Hair Metal Rockers and the Subversiveness of Gender Essentialism As Escape

It is hard to decide if Bret Michaels, frontman for 80’s hair band Poison and current star of Vh-1’s Rock of Love, is more of an abomination of feminism or good taste. Michaels has based a twenty year plus career on songs and music videos that offer a beguiling mixture of cliche and misogyny in equal measures. It seems fitting that he would star in a reality series like Rock of Love. The premise of this television show seems unlikely as Poison’s long-standing popularity. A group of “hot and sexy ladies” (Michael’s words) compete to win the title of Brett Michael’s Rock of Love. These ladies must endure trials that run the gamut from lingerie modeling competitions to boot camp exercises performed in the mud. Through it all, they declare their sincere devotion to Michaels with frequent and tearful confessions to the camera. This requires more than a little suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer. Hell, I realize I more readily appreciate a man like Jon Stewart than, say, Fabio. But I do know many women o f varying tastes and opinions. Of these women, not a single one finds Michaels to be any more sexually attractive than the flatulence that proceeds a bad case of diarrhea.

It would be disingenuous to proclaim that the women competing for Michaels are any less embarrassing than the man himself just as it would be hypocritical for me to avoid admitting that I watch the show with great regularity and enthusiasm. I could allow myself the dodge of admitting to only liking it ironically but that would be cowardly bullshit. I adore Rock of Love. I root for the strippers–because this is the most popular profession for Rock of Love contestant. A distant second is hair stylist. An even further outlying third is working musician–to rip out each other’s hair extensions. As an exercise/nutrition junkie I marvel at the girl’s amazing ability to drink constantly (because drinking booze and french-kissing Michaels with a comically vigorous tongue-thrusting that could double as a bulimia inducing technique are the primary agenda items for the girls in the Rock of Love mansion ) and still remain eating disorder thin. Indeed, the only thing jiggly on these women are their surgically implanted breasts, orange-tanned baseballs stretched so tightly through their skin that they risk ripping right through the flesh like the creature from Alien. Make-up is always freshly applied even in the ubiquitous hot tub scenes. The women of the house ostensibly represent a range of “types” (which means Rocker Chick and Exotic Dancer) but that is the only real means of differentiation. Lots of little girl voices and intentional inarticulation for the sake of sounding cute. Perhaps my devotion to a show that requires only slightly more brain power than simultaneously chewing gum and shooting meth (which seems the recreation of choice for some of the contestants) could be simple as a the slogan found on a teeshirt that you can order off of The Onion’s website: Stereotyping saves valuable time.

The gender essentialism that Rock of Love offers is also the promise of an easy world where girls equal vixens and dudes are mindless horndogs. It’s a safe place, free of nuance or mentally taxing circumstances or intellectual calisthenics. The only thing that comes close to masquerading as deep thought happens when Michaels must choose which contestant to eliminate. For these camera shots, he performs a dubious version of pensive while sitting on the beach, looking out onto the ocean. The rest is brain candy. To “get” Rock of Love all one has to remember is that all women are opportunistic bitches and all men are predatory assholes. To go any deeper is tacit admission that you can’t (as Bret would put it) “hang with the rock and roll lifestyle.” And to me, someone who used grad school English classes to specialize in feminist theory, it does seem pretty damned rock and roll.

Maybe I like this show because it takes a sledge hammer to the tired party-line that all gender differences are societally-based. Such a flagrant nose-thumbing is weirdly fascinating but this appeal is like the pleasure of a Big Mac after a diet of bean sprouts. It is short-lived. Given a choice between the two, I’ll take the sprouts because they are less likely to make me ill. Given a range of options, I’ll take a cheddar head sandwich from Tomato Head. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think there are any hidden truths to be found in Rock of Love. On the contrary, it is like professional wrestling and soap operas: brain-numbing salve useful only in that it makes the nuance of reality seem less daunting. Come to think of it, the writers of this “reality” show would appreciate the fact that I broke this comparison down into such gender-specific terms. One does not have to think so hard about it.