#Madonna didn’t invent vogue the lgbt community did

[riotgrrrlhole]

Pose fx - Babylon

The video is by Ovik6280

Here is the link to the channel of the one that make the video:

[jessieliveblogs]

I want to talk a little bit about Madonna and Taylor Swift.

Taylor Swift as a lot of people know with her new release of “You Need to Calm Down” has put herself right in the middle of the Gay Rights Movement.

I’m very fucking annoyed about this as are many gays. 

It’s opportunistic in a way that seems cheap and gross and completely ingenuine.

I’ve been trying to articulate how what Taylor Swift is doing compares to time-honored divas of years past. Like, we all hated that Taylor performed at Stonewall during pride month (ooh does that shit rankle.) but would we feel that way if another straight woman performed? Maybe not.

If it was Dolly Parton, Maria Carey, Brittney Spears, or even Ariana Grande, I don’t think any of us would be nearly as incensed. 

For one: these women have shown their support for the LGBT community already. They’re not Lady Gaga, but over the course of their careers, they’ve done their part to raise up the gay community. Some more explicitly vocal than others (Ariana Grande in particular is very vocal about this because she’s so young) but they are respected in the community if for no other reason than the gay community chose them.

This is important.

No one fucking invited Taylor Swift. She wasn’t even a part of the conversation. She invited herself to a place that had nothing to do with her.

And I get trying to make amends for homophobic rhetoric of the past and over-correcting or whatEVER but this does not come off that way.

What this feels like is a marketing gimmick.

It is no coincidence that this music video came out during pride month. No coincidence she played the song at Stonewall (gag) before the video even dropped. It’s no coincidence that the music video has appearances from some of the hottest gay icons of the day.

And that’s all they are: appearances.

It’s like a game of celebrity (maybe? I don’t know how that game works) where she’s just trying to name drop and boost her own credit enough to get people to buy the song. Is it good? I literally don’t remember. The music video was so distracting. And it was supposed to be.

It’s marketing.

Let’s look at Madonna: “Vogue”.

There’s no doubt that Madonna is responsible for the popularization of voguing as a dance and concept.

HOWEVER!

It’s important to note that she did not create it. That credit lies with the drag queens of New York in the 1980s and, specifically, Willi Ninja: the godfather of voguing.

The song was named after the dance. The dance did not follow the song.

This was something drag queens were already doing - their version of dance battling - and Madonna saw it, thought it was dope, and used it as inspiration.

But HERE’S THE THING.

She didn’t steal it. In her music video, the featured dancers are some of the very people who created voguing, including Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza and Luis Xtravaganza who were the two dancers Madonna had first seen perform the dance.

They’re not in drag (everyone’s in a suit, it just didn’t fit the aesthetic of the video) but the spotlight moments of voguing are performed by the LGBT men of color who invented it.

They are a part of the conversation. They are popularized with the dance.

Willi Ninja went on to dance in several music videos after this. It launched his career.

Madonna did not use these dancers to further her own status but to give credit to the artists responsible and to grant them the status they deserved.

DO YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE?!

Taylor Swift is doing nothing new or exciting with her video. She’s not breaking barriers like Lady Gaga did with “Born This Way”. She’s not pissing anyone off. She’s jumping on a pro-gay bandwagon and making money off of it.

It’s gross. We need to do better.