ava max, choice feminism, and cbt

Ava Max’s song Choose Your Fighter popped up on my Spotify today, and I thought it was almost a perfect example of choice feminism and neoliberal subjectivity. The song has over 110 million streams on Spotify, and was a part of the Barbie Movie’s soundtrack (although it does not appear in the movie).

(Inb4 “this song is clearly satire” or “there’s self-awareness of the artist of the ridiculousness of the lyrics”– I’ve listened to a lot of Ava Max’s discography, and if it’s satire, it doesn’t meet any definitions of satire I know of.

Let’s dive into the lyrics.

“You can be a lover or a fighter, whatever you desire”

In Max’s song, a woman can be whatever they desire, e.g. a lover or a fighter. Desire here is a key function of neoliberal subjectivity, and Max’s positionality as a cishet white (rich) woman is also key. Feminism for Max is not systemic, it’s individual. In neoliberalism, one simply has to do cognitive work to make your dreams come true, and this is true both in terms of financial security, but also affectively. In terms of broader feminist movements, women simply have to work hard enough for a “seat at the table” and everything will change (see e.g. Crow Jane Makes a Modest Proposal). This is clear from the next line:

“Life is like a runway and you’re the designer”

This line does a lot of the key work ideologically. If things are going fine in a subject’s life, they feel on top of the world. But what happens when things are not going well? If things are going fine for the subject, how do they view the Other who is inevitably struggling? What is the affective response? Disgust? Hatred? A subconscious desire to control?

This line is basically repurposed rugged individualism in a catchy pop song.

“Wings of a butterfly, eyes of a tiger

Whatever you want, baby, choose your fighter”

Choose your fighter. It’s like a video game. How fun!

Except what you want is already confined within a system that promises so much and gives so little. What you want is already predetermined and even if one could think “for oneself”, one would likely be disappointed with the outcome of said desire within the system (see e.g. The Burnout Society). And you will work for it (imagined “fulfillment” or “empowerment” or “satisfaction” or any other mental health term co-opted by neoliberalism) . Later on in the song, Max says:

“A pretty knight in shining diamonds

A beauty queen in camouflage

It’s giving thunder and lightning

When you give it all you got”

“Giving it all you got” again conditions one to believe if that one gave just a little more effort, a tad more energy, one more late night at the social services agency, that one would feel xyz feeling mentioned above. And if you burnout, that’s a personal failure, of course.

The “give it all you got” line is completely contradicted by the lines a few verses earlier:

“I know this world can be a little

Confusing, no walk in the park

But I can help you solve the riddle

You’re perfect as you are”

Because the truth is that if you were “perfect as you are” that you wouldn’t have to “give it all you got.” This is a key contradiction in neoliberalism– you are simultaneously “okay as you are,” you can show up “as you are,” but underneath that underlies the assumption that you simultaneously need to “give it all you got” or else it is some sort of personal failing on your part.

I think disability justice is an interesting model to look at because capitalism claims to breed innovation, but simultaneously causes disability (Fisher notes that mental health is one of the main contradictions of neoliberal capitalism: we are all getting sicker and sicker, both physically and mentally).

“If you wanna break out of the box, wanna call all of the shots

If you wanna be sweet or be soft, then, go off

If you wanna go six inch or flat, wanna wear hot pink or black

Don’t let nobody tell you you can’t, ‘cause you can”

Note the usage of AAVE here.

A quick Google search and browse on Max’s Wikipedia seems to indicate that she is actually serious about this form of neoliberal choice feminism. It’s the equivalent of saying that capitalism breeds innovation when you have 100 different toothpaste options to choose from in the drug store.

“For Ava, her asymmetrical hairstyle is a visual representation of her self expression. ‘When I cut my hair like this, once again a lot of people gave me hate on the internet… but it’s no one’s business. You do you, wear what you want to wear, look how you want to look… I think it’s important to express yourself the way you want to,’ declares Max. She continues to explain that her hair is symbolic of having the freedom to do your own thing. Others should not be constricted by conformity.”

I don’t mean to add to the internet hate–and this really isn’t directed at Max–it’s more me screaming into a void at the culture industry (Kulturindustrie) that Adorno talked about in “Dialectic of Enlightenment,” leading not to passivity but to further reinforcement of the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality in the general population.

You can find this kind of mentality pretty much everywhere in pop culture, for example, in Taylor Swift (see e.g. Taylor Swift and the unbearable whiteness of girlhood by Code Switch), Tate McRae (e.g. greedy, sports car, it’s ok, i’m ok, exes), and Katy Perry (I’m genuinely still not over her space mission), not only where critique of capitalism gets commodified and watered down, but where we’re reaching a point in capitalism where there’s genuinely no critique to be found in the first place.

Where CBT fits in

CBT, the dominant model in mental health, is summed up with the mantra “life is like a runaway, and you’re the designer.” The main idea is that if a subject just got rid of their “maladaptive thoughts” (FYI CBT practitioners: they’re never maladaptive), that they could simply create a life of their own choosing.

There is hardly any awareness of the systemic factors leading to mental health crises, and little recourse for subjects outside of “reframing” their thoughts in a “flexible” way. Sidenote– this flexibility rhetoric is typical of the economic insecurity that decades of neoliberalism has brought about, and people are tired of hearing it. Add in some somatic therapy (“where do you feel that in your body?” reply: FUCKING EVERYWHERE) and you have a service-user who is sure to internalize their own failings, once again reinforcing the ideas that somehow it’s their own fault?

Then, when subjects turn to AI models for therapy, and these models do a better, cheaper job of empathizing than therapists (also without involving the police), therapists have the gall to shit on the AI models instead of doing some introspection.

This is just a dumb prediction, but therapists are going to realize far too late that they need to change their modalities and adapt to adjusting trends if they are going to survive. Ironic, in a way, that they aren’t prepared to do the cognitive restructuring they preach to their clients.

Well, just remember, unemployed (future) CBT therapists,

“I know this world can be a little

Confusing, no walk in the park

But I can help you solve the riddle

You’re perfect as you are”

That should help. Take care.