http://www.lyricsfreak.com/k/kinks/lola_20079021.html

“Lola” is a song that was written by Ray Davies and performed by The Kinks in 1970. It talks about a situation Ray, the main character encountered in a night club with a “transvestite”. He does not have any experience with women. The opening line of champagne tasting like Coca-Cola shows how he does not have any experience in the world so he relates the taste of champagne to soda because that is his reference point. He then proceeds to lose his innocence when he meets a city woman who has experience picking up men. It was his first time a woman approached him and also wanted to kiss him. The roles of men and women are reversed in the song. It’s usually the guy who tries to seduce the woman. In this song it’s the woman seducing the guy.

“She walked up to me and she asked me to dance”, the woman is taking on the man’s role by asking Ray to dance.

“She walked like a woman and talked like a man”. This shows that Lola appears like a woman but has a deep voice that makes her sound like man. This does not necessarily means that she is a man. It could just refer to the confidence that Lola showed.

All the other references included in the song were about Lola displaying the characteristics of a man because she’s experienced and is seducing the man. Women do not typically do that. I think Ray had fun with this because he was able to have it both ways. The implication that Lola could be a man is obviously on the surface of it. People might claim that the last line reveals Lola’s identity as a transsexual. It doesn’t actually.

“I know what I am and I’m glad I’m a man and so is Lola”. Is Lola really a man or is Lola also glad that Ray is a man? The song does not commit to a meaning and Ray created it with multiple meanings. In other words Lola is either glad or a man and this makes it look like Ray intended it that way. If the narrator/writer of the song intended to have two meanings then one cannot say it absolutely has to be one or the other. I noticed that Lo in Spanish means masculine and La means feminine. The two words combined might just show that Lola in fact is a man who dresses like a woman. Because it was his first experience, Ray did not care much about how she looked. he fell for her every time they look at each others in the eyes.

The whole purpose of the video was to visually see how the media affects the way women feels about themselves and also how they can avoid that. I started off my video talking about what the media considers as the ideal body image for women today. I asked questions and answered them throughout the video. It was kind of a combination of information and giving my opinion about the different ideas I brought up. I used different images and texts that were supposed to capture the audience’s attention and also prove the point I was making. The beginning of the video mostly showed images of what the media considered as the ideal body image for women. I included images of models walking down the run way, another one on the cover of a magazine and couple of celebrities on the red carpet. All of them looked really thin, which showed what is actually considered as the ideal body image for women according to the media. But this is not quite right because research has shown that “average” women in the U.S are size 12-14. The images the media portrays as the perfect body is not realistic and cannot be accomplished by those ordinary women.

The middle of the video talked about how those ordinary women are affected by the images they see in their daily lives. Which most likely lower their satisfaction with their own attractiveness and makes them insecure about their bodies. Those women will start to have this impossible goal in mind to accomplish and start hoping and wishing for that ideal body image.

They will start feeling like they have to lose weight in order for them to be attractive or feel good about themselves. Some of those women do not realize that they do not even need to lose weight, they are just too focus on one image and hope for that type of body on that image. They would want to lose weight in certain area of their bodies only in order to match whatever celebrity they admire or image they want to look like. Without even realizing that most those images they see every day are photo-shopped in a way. Yes many of them are. It is rare to see an image of a celebrity taken and posted directly online for everybody to see. They always have to be altered to make them look thin, fit, with no wrinkles, no pimples, just perfect.

I included some before and after images that were photo-shopped. One of the images showed a woman that looked like an ordinary size 14 female who had a lot of changes done to her body and face in order to fit that ideal body image. Another one showed a celebrity getting ready for her photo shoot where someone else took a candid un-photo-shopped picture of her. She looked like a normal person to me with not so much imperfection in the first picture. But the second picture showed her in a different skin color, looking thinner and representing what the media considers as the ideal body image. And women are tricked to believe that is how those celebrities really look like and that is how a perfect body should look also. This is not true.  Almost every day in Hollywood had some type of work done on their bodies to look “better” than they used to be or to reach that ideal body image in today’s society.

The end of the video focus much more on those ordinary women who see those altered image. I would say that my tone was more cheerful at this point. It mostly talked about women loving themselves and bodies the way it is. Even though some changes could be made, do not just let the media affect them in any type of way. The media and advertisements are something that are going to be around forever probably, women just to love themselves instead. Women also need to understand that we are all different and not everything will work for them. They all come in different shapes and sizes and they are all beautiful and perfect just the way they are. Don’t let the media affect you, embrace your shape.