This Tuesday night, CW will air The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search For The Next Doll, a reality show that, through a strict regimen of catfights, vacant stare-offs, multiple booty short fittings, and repeated choruses of "Don't 'Cha?" promises to empower women everywhere!
At least that's what the show's producers told The New York Times:
But "Pussycat Dolls Present" is about female empowerment, the show's producers explained to a group of television writers and critics here in January,
"Everything the Pussycat Dolls are is everything that I've developed myself into being," said the rap star Lil' Kim, who is a judge on the show and who served a prison sentence for lying to a federal grand jury about a shooting outside a radio station.
Unfortunately in the case of Lil' Kim, developing into "everything the Pussycat Dolls are" means having more plastic surgery than that socialite who wanted to look like a cat. But at least she's empowered!
One of the show's producers even offered the reporters an alternative, "third-wave feminist" interpretation of the lyric, "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?":
Dismiss immediately whatever pornographic inferences such a performance might bring to mind, said McG, the music producer and film director who is an executive producer of "Pussycat Dolls Present." The Dolls, McG said, are simply making a heartfelt inquiry: "It's just like saying, 'Don't you wish your girlfriend could be free and comfortable in her own skin and do her own thing, like me?'"
Not as catchy, but it works. Here are a few other alternative "Don't Cha?" lyrics that point to the Pussycat Dolls' hidden female-empowerment agenda: Actual Lyric: "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" Hidden Meaning: "Don't you wish your girlfriend was unencumbered by mass-media-imposed, unrealistic ideas of feminine beauty like me? Actual Lyric: "Don't you wish your girlfriend was raw like me?" Hidden Meaning: "Don't you wish your girlfriend was reading Betty Friedan like me?" Actual Lyric: "Ahhhh! Don't cha?" Hidden Meaning: "I have a subscription to Ms. Magazine."