Katy Perry’s rebrand reveals one thing that still always works for women
Katy Perry is in the middle of a huge rebrand and she’s shaken up her look to do it but it proves there’s a trend that is still rife.
OPINION
Katy Perry is in the middle of a very sexy, very naked, very stripped-down rebrand, and why is this what women always find themselves having to do?
Perry, 39, just released her new single, Woman’s World, and the music video is very sexy. She’s prancing around in a bikini and singing about the importance of girl power in it.
She looks great and sounds incredible, but her super-sexy performance feels stale because it’s predictable.
It’s not Perry’s fault; she’s just working within a flawed system.
If you’re a famous woman and you want to stay relevant, the best thing you can do is up your sex appeal every couple of years.
It doesn’t take much.
Look at radio host Jackie O.
She lost some weight, and now she’s being treated like Lara Bingle, and everyone wants to know why there’s a hot tradie on her balcony.
It wasn’t like her career was going badly before – she was hosting a number one breakfast show – but her personal brand, after decades in the industry, has never been more relevant.
Perry’s last album, Smile, came out in 2020, and it wasn’t a mega smash. Shortly after, she had her daughter Daisy with movie star Orlando Bloom, and she’s been making ridiculous money as a judge on American Idol.
Her career wasn’t in the gutter by any means, but she hadn’t released new music for a while and wanted to make a comeback.
She probably wanted to remind people she didn’t just sit in a chair offering advice to eager musical hopefuls - she was the star.
If you’re a woman, the best way to achieve that is to lose weight and show off more skin. Then, suddenly, everyone will be yapping about you again.
It’s a formula that works.
Perry started posting some sexy photos on Instagram, and suddenly, she was the talk of Elon Musk’s playground X, and people were gushing about how she hadn’t aged and how gorgeous she looked.
Fans and non-fans were asking. Has she lost weight? What has she done to her hair? “Oh I forgot she was married to Bloom.”
She pushed her way back into conversation and created hype for her album. It is just business.
She’s also not the only one doing it.
Camila Cabello has just released her new album, C. XOX0, after a two-year break, and she promoted it by dying her hair blonde, dressing sexier, and chatting about her sex life on the popular Gen Z podcast Call Her Daddy.
She went from the girl next door to someone who wore the kind of fake nails that look like they can do bodily harm.
It was quite the change.
At some point, fans claimed she looked “unrecognisable”, and while her new album hasn’t taken the charts by storm, new photos of her are constantly going viral on the internet and she’s very much being talked about.
She’s never been more relevant, and it isn’t because her music is taking over the charts. It is because she’s in her sexy girl era.
Similar to Perry, whether her new era flops or thrives, she’s back into the cultural conversation in a big way.
Perry might be singing about a woman’s world in her new song, but we are still living in a patriarchal one, where if women want to stay relevant, their best chance of doing it is by dressing sexier.
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