A Serious Matter

As regular readers of this site I trust you appreciate the multi-national, multi-cultural, informational and educational but still light-hearted tone of the blogs we submit for your perusal here on a (fairly) regular basis. We know that there's plenty going on in your lives and seek only to serve to provide an occasional distraction for a few moments of enjoyment before you go back to whatever it is that you were doing.

However, there are times when we are duty bound to share something of a more serious nature on this platform and hope that we don't offend or disappoint you. Today, I'm afraid is one of those times. The pressure has become too great and we have to get this off our chests now in order to move forward and return to business as usual. So, without further ado...

We are disappointed with Katy Perry.

More specifically, at a time when she's getting nominated for best female artist, best album and best song here in the US and also in the UK, we are disappointed in her failure to utilize the potential of the Peacock metaphor in the song of the same name on her recent Teenage Dream album.

Our expectations were initially very high - was she singing about how she expected her beau to show her just why he deserved her, why she should pay him attention, how he shouldn't be shy about himself but to show his true colors - just as a male Peacock does to attract a female - in order to win her heart? If so, that would have been an impressive use of metaphor to deliver a message about something that is so often misunderstood by our younger selves who haven't quite grasped the nuance of what it means to fall in love and court a future life-partner - that you need to open yourself to that person, expose yourself (again, metaphorically) and lay yourself bare to them in order that they will reciprocate, that the biggest successes and emotional growth in life come as a result of taking such risks. And at the same time, she could have incorporated in her use of said metaphor the notion that girls expect boys to be a little confident, a little cocky, a little 'here - this is what you'll be missing out on if you don't agree to go to the dance with me' in their manner, all while being respectful and understanding that sometimes girls are on a completely different planet.

But no. Instead she took the easier path, choosing to use the second syllable in the title literally, singing ultimately about how much she wants to see her potential partner's undercarriage, so to speak.

So yes, we are disappointed in you Katy Perry for failing to reach for a more lofty goal in the lyrical message for this song.

We still think she's pretty hot, though. And by 'we', we mean 'I'.