{"id":50282,"date":"2025-08-07T12:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/50282\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T12:22:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:22:09","slug":"dua-lipa-is-so-sexualised-its-not-empowering-its-embarrassing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/50282\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Dua Lipa is so sexualised. It\u2019s not empowering \u2013 it\u2019s embarrassing\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnger? Oh god\u2026\u201d laughs Belinda Carlisle<\/a>. \u201cI have done A LOT of work on my anger. But I was born rebellious, and anger can still be my base of operations. It takes a serious, daily effort for me to keep a lid on it \u2013 for me to be normal.\u201d <\/p>\n

This might come as a surprise to casual fans who only know the Californian singer from mid-80s solo hits such as \u201cHeaven Is a Place on Earth\u201d (1987) or \u201cSummer Rain\u201d (1989). But before she morphed into a sleekly blow-dried pop star, Carlisle was the spikey-haired lead singer of pioneering new wave band The Go-Go\u2019s. The LA quintet\u2019s 1981 debut album \u2013 Beauty and the Beat \u2013 became the first album entirely written and performed by an all-female group to top the US Billboard chart. Astonishingly, when they bounced back onto the stage at Coachella earlier this year, they were still the only all-female group to have achieved this feat.<\/p>\n

Over the phone from her home in Mexico City, Carlisle says that her \u201canger and contrarian nature\u201d was one of the forces driving her to succeed in a sexist industry. It remains a motivator today, as she refuses to fade out gracefully, instead releasing a new solo covers album, Once Upon a Time in California, opening with a confidently confrontational version of Bacharach and David\u2019s 1963 song \u201cAnyone Who Had a Heart\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cDionne Warwick\u2019s 1963 recording of that was a female empowerment way ahead of its time,\u201d she says. \u201cYou could feel she wasn\u2019t afraid to challenge the way she\u2019d been treated. So that came naturally to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AmericanThe Go-Go\u2019s, 1980. Left to right: lead guitarist Charlotte Caffey, singer Belinda Carlisle, bassist Margot Olavarria, rhythm guitarist Jane Wiedlin and drummer Gina Schock (Photo: Kerstin Rodgers\/Redferns\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

But Carlisle\u2019s inner rage didn\u2019t help with the \u201cmess\u201d of drink and drug-fuelled rivalries that caused the Go-Go\u2019s implosion in 1985. Carlisle\u2019s publicist has warned me she doesn\u2019t want to talk about drugs any more. She\u2019s been sober for almost two decades and tells me she maintains her new lifestyle by \u201cgetting up at 4am for a two-hour routine of chanting and meditation before getting out the front door for my morning walk at 6am\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the roots of the damage are all laid bare in Alison Ellwood\u2019s excellent 2020 documentary, The Go-Go\u2019s, which charts the band\u2019s rise and fall in all its chaotic truth. The film explores how the fiery young women blended a punk attitude with sunny Californian melodies (written mostly by guitarist Charlotte Caffey) but lost their way as drugs and money poured in. <\/p>\n

By the end, heroin-addicted Caffey was so out of control that even Ozzy Osbourne<\/a> threw her out of his dressing room. For her part, Carlisle was lectured on drug use by American comedian John Belushi, who later died of a drug overdose aged 33, and was pulled aside at a Grammy award ceremony and told to wipe her nose by the Bee Gees\u2019 Maurice Gibb. In 2023, Carlisle told an interviewer: \u201cWhen I was introduced to coke, I thought: \u2018Oh my God, when I get money, I\u2019m going to buy lots of this.\u2019 And I did\u2026 Everybody was just off their trolley.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Carlisle\u2019s case, media scrutiny of her weight caused her to use drugs to stay slim. She\u2019s covered The Carpenters\u2019 1971 song \u201cSuperstar\u201d on the new album, and today notes \u201cthe similarities between the way Karen Carpenter and I were treated by the press, coming up\u201d. Carpenter died of complications from her anorexia in 1983, as The Go-Go\u2019s were touring. Carlisle \u2013 who looks so wholesome and carefree in those early photoshoots \u2013 recalls: \u201cI was always described as \u2018pretty and plump\u2019, \u2018cute and chubby\u2019. The papers were all: \u2018Oh look, she\u2019s lost weight! Oh no, she\u2019s gained weight!\u2019 It really fucks up your brain as a young girl.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BelindaThe media relentlessly scrutinised Belinda Carlisle\u2019s weight in the early 80s, which led her to use drugs to stay slim (Photo: Paul Natkin\/WireImage) <\/p>\n

\u201cI developed what turned into an eating disorder,\u201d she continues. \u201cIt was a form of bulimia that still sometimes comes back. I think the press are more mindful now, but they weren\u2019t then. And those judgments can destroy women. They do. They destroy us.\u201d <\/p>\n

