Lady Gaga's Swine: Song Analysis

ARTPOP Popular music artist Lady Gaga performed at the 2014 South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas. During her performance of "Swine" from her album Artpop, Lady Gaga had a performance artist vomit black liquid all over her face and chest.
Fellow musician Demi Lovato expressed disapproval towards the concert on social media. She claimed that Gaga was "glamorizing" bulimia.
BULIMIA
An estimated 4.7 million women and 1.5 million men suffer from bulimia nervosa. The disorder involves a cycle of binging on food and purging it through vomiting, excessive exercise, or laxatives. Children as young as six-years-old have been diagnosed with it.
CARPENTER, KAREN Famous for her work with the duo band The Carpenters, American musician
Karen Anne Carpenter was born on March 2, 1950. Her deep contralto vocals and skill on the drums made her band a household favorite during the 1970s. On February 4, 1983, Carpenter died due to complications arising from anorexia nervosa and bulimia. She was thirty-two at the time of her death and had suffered from eating disorders since her early twenties.

DEMI In 2010, Demi Lovato checked herself into the Timberline Knolls rehabilitation facility for bulimia, self-harm, and a cocaine addiction. She claims that her self-harm and eating disorders were a result of the bullying she received as a teenager.
EMETINE
Syrup of ipecac is a powerful medicine produced from the dried, brittle roots of Carapichea ipecacuanha. When consumed, the roots of an ipecac plant force the consumer to vomit. Carapichea ipecacuanha roots also create the drug emetine, which is interchangeable with syrup of ipecac. Emetine, when consumed over long periods of time, can cause the muscles of the heart to thin and weaken. Eventually, it disrupts the essential electrical impulses that keep the blood in the heart pumping.
FAT-PHOBIA
80 percent of American women are dissatisfied with the shape of their bodies. Research suggests that this self-loathing begins around the time of puberty because puberty causes an increase in weight around the hips, breasts, and midsection. Pubescent girls begin to feel self-conscious as they become more aware of the differences between their bodies and the bodies around them, especially those portrayed in the media. Many young girls report that they are afraid of getting fatter.
GLUTTON
I was always a big girl. In elementary school, swing-sets would creak under my weight and the plastic chair legs of cheap lawn chairs would snap when I sat down. Girls at recess would ask me if I was pregnant and boys would double-dog-dare their friends to ask me (the fat girl) out. I wouldn’t eat at school because I didn’t want to be laughed at, but I stuffed my face like a glutton when I got home.
INTERNAL
Depression and anxiety often coexist with eating disorders. Two-thirds of people suffering through eating disorders have had an anxiety disorder at some point. Additionally, 42 percent of these individuals developed their anxiety disorder during their childhood. Social anxiety disorder is the most common anxiety disorder in female bulimia patients.
JEFFRIES, MARK The former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, Mark Jeffries, told an interviewer in 2006 that he only wanted "cool people" to represent his brand. He said that Abercrombie was "exclusionary," and only catered to young, skinny people. Although Jeffries retired his position in 2014, Abercrombie still does not carry XL sizes in women’s clothing despite 67 percent of consumers being plus-sized.
LONELINESS
"Superstar," written by Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell, is a ballad popularized by The Carpenters.
The song was released on their 1971 album Carpenters and peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100.
Carpenter received massive praise for her work on the popular rendition. Critics claimed that her emotional vocals expertly captured the essence of loneliness and pining conveyed through the lyrics. Carpenter would later reveal that "Superstar" was one the hardest songs for her to sing because of her own intense struggle with
loneliness.

