Gwen Stefani Addresses If She’s A Republican, Isn’t Really A Feminist, And She Won’t Apologize For The Harajuku Girls
Gwen Stefani is on the cover of the latest Paper Magazine and in the interview she talks about working on her upcoming album, fashion, songwriting, touring, and how her becoming a famous pop star doesn’t make any sense. Gwen says her success must be “written in the stars” cuz she’s not the most talented, the prettiest, or the smartest. Hey now! You’re very pretty, Gwen!
51-year-old Gwen also gets into more serious shit… kind of. Gwen is the new dodgeball champion because she dodged a couple of serious questions. She refuses to clarify if she’s a Republican, explaining that voting is personal. But she adds, “I think it’s pretty obvious who I am.” She also says that she’s never publicly identified as a feminist, she just wants to be a good person. Finally, Gwen addresses criticism that her silent Harajuku girls are culturally appropriative. She claims that sharing culture is good; it helps us to learn and grow.
Gwen says she’s had a “deep fascination” with Japan since she was a kid. Her father had a job that required him to travel to Japan, and he’d bring her back Sanrio toys and stories about Tokyo’s Harajuku district. She says she and No Doubt played there in 1996, and she was very inspired:
“It’s a world away. And at that time it was even further, because you couldn’t see it on the internet. I don’t think a younger generation can even imagine what it’s like to not have access to the world.”
After that, going back to Japan became a big motivation for her career. Until she could return, she thought she’d bring Japanese culture to LA:
“I never got to have dancers with No Doubt. I never got to change costumes. I never got to do all of those fun girl things that I always love to do. So I had this idea that I would have a posse of girls — because I never got to hang with girls — and they would be Japanese, Harajuku girls, because those are the girls that I love. Those are my homies. That’s where I would be if I had my dream come true, I could go live there and I could go hang out in Harajuku.”
And she disagrees with Margaret Cho comparing her four mute dancers to a minstrel show:
“If we didn’t buy and sell and trade our cultures in, we wouldn’t have so much beauty, you know?” she says. “We learn from each other, we share from each other, we grow from each other. And all these rules are just dividing us more and more.”
She adds:
“I think that we grew up in a time where we didn’t have so many rules. We didn’t have to follow a narrative that was being edited for us through social media, we just had so much more freedom.”
The interviewer notes that Gwen wore a lot of bindis and saris onstage in the nineties, inspiring a white girl facial jewelry trend that “would not fly in 2021.” Apparently, Gwen thought of that as a symbol of “cultural exchange” between her and her No Doubt bandmate/ex Indian-American Tony Kanal.
There’s been speculation about Gwen being a Republican since she’s with Blake Shelton and many have thought that he’s a Trump supporter. And even Debra Messing (Oh, Debra) called on Gwen to get Blake to put down his alleged MAGA hat (Debra later apologized). When Gwen was asked if she’s a Republican, she didn’t confirm or deny:
“I can see how people would be curious, but I think it’s pretty obvious who I am,” she says. “I’ve been around forever. I started my band because we were really influenced by ska, which was a movement that happened in the late ’70s, and it was really all about people coming together. The first song I ever wrote was a song called Different People, which was on the Obama playlist, you know, a song about everyone being different and being the same and loving each other. The very first song I wrote.”
She also says her hit Just A Girl is less about feminism and more about growing up and “all of a sudden you realize your gender”:
“I don’t even know if I knew what feminist at that time was,” she says. “I was very sheltered growing up with my family. I wasn’t political. I wasn’t angry.” Even now: “I don’t need to go on Instagram and say ‘girl power.’ I just need to live and be a good person and leave a trail of greatness behind me. Stop talking about it and stop trying to bully everybody about it. Just do it. And that’s how I feel like I’ve lived my life.”
Well, there’s NO DOUBT that these quotes will piss off a lot of people, especially those who view Gwen’s “cultural exchange” as more “super-rich out-of-touch white lady stealing from other cultures.” Either way, it doesn’t sound like Gwen gives two shits. She’s far too busy planning her and Blake Shelton’s wedding of the century (probably next century at the rate they’re going).
Here are the pictures from the Paper shoot:
Pic: Paper