Tag: mother's day

In 1997, Meredith Brooks single-handedly reminded the masses that women were far more than just one convenient label (most often: “Mother”…or, worse still, “Homemaker”). That a woman could be (and is) so many things all at once, and at any given moment of the day. A multifaceted kaleidoscope of roles and according personalities that the patriarchy is constantly trying to hem in to being just one thing. Or, at best, two: wife and mother. That restrictive, “know your place” kind of thinking is, once again, starting to bubble back to the surface with the wave of conservatism that has continued to crest in America post-Trump (ergo, the emergence of terms like “tradwife” and “stay-at-home girlfriend”). 

Thus, the time feels especially right for Julia Fox to not only release a song called “Down the Drain” (the same title as her 2023 memoir), but also an accompanying music video. As her first (and more than somewhat unexpected) music release, it seems as though Brooks’ messaging in “Bitch” must have permeated Fox’s psyche at some point (whether it was when the song actually came out in ‘97—when Fox would have been seven—or somewhere else down the line). Whenever it was that the influence clicked, Brooks is clearly all over “the chorus” (read: the majority of the song, save for one deviating verse) of “Down the Drain.” To be specific, Fox chanting, “I’m a bitch, I’m a girl, I’m a woman, I’m a whore/I’m a bitch, I’m a girl, I’m a mother, I’m a whore.”

Needless to say, it’s not quite as dense or complex as Brooks’ defiant declaration, “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover/I’m a child, I’m a mother/I’m a sinner, I’m a saint/I do not feel ashamed/I’m your Hell, I’m your dream/I’m nothing in between/You know you wouldn’t want it any other way.” Fox’s version of “Bitch” is one for the TikTok age—an anti-patriarchal message for those with the attention span of a gnat. Fox further distills the “Brooks message” with help from producer Ben Draghi (who also, amazingly, has a co-writing credit—because, honestly, couldn’t Fox have just written these very brief lyrics without an assist?). 

By lending a techno-industrial feel to the sonic tincture of “Down the Drain,” Draghi separates it from the grungier, alt-rock tone Brooks opted for back when that sound was at a peak of popularity in the early to mid-90s. Along with the hippie-dippy (with a “punk” edge) music video that Brooks filmed to promote it (think: lots of florals). Fox’s own video, directed by Draghi (a real renaissance man, apparently), is wielded to make the same statement. But it’s slightly more, let’s say, “hardcore.” It all starts with Fox driving her son, Valentino, to school…to the tune of the kind of opening music that does, indeed, sound straight out of a Safdie brothers movie (as does most of “Down the Drain”). So it is that things begin “maternally” enough, with Fox glancing back lovingly at her child in the seat behind her. After dropping him off at whatever bougie school he attends (as Fox herself said, “We need him to be a nepo baby, and he needs to like own it too”), Fox receives a series of text messages that read, “Hi Julia. We have your friend Richie. Send us 1 million dollars by the end of day. Or else…” This warning includes a photo of the kidnapped “Richie” in question: Richie Shazam (who also just appeared in Charli XCX’s equally cunty “360” video along with Fox as well).

Horrified by both his abuse and this ultimatum, Fox runs toward her car like a superhero called to action and speeds back to her apartment where she changes into multiple (dominatrix-inspired) costumes while strutting down a darkened hallway. She then descends to her “office,” where two other dominatrixes are punishing a very bad man tied to a bondage cross (positioned as an “X,” not a “T”). Summoning them to join her in her quest to find and release Richie, they leave the submissive on the cross and hightail it out of there. 

Fox then descends still further down into the depths, suddenly appearing in a dom-approved nurse ensemble as she tortures a doctor to the verse, “Come with me, come down the drain/I’ll be sweet like sugar cane/Come get lost inside my brain/I promise that you’ll go insane/I’m a menace, not a muse/The baddest fuckin’ drug that you’ll ever use/Destiny, it’s yours to choose/Come with me, you’ll never lose.” Her role switches up yet again as she finds herself “materialized” (appearing like television static) in a boxing ring to take on the seemingly much more powerful man she ends up kicking to the ground. 

Draghi then cuts to the next scene during which Fox essentially “teleports” to another location in a different costume (this time, an all-out superhero one in bright yellow, but still rooted in dom aesthetics—as this period in her life clearly remains influential). That location, conveniently, is where Richie is imprisoned in a cage, his hands restrained above his head. Breaking into the cage (after one of her acolytes is pawed at by a “sanctum monster”), Fox puts an ostensibly magical skull ring on his finger to “revive” him and the two—along with her fellow dom assistants—escape that bad scene. And all just in time to pick up Valentino from school again. Not bothering to change entirely out of her bright yellow superhero dominatrix outfit, Fox instead throws the same coat and hat on over it that she was wearing before. Just further proof that a woman is many things to many people throughout various moments in the day. And depending on what the “need” is from those in her life. 

Brooks was able to highlight the inherent multifacetedness of what it is to be a woman with less “slickness” than is required of music and messaging now. That “many-sidedness” including the puzzle piece called “Mother.” And while so many people (particularly men of the husband and son variety) want to reduce the divine feminine to that one thing—that one “job title”—there is always so much more to her than just that. Before a woman ever steps into the part of “Mom,” she is her own person, has her own unique identity…one that is separate from whatever personality her children might eventually ascribe to her. Just as Fox’s own son inevitably will.

But to any of his potential judgment, Julia might simply respond the same way she did about what inspired her to enter her “pop star era” in the first place: “I’m a firm believer in reinvention. The power to transform and become entirely new whenever you choose [is what] inspired writing this song… In this instance, I’m embodying the persona of a pop star. Never stop creating art because you never know where it will take you.” And where Fox wants to take her fans and listeners, just in time for Mother’s Day weekend, is to a place where people are forced to recognize the many conundrums and contradictions of what it is to be a woman. Particularly in an age when they’re still fed the line that they can “have it all” (you know, the way penis-packers can). This despite no one actually wanting them to. In truth, they can still only “be it all” to anyone who demands to suck some of their energy and patience from them. 

As Brooks warned of that prismatic way of being, “Just when you think you got me figured out/The season’s already changing.” She then adds, “I think it’s cool, you do what you do/And don’t try to save me.” Let’s put “save” in quotes because that’s what men always think they’re doing with women. Maybe the better lyric is, “And don’t try to change me.” Oh would that all men could be like that—like whoever Brooks is describing when she thanks him for, in effect, tolerating her “mood swings” (a.k.a. acting as irascible and erratic as the male species). Alas, most men are, instead, as backward as Fox’s ex, Ye (formerly Kanye West). But maybe Fox more fully learned all about how not to be muzzled or stifled in any way thanks to her brief time with him. Hence, her urging to other women, “Come with me down the drain…/Come get lost inside my brain/I promise that you’ll go insane/I’m a menace, not a muse.” Brooks, on the other hand, is an undeniable muse to Fox. At least in terms of her lyrical template. 

What’s somewhat unfortunate though—tragic even—is the fact that women, almost thirty years after “Bitch,” still have to remind people that (gasp!) they’re complex, three-dimensional humans. And, you know, not some enduring cardboard cutout of June Cleaver.