"She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down."
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth
"Shout out to them freshman on Instagram straight flexing."
― Trinidad James, "All Gold Everything"
Post-Jason Derulo Jordin Sparks, skinny and curly-haired, is liberated. Liberated from the weight of expectation that comes with winning "American Idol", liberated from her weight. Her first mixtape, #ByeFelicia, marks a new era for her. "Double Tap" ft. 2 Chainz, one of the more popular singles, recently got a video.
"Double Tap" sounds like a Tinashe throwaway, a leftover co-write that Jordin hopped on out of, perhaps, a desire to catch up to or emulate her DJ Mustard-produced peers. But "Double Tap" is actually so much more; it’s about the marriage of the male gaze and technology. While the sound is new for Jordin—it’s the same sticky, infectious sound heard since before last year—the visuals, explicitly appealing to the male gaze, set it apart from similar pop offerings.
In the first scene, Jordin is coming out of the bathroom, wearing an A-line thigh-high robe, swishing her hips from side to side with a phone in her hand. She walks past a big screen TV. Shortly thereafter, she holds the phone up and documents herself, using her phone’s front-facing camera. Meanwhile, men— three hot, black men— surveil her Instagram photos from a living room far removed from wherever Jordin is. They watch her while she watches herself, writhing in bed. She gets out of bed, goes in the bathroom to get ready to go out—for more male validation, real looks—and begins primping herself in front of the mirror while taking more selfies from every angle. She takes a call from girlfriends, telling them to come over. They oblige and dance/get ready in front of a mirror while taking selfies with Jordin. They leave to go to a party, but not before inviting the hot guys. At the party they take more selfies and dance with each other. Jordin ditches her friends to dance on a countertop with 2 Chainz—one of the only scenes where Jordin is not holding her phone—until eventually meeting face-to-face with one of the three hot guys.
"Double Tap" connotes a with-my-girls-but-by-myself-even-when-I’m-with-my-girls agency. Jordin knows her own angles; Jordin writhes in bed while taking sexy selfies of herself; and Jordin performs friendship, on Instagram, through group mirror selfies and phones/friends attached at hips. The lyrics, forgettable, reference "double tapping." This reference is lost on anyone who doesn’t use Instagram or anyone who uses Instagram but doesn’t refer to liking a photo on it as "double tapping." This reference is hackneyed today and severely dated tomorrow, which is the danger in novelty. Boastful, Jordin brags, "Bet I look better than your last one/ Everybody know I don’t care/ Instafamous overnight, yeah." While there’s nothing but comaraderie between Jordin and her girls, she’s in active competition with other girls, but, of course, she’s oblivious—that’s what she tells herself. "You gotta let me know...bet you won’t double tap that ho" is one request; another request, this one more direct, "If you like what you see, you gotta let me know.”
"Double Tap", lyrically, never becomes a "Post to Be", a "Show Me" or a "2 On". Psychically, it’s analogous to when a white girl gets her hip-hop wings. Miley’s "We Can’t Stop" is a good example of this, but a better, and more subtle, example is Jojo’s "Andre". "Double Tap" is to Jordin what "Andre" is to Jojo: it distinguishes herself from herself. In "Andre", Jojo’s fixation on a lover named Andre simultaneously shifts the attention away from her while also marking the end of whatever we thought Jojo was going to be post-"Leave (Get Out)". Fourteen-year-old Jojo, after all, signified a certain American oddity: the black girl in the white girl in the black in the white girl; layers of Blackground Records-cultivated down white girl simulacrum and a golden voice. The opposite of a Diva.
In 2014, I wrote this definition of a Diva in reference to Charli XCX:
Only a Diva can make us believe, in the cultural moment, that “Yeah, keep turning it up/ Chandelier-swinging, we don’t give a fuck” will never not sound cool because Divas are matryoshka dolls of authenticity. Inside every Diva is another Diva and another Diva and another Diva. Bad Bitches are shells constructed by the male gaze with the help of Instagram filters. A hard and fast Bad Bitch-Diva dichotomy doesn’t exist, but we can glean from the video that Charli is in fact the ‘realest.’
In the same way Jojo, at least in her infancy, was no Diva, Jordin, at the beginning of her post-"Idol" career, was no Bad Bitch. A Bad Bitch, however, is what she’s angling to be in 2015. Amber Rose, who is literally writing the book on How to Be a Bad Bitch, would probably say Jordin’s well on her way to being one. But just like Jojo’s Diva posturing is saturated with an inauthenticity, Jordin’s Bad Bitchdom, "constructed by the male gaze with the help Instagram filters," is ill-fitting, awkward. She wears her sexuality exactly how a 25-year-old Evangelical Christian, formerly ‘chubby’ "American Idol" contestant whose only really dated one guy would wear her sexuality: peekaboo-style, hiding behind layers of herself.