MIRROR MASK
The Carpenters covered the song "(They Long to Be) Close to You" on their 1970 album Close to You.
"(They Long to Be) Close to You" became number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and was The Carpenters’ breakthrough hit. The fantasy film MirrorMask (2005) featured a surreal rendition of the song, sung by robots.
NORMAL
Children are able to recognize their reflection in the mirror at fifteen-months-old. By the age of six, 50 percent of girls and 33 percent of boys have expressed the desire to be thinner. At seven-years-old, 25 percent of all children have tried dieting. Researchers claim that these children are strongly influenced by mainstream media, which tends to equate normalness with thinness, and thinness with beauty.
OZ
In 1967, two years after The Carpenters began recording, Karen Carpenter turned seventeen. Concerned about her 145-pound weight, she started the Stillman water diet, a diet that involves cutting out any foods containing fat or oil. When The Carpenters' fame peaked in 1975, she only weighed 91 pounds.
By thirteen, I was over 160 pounds.
Late one night, I crept into my mother's quiet bedroom and stole the ancient laptop from her school bag. The decrepit machine whirred and hissed angrily, lacked an "n" key, and only functioned when tethered to the charger, but it served us well
enough.
In the darkness of my own room, hidden underneath the covers of my bed, I googled "easy weight loss." Hundreds of websites popped up. Each of them promised a new celebrity secret, miracle diet, or snake oil that would make my ugly fat melt away.
Kate Moss survives on pro-biotic yogurt. WebMD warns "no carbs!" Dr. Oz raves about raspberry ketones. I devoured the information hungrily.
By morning, I had settled on the 5:2 diet, which involves fasting for two days of the week and eating unconstructed on the other three. I started the next day. I didn't tell my parents, who had divorced a year or two earlier. My mother was studying her way through paramedic school while my father busied himself with work, or with one of his many girlfriends. They had enough on their plates.
PEPTO-BISMOL
Pepto-Bismol is an over-the-counter antacid medication. Its main use is to calm discomfort caused by indigestion, heartburn, or nausea. Some doctors recommend taking Pepto-Bismol after vomiting to help protect teeth from stomach acid's low pH.
QUIET
When classrooms were especially quiet, I could hear my stomach rumble from hunger. My hands rattled and shook when I picked my books up, and my vision faded into little black dots upon standing. My body ached, but I felt empty, and empty felt good.
REPORT
Dr. Ronald Kornblum performed Karen Carpenter’s autopsy in Los Angeles during the February of 1983. He reported to the media that her death was the result of “emetine cardiotoxicity."
SUPERSTAR
Although Karen Carpenter’s vocal talent rocketed The Carpenters to super-stardom, she often felt overshadowed by her older brother Richard. Itchy Ramone, a close friend of Carpenter’s, claimed that Carpenter’s eating disorders stemmed from her desperate efforts to gain the attention of her mother. I didn’t see much of my own busy mother when I started high school. She worked the graveyard shift at Grady Memorial Hospital in downtown Atlanta. When I came home from school, she’d be going to bed and getting ready for work.
TWIGGY
Lesley "Twiggy" Lawson is a former British model and actress. When she began modeling in the mid-1960s, her androgynous, thin look brought something new to the fashion industry. Twiggy is considered one of the first "supermodels," and sparked the stick-thin trend in modeling.
UVULA
Karen Carpenter took her poison in the form of an ipecac and Dulcolax cocktail. My weapon of choice, however, was a pair of decorative chopsticks that I nabbed from a cheap Chinese restaurant outside the Mall of Georgia. I pocketed the pretty baubles when our waiter turned to take my step-mother's order.
The shafts of these durable plastic sticks were a creamy eggshell color that swirled into streams of blueberry-blue water and Fanta-orange koi fish.
When I angled myself over the restaurant’s stained toilet, I let the chopstick’s sharp, tapered point scrape the back of my throat like a rapier. The area behind my uvula would still be raw and red from acid and scratches for hours after my first purge. The chopsticks would become a staple in my purse, as ordinary and familiar to me as sticks of gum or pens.

VOMIT Vomit is acidic. It is about a two on the pH scale, which is the same acidity level as lemon juice.
And like lemon juice, it tasted bitter and sour in my mouth. It made my teeth feel fuzzy like I had bathed them in Coca-Cola, and seared sores into my tongue.
After throwing up, I would quickly douse my teeth with Pepto-Bismol, swirling the pink, minty liquid in my mouth until I gagged. I chewed on antacid pills like candy. I hated the taste, but I feared that my teeth would crumble from corrosion. Thankfully they never chipped away, but they did develop seven cavities.
WALES
Diana Windsor, better known as the Princess of Wales, did an interview with BBC's popular current affairs show Panorama in 1995. On air, she admitted to struggling with bulimia. "That's like a secret disease," she said. "You inflict it upon yourself because your self-esteem is at a low ebb, and you don't think you're worthy or valuable...It gives you a feeling of comfort. It's like having a pair of arms around you, but it's temporarily, temporary."