The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Brilliance of Ickitt

Willa, I checked my favorite desi blog, Sepia Mutiny, and they, too, are trying to figure out if Ickitt is a South Asian name. (I called my dad, but he'd never heard of it. "Maybe it's Tamil?" he suggested. A Google search came up empty.)

I love bonkers celebrity baby names as much as the next person, but M.I.A.'s holds a special place in my heart. I'm biracial, like lil' Icky, and naming me was a bit of a chore for my parents—they ended up going with "Nina" because it's nonspecifically ethnic and, perhaps more important, can be pronounced by all parts of the extended clan (no Rs or Ls to trip up the Chinese, no Ws and Vs to frustrate the Indians). I've often wondered how I'll extend this multiculti balancing act to the next generation, but maybe M.I.A. has the right idea—just put together a few syllables that sound ethnic, and call it a day.

Seeing Past the Polka Dots

My sister e-mailed me this morning with an interesting addition to our conversation about M.I.A's Grammy outfit. She's on Jessica and Nina's side that the get-up wasn't particularly revealing, especially by pop-star standards, and questions what's causing people like Marjorie to feel uncomfortable with it:

The only reason people are pearl-clutching over it is that the body underneath it is pregnant, and we're socialized to believe that a pregnant woman's body no longer belongs to her alone. Look at all the "think about what your future kids might think!" horror—like just because the fetus is in there right now, he's got some say over the exterior decorating. Sorry, but the fact that you don't give up ownership of your body (and the right to make ugly fashion choices) just because you're incubating is kind of a basic pillar of feminism.

There's also a great conversation going on in the Fray about this, with most posters agreeing that the polka-dot onesie was more kick-ass than indecent. And kak79 makes a good point that the artist herself was actually fairly M.I.A. in the Grammy performance:

I think what astonished me more about M.I.A's Grammy performance than her outfit was that she had such a small part to play in her own song. Was she not good enough to perform her own song on her own? Yes, I know the Grammys are big on pairings. So, I'll grant them the desire to do a remix with another performer. But, really, they practically wrote her out. It was her and four men and they held a good 95% of that performance. I think we should all be talking about that and not her crazy fashion choices.

Everyone's Talking Polka Dots

I still don't think M.I.A. was trying to look sexy, Marjorie. I think she was trying to look provocative and faintly goofy. She's wearing puffy white sneakers with that getup, not spiked heels. And M.I.A.'s not the only one to find the polka-dotted dress entertaining: the designer, London-based Henry Holland, tells New York's Fiona Byrne, "We are going through all the blogs and looking at all the comments people put about the dress. It's quite amusing," adding that some bloggers were "saying that she’s a skanky ho who couldn’t wait to get her baby out before getting back in the game!"

Swagger, She Had. Sexy, She Wasn't.

I admit that I was unaware of her "whimsical" style before I saw her onstage. But if M.I.A's performance was really about her music and not about craving attention she could have worn any number of great outfits, including the unique one she wore on the red carpet that night that neither hid her pregnancy nor shouted: Look at me. Look at me. I'm pregnant, I'm cool, and I'm still sexy.

As for the performance harkening back to the Rat Pack days, I don't remember any scenes from the old Rat Pack movies that included anything close to a pregnant woman wearing a silly and revealing bumble-bee outfit. And if M.I.A. was supposed to be part of the pack that night, she could have taken a cue from the suited men on stage and wore something more in keeping with the Rat Pack's formal/cool sensibility.

And Nayeli, my point was not that she committed an ethical lapse, my concern was about the imagery of a fashion lapse. I don't think dressing in clothing—pregnant or not—that leaves little to the imagination is empowering or radically feminist, as you and Jessica imply. It's not M.I.A.'s outfit that is "debunking notions of feminine delicateness," it's her ability to make it to the top of the hip-hop hierarchy. She would have been just as effective performing with those men while wearing a suit—albeit a suit that proudly accommodates the protruding stomach—and even more so a dress.

My larger point is that young, female rock/rap/R&B/country music/whatever stars, much like the female dancers in music videos, are wearing less and less and revealing more and more of their bodies for the entertainment of whom? Other women? Themselves? I don't think so. They've brought into the notion that equates being sexy with revealing all. I would argue that's not a feminist notion but a creation of the male-dominated fashion and music industries. It makes me sad for female artists who bare more than they should, and for the young girl fans who emulate them and put a premium not on being smart, kind, independent-minded, or socially conscious, but on being sexy and famous, even famous for doing nothing like Paris Hilton.

