Tori Vilches, “Young Miko’s Fashion and the Politics of Queer Identity in Latin Trap”
This paper explores the intersection of fashion, identity, and sexuality in the music of Lesbian
Latin Trap/Urbano artist, Young Miko. Fashion has long been an essential medium for self-
expression, but in genres like reggaeton and trap, the portrayal of women often emphasizes
colonial beauty standards. Building on the work of Clarke and Turner (2007) and Schofield and
Schmidt (2005) on queer identity and fashion, as well as Penney’s (2012) study of baggy
clothing in queer hip-hop culture, this research extends the discussion to Latin Trap. Meave
Avila (2021) argues that in Reggaeton music videos, women’s bodies not only enhance financial
gain but also symbolize men’s social power and status. This concept is complicated by Miko’s
positioning within the genre, as she subverts these norms, embodying traditional masculinity
through baggy tracksuits, chains, and placement in front of cars while simultaneously embracing
femininity through makeup, hair, and nails.
Young Miko’s presence in the genre makes space for queer women and their sexual experiences,
taking the traditional place that straight men have for so long. However, she could also be
embodying elements of heterosexual masculinity as a way to “fit” into male-dominated
structures – a concept highlighted by Davies (2021). In this context, we might also consider the
notion that instead of transcending the machismo stereotypes of reggaetón/Urbano/Latin trap,
Young Miko could inadvertently reinforce these values.
Through a decolonial analysis of music videos such as “Lisa,” “Classy 101,” “ID,” “8am,” and
“Castigada,” I explore the ways Young Miko explicitly navigates sexuality and identity
expression through fashion, lyrics, and vocal timbre. Ultimately, Young Miko’s fashion choices
and performance style serve as a dual-edged commentary: advancing representation for queer
sexual experiences while negotiating the gendered power dynamics of “fitting” into a genre that
traditionally uses women’s bodies as visual signifiers of social capital.
Jessica King, “I’m About to Pop Your Music Bubble: Scene Queen’s Hyper-Feminine Bimbocore
Metal Theatrics and Aesthetics v. Metal’s Misogyny”
Scene Queen lauds herself as the literal antithesis to what the misogynistic metal
scene wants to see or hear. From its origins, metal has included women primarily as objects
of heterosexual male desire and fantasy, whether referred to in objectifying lyrics, paraded as
music video props, and/or abused as groupies. The pioneering women in metal were often
reduced to sultry sirens, Xena warrior princesses, or Valkyrie vixens. Those that garnered the
most tolerance, like Warlock’s front-woman Doro Pesch, earned acceptance by adopting more
masculine dress and mannerisms during the 1980s. Then and now, for even the remotest
chance at being taken seriously, women in metal are held to higher standards of genre
knowledge and musical proficiency while needing to rely on what Deena Weinstein terms
“being metal” through masculine-coded physical markers and/or identity acts. Female metal
musicians are expected to strictly adhere to the principal sonic element of the music itself,
sheer power (i.e., volume), accompanied by extreme distortion, electric guitar and bass, riffs,
bombastic percussion, fast tempi, liminal breakdowns, and extended scream vocal techniques.
Scene Queen, however, performs an amplified parody of white, dumb blonde, hyper-feminine
2000s inspired bimbocore that unapologetically exposes and confronts the misogynistic, often
predatory, metal genre and subculture. While the hyper feminine and the Scene Queen
character herself seem at odds with metal, I argue that Scene Queen is in fact a significant
and valid inheritor of metal’s theatrical traditions, aesthetics, fashions, and antics, aligning
her with iconic bands such as KISS, Twisted Sister, GWAR, Slipknot, Ghost, and more.
Unapologetically performing the most amplified version of herself and calling out the scene’s
bad behavior are undoubtedly making the metal scene a safer, more inclusive space. Scene
Queen is more than just her music. Scene Queen is a movement.
Claire Lobenfeld, “Mother Monstro: A Semiotic Reading of Lady Gaga's Meat Dress”
Lady Gaga refuses to deny that her body—and all bodies—are fragile and fluctuating. Using the
meat dress she wore at the 2010 VMAs, I will examine Gaga’s project as a counter-narrative to
the perception of pop stars as flawless and fully able. By wearing a garment made of dead bodies
that actively decomposed on her own, she signaled to her deteriorating flesh and the universal
inevitability of death. The presentation will further investigate Gaga’s grotesque aesthetics—blood, vomit,
the hybridizing of her human body with non-human forms—as a source of beauty and pleasure, providing
catharsis for her own body in crisis. These examinations will be made through the lenses of literary criticism
(Mikhail Bahktin’s carnivalesque and lower-body stratum; Julia Kristeva’s theories of abjection) and Tobin
Siebers’s theories of aesthetics represented by embodied-difference in art and visual culture.
