Skinny Girl Diet's insights on identities & ideologies
Delilah & Ursula Holiday of Skinny Girl Diet; press photo courtesy of the artists.
London's Skinny Girl Diet delivered the world a message of unflinching resistance with their new album Ideal Woman. Since the release of 2016's Heavy Flow — the duo of Delilah Holiday and Ursula Holiday have turned the tables on the global patriarchy with a record that does not conform to any neat construct or defined label. Ideal Woman is the rallying cry for 2019, a call for universal feminism to wake the unwoke that elevates humanist equality while leveling the playing field in the face of archaic systems of misogyny that maintain a hold on the socio, economic, political and media platforms of modern day.
Striking with their heaviest record to date, Ideal Woman pulls no punches and takes no prisoners. Siren songs and mermaid myths are cast to the wind and foam of the sea on the blistering opener "La Sirena", beckoning the wayward wandering listeners to follow into the mystic maw of raw, unflinching feminism, delivered like a shamanic rock ritual on the blaring "Witch of the Waste" (a wordplay on the benign witch from Wizard of Oz). "Shed Your Skin" slips into the chrysalis chambers of change, with the title track challenging all normative constructs that pertain to what the cis het male gaze deems to be the perfect concept of what the opposite cis gender should be. Modern day meat markets and notions of objectification are tackled on the atrocity exhibition tour of "Human Zoo", elaborating on the aforementioned motifs with the demur "Starfucker", which is certainly a far cry from the 70s Rolling Stones song from Goats Head Soup.
Superficial gestures of facetious philanthropy and the like are confronted on "Western Civilization", to embracing the stain of xenophobia on "Outsider", taking back items of autonomy and states of being and rights on "Timing", while "Golden" shines with a bright light that recalls decades of femme defiance in the face of global patriarchal industries. "Warrior Queens" takes back all aspects of independence from antiquated feudalist systems and ominous (and impotent) powers, continuing the declaration of rights in the face of colonial oppressors on "White Man" (that references the titular hook from the classic Skee-Lo single), before bringing down the house on the succinct finisher "Clickbait" that clocks in at just under a minute and a half — delivering a mighty punch to any adversary that stands in their path.
Regal pop rebels Skinny Girl Diet; press photo courtesy of the artists.
Standing in defiance with Skinny Girl Diet; press photo courtesy of the artists.
Delilah & Ursula off Skinny Girl Diet penned the following exclusive joint statement on the new album Ideal Woman:
The whole album stems from the concept of trying to be perfect to please people. We were all inspired by the concept of the 1950s housewife in the nuclear family being brainwashed into a passive role in life to not step out of line in case one of the neighbors says something. It reminds me of how we are all too scared to speak up today, to be different. Why are we torturing ourselves with the idea of what other people think? Life is too short to please anybody but yourself, be your own ideal person and no one else’s.
Ideal Woman is available now via HHBTM Records.