Swagger, Like Us?

M.I.A.'s Swagger

Marjorie, are you offended by M.I.A.'s Grammy duds because they're fugly or because they're inappropriate? As to the first—well, we could argue ourselves in circles about that outfit's aesthetic value. I happen to think it's a perfect encapsulation of a look we might call le punk rock jolie laide. (Björk being another big proponent of the look, as Jessica pointed out; Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is a third.) We could also talk about the fact that Ms. Arulpragasam can only pull the look off because she's totally gorgeous—which makes the look compelling, rather than repellent—but that's another post.

As far as whether it's inappropriate—I can't say I agree. Pop-lets have certainly appeared in less. Modern dancers at Alvin Ailey wear less! You write:

The imagery of a scantily-clad, or should I say scandalously-clad, pregnant young woman dancing onstage with a bunch of male rappers whose rhymes sometimes debase women, was just too much for me.

I read it completely differently. In M.I.A.'s hook (which clips from her hit "Paper Planes"), she brays that "no one on the corner have swagger like us/ swagger like us, swagger swagger like us." I thought the performance seemed defiant, cool, confident. Check out the video: M.I.A. and the boys look like 21st-century Rat Packers, what with the elegant suits and bandstand in the background. Not every pregnant woman has to be beatific and glowy. Sometimes they can be rock stars! Note the awesome way those crazy polka dots echo her big belly and other round, pregnant parts. She looks like a hot, Sri Lankan version of Baby Huey.

Is Your Sense of Whimsy M.I.A.?

I missed out on the Grammys live, so when I read Marjorie's post on M.I.A.'s polka dot outfit, I figured it would be a fashion disaster of Lil' Kim proportions. But looking at the photos of the Sri Lankan star, it seems that her frock was more Bjork than Beyonce, which is to say: whimsical and slightly ridiculous, but certainly not worth any gaspy pearl clutching. Her fashion has always been silly, and this over-the-top outfit is no exception.

M.I.A.'s pregnancy peekaboo actually seems to be very similar in spirit to the "gross-out girls" Meghan blogged about last week. Just as my old colleagues at Jezebel and writers like Miranda Purves are debunking notions of feminine delicateness, M.I.A. is showing the world that a woman who's just shy of the delivery table can rock out on stage in a peekaboo getup. Like everything else, though, it's all about execution. I can say for the Jezebels that when they write their most graphic pieces, the aim is not just to potentially inform, but also to make the reader laugh. Which is why Wetlands is such a failure. I read it last month, and when it wasn't actively turning my stomach from its exponentially disgusting descriptions, it was turning my stomach with its aggressively artless prose.

Fashion Senseless

I'm not a fashion connoisseur or a hip-hop etiquette expert, or even a mother, but I don't think this disqualifies me from being able to ask the following question: What the heck was the very-pregnant rap artist M.I.A thinking when she went on stage during the Grammy Awards show on Sunday wearing this utterly ridiculous outfit?

The imagery of a scantily-clad, or should I say scandalously-clad, pregnant young women dancing on stage with a bunch of male rappers whose rhymes sometimes debase women, was just too much for me. And don't even get me started on what this cringe-worthy antic might say to impressionable teenage girl fans.

I know I sound like a scolding, prudish Ms. Crabtree, but I don't care. I grew up with hip-hop and still like a lot of it, and despite the sometimes potty-mouthed and offensive rhymes of Jay-Z, Kanye West, and T.I., there's no denying their talent. But the men were beside the point on Sunday night; M.I.A. was the point. She made Brittany Spears' 2007 MTV Video Awards fashion faux pas seem tame.  

I don't care if she's unconventional, uber cool, young and reckless, or supremely confident; someone, anyone, should have pulled her aside before she went on stage and simply said NO! You can't wear that outfit. Please don't wear that outfit. If she has a fashion consultant that person should be promptly fired and run out of town. The British designer who came up with the polka-dotted creation should be fired too. Given the recent discussions on XX Factor about children being exploited by their parents in embarrassing YouTube videos and the discomfort those children might feel watching the videos as adults, I'd still rather see myself on YouTube looking behaving like a funny little dork during a captured moment of youthful indiscretion than see my half-dressed mother dancing onstage before a television audience of millions, while carrying me in her womb no less, acting like she has no sense.

Tell me, Slate women, do I need to lighten up and just let M.I.A. be? Should I accept that maybe she just has a whimsical sense of humor?