Princesses of Power
What MARINA and Hannah Arendt can teach us girly pops about power.
What do a 20th-century political theorist known for her romance with Martin Heidegger and coining the phrase “banality of evil”, and a pop star formerly known as Marina and the Diamonds, have in common?
Power, baby.
Not the kind you hoard. Not the kind you steal. Not even the kind you post about on LinkedIn. The kind that flickers between people like static in the dark — fragile, fierce, and, according to both Hannah Arendt and MARINA, absolutely fundamental to being human.
Let’s take a closer look.
Hannah Arendt: Power Is Between Us
Hannah Arendt survived totalitarianism, fled the Nazis, and wrote books so densely brilliant they could bend space-time. But at the heart of her philosophy is something simple and surprisingly hopeful: Power is not violence. Power is not domination. Power is what happens when people act together.
“Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert,” Arendt wrote.
Unlike force or coercion, power for Arendt is relational. It’s built through mutual trust, shared world-building, promises, forgiveness — basically, a political version of your favorite girl group ballad (mine is any Little Mix song). Power disappears when we abandon each other or retreat into silence( think of Jesse when she left Little Mix). It arises when we show up — not as identical units, but as plural beings, holding space for action that none of us could do alone.
MARINA: Power Is Reclamation
Now flip the record.
MARINA (you might remember her from her early era as Marina and the Diamonds) came into the pop scene with glitter, Greek tragedy, and a knack for dismantling cultural myths — especially about femininity, control, and self-worth. Her album Electra Heart is practically a thesis on the performance of power through different feminine avenues. Her later work? Even more explicit- titled Princess of Power (P.O.P).
Take Man’s World (2021), where she sings:
“Mother Nature’s dying, nobody’s keeping score / I don’t want to live in a man’s world anymore.”
For MARINA, power is something we’ve been alienated from — especially women, queer folks, and marginalized communities. Her lyrics peel back the illusion of control sold to us by patriarchal capitalism and replace it with a tender, defiant reclaiming of voice.
Get B. K. Hart’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Where Arendt warns against domination masquerading as power, MARINA exposes it — with sequins.
But MARINA’s power isn’t just resistance. It’s transformation. Across her discography, power becomes self-knowledge, vulnerability, even love. Especially love. All of her best songs are motivated by love and not fear.
Power Isn’t a Weapon. It’s a Relationship.
If you stitched together Arendt’s theory and MARINA’s art, you’d get a power philosophy that sounds like this:
Power is born when people act together with purpose. (think of a great concert)
It dies when we isolate, dominate, or give in to despair (bye, Jesse)
It is expressed not in domination, but in dialogue, vulnerability, and imagination. (Little Mix when it was just Jade, Perri, and Leigh-Ann)
That’s why Arendt, with her stubborn insistence on plurality, and MARINA, with her glitter-drenched critiques of toxic systems, are unlikely but perfect companions. Both are deeply political. Both believe in human dignity. And both ask us — urgently — to stop confusing force with freedom.
So if you’re feeling powerless today, don’t ask how to get more control. Ask how to get more together. Text a friend. Write the letter. Join the protest. Start the weird art collective. Fall in love with the idea that power is not a throne you sit on — it’s a dance floor, a kitchen table, a mic passed back and forth.
And in the words of MARINA herself:
“Welcome to my world, princess of power
Stuck in a loveless generation
Ready to go through a transformation
I’m gonna glow like a meteor shower
Welcome to my world, princess of power
I believe Hannah probably wouldn’t listen to electropop, but she might appreciate MARINA’s lyrics more than we think. After all, both women believe power begins not with domination, but with the miracle of beginning — again.
Power in a Man’s World
Both Hannah Arendt and MARINA had to invent languages for power that weren’t handed to them. Arendt wrote in the male-dominated realm of postwar philosophy, often misunderstood or dismissed for refusing ideological camps. MARINA has sung her way through the commodifying pressures of the pop industry, critiquing it even as she mastered it.
Each carved a path through patriarchy — Arendt with thinking, MARINA with feeling — not just to survive but to redefine what power could mean. Neither accepted the rules they were given. Both demanded more: more imagination, more truth, more love, more world.
And that’s the thing.
They are powerful in their own right — not because they seized power in the way men have traditionally modeled it, but because they revealed other ways of being powerful altogether. They made power visible, audible, and human.
They remind us:
Power isn’t something you take.
It’s something you make. Together.
