quote, helps us to respect human life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. - This makes me so mad. Live Action is one of my number one enemies. They don't know that I exist, but to me, they're one of my number one enemies. This is so crazy. I did not realize there was a live action tie-in with this app, but live action is super, super notorious if you are in the abortion rights space whatsoever. They're like one of the biggest arms of anti-abortion propaganda, especially in the social media age. And the whole Gwen Stefani pivot to marrying Blake Shelton and being like a Southern bell and being like a religious Southern-esque woman, like a country woman, and specifically also having lived in Orange County. Do you know who Cole and Savannah LeBranche are? - No. - But wait, can I guess who they are? Are they like an influencer couple? - Yes. - Cole and Savannah, that gives influencer couple. - Yes, and they go by Cole and Sav. They wear a Cole and Sav and now they're the LeBranche fam. - Okay. (laughing) - I'm gonna keep this brief, but I know there's gonna be at least one person listening to this who is like cheering right now. (laughing) The LeBranche command, a really big audience of people who are skeptical and people who are hairs. Savannah LeBranche lives the life that Gwen Stefani said she wanted to live when she was a teenager in no doubt. She's the girl who got married and started having all of these kids and was like religious. And Savannah LeBranche is from Orange County. And when she and Cole got together, they lived in Orange County. But along with some other influencers, like a small trickle of conservative influencers and super religious influencers over the past five years, they moved to Tennessee and they have worked with live action. And so that's why I'm like, it's all coming together. - Wow, I'm looking at a photograph of this family and they look like AI generated. - Yes, yes, a hundred percent. - Sorry, continue. - It's just like there's a cultural movement happening right now that involves like a few things, anti-abortion stances, Christianity loosely defined, like Christianity without any of the like standards. - Right, right, Christianity without any of the teachings of Christianity, but more of just like the idea of like American white nationals Christianity that's come to light. - The aesthetics of Christianity, the bigotry and white supremacy inherent to it, the anti-abortion stance, and then like the celebrity influencer lifestyle brand, all of these things and fifth thing, Peter Teele. - And always Peter Teele, fuck Peter Teele. - These are like all coming together and creating this really big thing that I think a lot of people aren't picking up on in popular culture, which is ultimately like the erosion of women's rights. Peter Teele is also heavily invested in fertility tracking apps. So between the fertility tracking apps and the anti-abortion prayer app that Gwen Stefani is promoting on Instagram, you have this movement that's ultimately like the intention of all of this is to get young white women pregnant and popping out kids and have them be conservative and have them be religious. And like that's what this is all about. Like Gwen Stefani is officially a part of like the modern fascist project in America. - A rare moment on the Abit Frudu podcast where I'm actually rendered speechless. I just have to pause and say direct to camera. Like this sucks. This sucks. Like I loved Gwen Stefani's early stuff. - Yup. - And now she's like, yeah, she's just (sighs) doing modern fascisms work on Instagram. - It's sad what is happening to our country. - It is sad and also I just, you know, these types of people are always in my comments and messages about how I'm like grooming children or whatever, the hollow prayer app has a section of prayers targeted towards what they label as littles which are three to seven year olds. Yeah. Yeah. - A three year old shouldn't even have an app. - Well, I mean (laughs) - But you know what? Like it's like they know that those kids are watching Coco Bellen. So it's like they're past the point of being like should children be on technology. They know it's happening. So of course they're going to take advantage of that. Of course they're going to. It's the same people, it's their Republicans. I mean, Democrats too, but like Republicans are like, we gotta get kids off these phones. No. You want them on the hollow app for three years old. You want them at age three to be listening to virginity prayers on their phone like it's ridiculous. - And we made it on the journey right back up to where we began at the Tucker Carlson promo tweet on Gwen Stefani's Twitter account. And while a week or two ago when I first saw that tweet, nothing made sense going through this entire journey in my head allowed it unfortunately to make a lot of sense. And I don't yet know at the time of this recording what I'm going to title this episode. But a note that I made here, which seems fitting for a title is this is the most honest Gwen's ever been. I feel like when I read all of those comments, especially on Gwen Stefani's "Hello" prayer app, Instagram advertisements, and on the TikToks where people are like, the old Gwen Stefani would hate the new Gwen Stefani. And what happened to the Gwen Stefani I grew up with? I'm like, not to sound like a broken record this episode, but this is, I think, the clearest picture of a Gwen Stefani we have ever had. We talk a lot on this podcast about people's radicalization to the right. We talk a lot about the various radicalization pipelines that different people go down for different reasons, whether that be financially motivated or spiritually motivated. And we try to bridge empathy with all of those different pipelines to understand how they happen and ultimately raise awareness so that less people go down them. But I think with Gwen Stefani, as with Kim Kardashian, who we talked about a month or two ago, I think this is less of a pipeline to radicalization and more like a return to form. I think that Kim Kardashian comparison is so perfect because I really think that we're seeing the veil lifted on all of these people where these Kim Kardashian, Gwen Stefani, these people were never feminist icons. They were never who the people that we sort of perceived them as 10 years ago, 20 years ago. But now they can lean into that conservative ideology. They can pose with a Tesla robot. They can have their prayer app. They can basically just be who they really are. Again, at a time when authenticity is rewarded and people are looking for authenticity more than anything else from these influencers and celebrities. But I think it's so funny to see the parallels and to see all of these celebrities, especially women that were held up as these feminist icons, just go completely mask off. And it's really been since I think Trump's ascendance that we've seen that where they feel like they can go mask off. Because again, there is now this alternative profit structure to support them. There's an alternative economy on the right that will ensure that they continue to profit and continue to make their millions. And so they don't have to play pretend anymore. It can be easy, especially as white people to fall into this pattern of thinking. Where we're like, these conservative celebrities who I used to love have been taken from me. Like they've changed. They're not the same person that I grew up loving. And I can empathize with that because it's comforting to imagine that Gwen Stefani was not always someone with fascist leanings and has been radicalized by some unseen force. but it's so important to critically examine what in the past let us here and we've literally walked through all the steps that showed us that this person who we see now was always the person who is Gwen Stefano, like she's always been this person and so I think it's like really important not to overlook that because the way that we avoid having people become outwardly fascist is that we extinguish things like oh cultural appropriation we start with like the problematic patterns of behavior and the refusal to apologize for them and the refusal to feel bad about them because if we don't stop that if we don't hold people accountable for that then we end up here. Gwen Stefano in the event that you're listening to this episode I would like to round out this conversation with just two words to you don't speak I know what you're thinking and I don't need a reason don't tell because you mastered her vocally it's incredible to watch the listeners currently disagreeing the comments the comments in fact he had not mastered her vocals I cat and Taylor thank you so much as always for going down the not so sweet escape with me thanks so much for having us if you would like to follow more of cat and Taylor's work they are both doing incredible independent journalism and their newsletters podcasts etc all of their work will be linked in the episode description thank you so much for joining us for the morning of yet another popped you but I hope you don't have to keep making these again if you would like to come experience the podcast live with perhaps some special guests perhaps some special guests that were on this very episode who knows you can grab tickets now at the link in the episode description to the tour I am so excited for it I really am the internet can feel so strange and dissociative and disembodied sometimes so I can't wait to hang out with you on person if your city is not on one of the tour dates listed there is a place in the tour website for you to submit your city if you want me to come hang out so feel free to do that as well I love you so much and until next time stay fruity