She\u2019s equally irked that \u201cnow the weight comments have stopped, it\u2019s all about my age. I\u2019m always \u2018Belinda Carlisle, 66\u2019. They never do that to the men, do you notice?\u201d I point out that I actually do include male musicians\u2019 ages in articles, and that perhaps when journalists flag the ages of women still rocking out we\u2019re giving them props for their longevity rather than knocking them for it. But I can see how it might feel from the perspective of a woman who reminds me that she was dropped from her previous record label \u201cthe day after my 40th birthday\u201d.<\/p>\n

The eldest of five children raised by a mother on lithium (who was only 17 when Carlisle was born) and a stepfather who drank his paycheck, Carlisle grew up in Thousand Oaks, California. In her frank 2010 memoir Lips Unsealed, she describes being mocked by classmates for only having one outfit and subsisting on a diet of \u201coatmeal and Bac-Os bacon bit sandwiches\u201d. The good girl\/bad girl contradiction in her character saw her cheerleading at school and shoplifting on the way home. <\/p>\n

Today, she tells me that as a young girl she became \u201cobsessed with California radio\u201d and the hazy, summery jangle of artists like Jim Croce and Harry Nilsson covered on this record. Her mum preferred showtunes. So young Belinda would \u201cgo to my best friend\u2019s house after school and lie on the floor in front of the speakers, singing along, starting to fancy myself a singer\u201d. It was then that she developed the distinctive vibrato that an ex friend once said made her sound \u201clike a goat\u201d, but she merrily defends as \u201chaving character\u201d. <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until 1976 that she \u201creally got into punk through the British music rags I bought in record stores twice a month\u201d. By that time she was living in Hollywood, and her stepfather would be \u201cso embarrassed, picking me up \u2013 all green hair and safety pins \u2013 from the bus stop in his station wagon when I came home to visit\u201d. She says: \u201cNobody in America really knew what punk was at that time. When I think about it, we must have been really frightening to people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PortraitThe Go-Go\u2019s in 1981. From left, Kathy Valentine, Charlotte Caffey, Jane Wiedlin, Belinda Carlisle, and Gina Schock (Photo: Paul Natkin\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The fearsome punk image definitely had its upsides. Carlisle says that although she\u2019s aware many women in the music industry in the 80s suffered sexist abuse and assaults, \u201cno man ever messed with a Go-Go. We were like a five headed monster\u201d. She says she only faced overt misogyny on one occasion, after launching her solo career: \u201cA big manager told me: \u2018You should show your tits and sing some songs like, \u201cStick it in me.\u201d And I said simply: \u2018No. I don\u2019t do that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s frustrated by how little has changed. \u201cThese days young women in the music industry are just so sexualised. Like, what happened? I don\u2019t get it.\u201d Maybe it\u2019s more of a choice for some artists these days? They see it as empowering? \u201cIt\u2019s not empowering. It\u2019s embarrassing,\u201d Carlisle argues. \u201cYes, you will get attention, but not the right kind, and down the line you are going to look back and say: \u2018Wish I hadn\u2019t done that.\u2019 I mean: Dua Lipa<\/a>? It\u2019s shocking! She\u2019s so talented. She doesn\u2019t need to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wonder if this means Carlisle regrets stripping for Playboy at 40: an act for which you could make an equal pro and anti-feminist case. She says she doesn\u2019t do regrets, then pauses. There\u2019s one boyfriend she regrets (although she has since been happily married to husband Morgan Mason for 39 years). And she regrets \u201cnot being more present as a mother\u201d to her writer-activist son James, born in 1992.<\/p>\n

\"BelindaCarlisle\u2019s new solo covers album, Once Upon a Time in California, opens with Bacharach & David\u2019s 1963 song \u201cAnyone Who Had a Heart\u201d (Photo: Albert Sanchez)<\/p>\n

In her memoir she\u2019s admirably direct about struggling with substance abuse when James was young. \u201cI was a kind of a mess \u2013 I was struggling in my forties,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I\u2019m really glad that everything I went through happened, because the difficult times give you character.\u201d <\/p>\n

She says sobriety rebooted her in her fifties. \u201cSome switch inside of me flipped and as I reached an age when women are told to start slowing down, I started speeding up. I did things I had never done before. I began travelling to weird places, climbing mountains at 3am.\u201d In 2009, she attended a \u201crebirthing\u201d session in the Indian river Ganges and later wrote of feeling an \u201cuncontrollable, off-the-chart rage surge through me\u201d, which she believes was a release of her mother\u2019s suppressed emotion. <\/p>\n

Having lived in France and Thailand, Carlisle thinks she\u2019s now settled in Mexico for good. The undeveloped countryside recalls the California of her youth and she waxes lyrical about the greenery and wildlife. \u201cA huge cricket has moved into my closet,\u201d she says, \u201cand although I don\u2019t like bugs I\u2019ve decided to let him stay and sing.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the rainy season there now, and Carlisle \u201cloves the afternoon storms and the relief after they pass. There\u2019s something very healing about the smell of the damp earth, the sound of the water dripping from the leaves\u201d. I suggest the rage and release of the weather clearly mirrors Carlisle\u2019s stormy soul, and she laughs. \u201cOh yeah,\u201d she agrees. \u201cI\u2019ll always have a punk rock heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

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