MTV Europe Awards Fug: Katy Perry

I’m learning that I must really not be a fan of Katy Perry. Thanks to my fondness for high camp, most crazy costumey outfits end up becoming so-crazy-they’re-amazing, a la Posh or Grace Jones or Bjork. I mean, if you’d asked me in the moment, I’d have told you Bjork’s swan dress was pure avian insanity, but now I look back upon it fondly and kind of miss it (and almost went as that for Halloween this year, before deciding it’s stuck in a relevance netherworld: too recent not to seem passe, but not old enough to be a cunning throwback).

So, my point is, I usually love unabashed weirdness. And yet any time I see Katy Perry in one of her farcical confections, I just roll my eyes and mutter, “Oh, great. AGAIN? WHATEVER.”

Let’s start with this one:

Are her boobs SUPPOSED to look like giant, evil green eyes glaring back at me from her torso? Is she TRYING to make a play on that old chestnut where a guy stares at a girl’s cleavage and she coos, “My eyes are UP HERE”? Or is it just an ugly dress that looks like someone sewed the bodice out of old shoulder pads? I don’t know. But I do know that when the skirt if both wrinkled and a size too tight, it’s probably not a very well constructed garment.

And this was the normal thing she wore. Behold the on-stage alternative:

She is wearing a merry-go-round. Or some sort of hideous neon circus tent. She has poked her legs through a child’s amusement-park dream and put it RIGHT where you’d find the ticket booth to her Adults Only ride.

Apparently, the whole point of this exercise  — she seems to have hosted the telecast — was to do as many wacky costume changes as possible. And I think that’s what makes me tired of her whole shtick. Quirky for the sake of quirky is boring and false. Grace Jones wears masks because she’s Grace freaking Jones; Lara Flynn Boyle wore the ballerina outfit to get noticed. Big difference.

As for why Katy Perry does things like this…

… well, I don’t want to know.