Remembering Sinéad O’Connor: It Is Literally Impossible To Be A Woman
The death of an iconoclast and the Barbie movie underscore gendered impossibilities.
Trigger warning: there are mentions of suicide in this article.
One of the greatest voices of our time — scratch that, any time — is gone at the age of 56. Sinéad O’Connor’s first two albums, The Lion and The Cobra and I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, utterly defined my teenage years and early adulthood. Here was a woman whose image was completely un-Taylor Dayne, un-Paula Abdul — she didn’t have dance moves, Spandex, or hair sprayed into some permed concoction; she was just unapologetically herself. Many times during her career, she referred to herself as “a protest singer,” even though her oeuvre spanned standards, love songs, reggae, you name it. But as a protest singer, she was exceptionally potent. On the American television show Saturday Night Live in 1992, she infamously tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II, head of the Catholic Church, which then was only subject to murmurs about child abuse and pedophilia in its highest ranks. Her choice of song? Bob Marley’s incendiary “War.”
Have you ever heard the term “canceled”? She was canceled harder than anyone could imagine. Arguably, she was the original canceled pop star, although she’d bristle at the term “pop star.” She didn’t sexually harass anyone, beat up a romantic partner, or attempt to murder a lover (male pop stars have done these things, and got away with them scot-free). All she did was tear up a photo. Shortly after that, she was jeered and booed offstage at a Bob Dylan tribute concert, and the commercial viability of her music nosedived, except to fans — including me — who couldn’t get enough of her vocals.
There are parallels between Sinéad O’Connor’s plight — marked by the above incidents, mental illness, and the suicide of her teenage son — and the Greta Gerwig movie Barbie, which stars Margot Robbie in its titular role. Minor spoilers for the movie Barbie are contained in the remainder of this article. At first glance, no two figures could seem more disparate. Robbie’s Barbie is perfect. Seriously. She doesn’t have a single physical flaw, is kind, doesn’t think about things such as death, depression, or suicide, and has no concept that things such as aging and illness are considered ugly and horrifying in the real world.
O’Connor probably would hate being put into the same context as Barbie, the movie and the doll. O’Connor shaved her head at the beginning of her career as a “fuck you” to music executives who wanted her to sway in music videos miniskirted like a Robert Palmer girl. She preferred leather jackets and jeans over pink frocks and high heels. In addition, her music — the lifeblood of her work — was uncompromising. From the first tones of “Jackie” on The Lion and The Cobra, you knew this wasn’t Taylor Dayne, Paula Abdul, or whoever was lip-syncing in C&C Music Factory. And as a teenage girl who knew she’d never exemplify the perfection of the dancing ladies on MTV, I and scores of other young women were eternally grateful. Finally, a woman artist was being her authentic self, and God, did she have all of the world’s talent.
However, both Robbie’s Barbie and O’Connor quickly discovered that there really was no right way to be a woman. Robbie’s “Stereotypical Barbie” is under the gun to stay physically flawless (in fact, one of the movie’s most hilarious — yet saddest — tropes involves cellulite) and encounters the stark awfulness of the real world in an effort to preserve her gendered perfection. (Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, doesn’t fare much better in the real world either and is also victimized by its messages of toxic masculinity, but that’s another story.) In her quest to figure out what is causing her shifts in mood and physicality, Stereotypical Barbie experiences emotions for the first time — and feels the pain of the real world, which is anything but perfect. In some ways, Barbie is almost a body horror movie, as the fictional character’s changes reflect the transitions that actual women go through and cannot control — such as cellulite, mood shifts, and perimenopause/menopause. And Barbie cannot predict, prevent, or manage these changes much better than a real, fleshy woman can.
O’Connor, while clearly not cleaving to gendered norms of appearance and body fascism, encountered her own horrors navigating the real world. She was routinely mocked in the media during the late 1980s and early 1990s for her distinctive appearance, even though — and again, she would hate this — she was a role model for girls not interested in being Barbie or Taylor Dayne. She was one of the world’s greatest vocalists, with a style and tone unmatched, but this wasn’t enough for both the industry she worked in and the public, which largely lost interest in her after Saturday Night Live. She did make many other fine albums and fulfilled what many view as women’s sole biological imperative — she had several children. This also brought her heartbreak. Last year, one of her children, her son Shane, died by suicide after longtime mental illness struggles. So here we have a stunningly accomplished woman — who did so much during her lifetime — who faced criticism at every turn and fulfilled the “goal” of having children…but at a considerable cost.
O’Connor’s love life — she had several publicized relationships and four short-lived marriages — also received scrutiny. It added to the trope that she was “crazy,” “troubled,” and “difficult.” But let’s suppose she had no relationships and zero children — then, she would’ve been decried as the ultimate megabitch: frigid, sexless, and possibly diseased or deformed. Let’s also suppose she had embodied more traditionally female-gendered “pop stardom” with heavy makeup, gowns, sky-high hair, and a heavy dose of dieting — then it would’ve been, how dare this lightweight bitch speak up about anything? Again, she never would have been able to do anything “right” in the tabloid glare.
There’s a monologue in Barbie currently going viral by actress America Ferrera, which starts, “It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.” Sinéad was the whole package: she was beautiful, smart, savvy, and was truly extraordinary, with unmatched talent. But yet, she was always doing it wrong — and was always going to do it wrong. Ferrera’s monologue recalls one from another movie, the 1950 classic All About Eve, where Bette Davis — playing an uncompromising, fiery stage actress — gives a postmortem on her career and her very life:
Funny business, a woman’s career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder — so you can move faster — you forget you’ll need them when you go back to being a woman. That’s one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not. Being a woman. Sooner or later, we’ve got to work at it, no matter what other careers we’ve had or wanted. And in the last analysis, nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner — or turn around in bed — and there he is. Without that, you’re not a woman. You’re someone with a French provincial office — or a book full of clippings. But you’re not a woman. Slow curtain. The end.
O’Connor had lovers, husbands, children, and her music; she had a whole life. But in the end, many saw her as “not a woman” but a scrapbook of old press clippings of a better time. As the years “stretched,” in Davis’ words, both O’Connor and Stereotypical Barbie fought to stay authentic in their own disparate ways — O’Connor with her voice and music, and Barbie by trying, but failing, to match up to her previous perfection.
Let’s hope that in death, Sinéad O’Connor finally gets respect for her own incredible version of perfection — even though it was far from being swaddled in pink gingham. But that’s why we adored her.
Read about O’Connor’s life — in her own words — in her memoir Rememberings, available on Amazon.
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