Beyoncé: being photographed in your underwear doesn’t help feminism
Excuse me White Feminists™, but what the fuck is this shit???
“Beyoncé: being photographed in your underwear doesn’t help
feminismwhite women and you’re not allowed to be a feminist unless you do what white women tell you.”-white women
First question: Has Beyonce claimed feminism?
Second question: Who the fuck are these people to tell her how to run her life?
Third question: Why is it that she is being targeted? Like, there are very few women who do not photograph sexy when doing pop music. Where are the calls for them to cover up?
Fourth question: Why haven’t I heard feminists take on the racism in the pop industry? Like what on earth is Cheryl Cole doing singing about she wants a “Ghetto Boy” for example?
Fifth question: In alll the issues and things that feminism has to tackle, why is Beyonce suddenly at the top of the list? Like, shouldnt they be rooting out transphobia racism Islamaphobic in the movement for a start?
The article’s actually even worse than the title would imply. Here’s your “setup”:
Next month marks the 50th anniversary of The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan’s hugely influential study that helped to spark that pervasive second wave of feminism that – for all its faults and stuttering incompleteness – shaped the western world as most of us know it today.
As a book it was – as Friedan was herself – a flawed advocate of women’s rights: Friedan had little apparent interest in women who were anything other than white and upper middle-class.
And then the slut-shaming, and the comparison of Beyonce to TWO NOTORIOUSLY RACIST WHITE FEMINISTS, INCLUDING ANDREA RADSCUM DWORKIN:
I never fail to be amazed at the high profile, often A-list women who celebrate their professional success by posing near naked on the covers of allegedly classy men’s magazines, such as Esquire and GQ, and these covers are, to my eyes, becoming increasingly close to porn.
It’s one thing to submit to this attention-seeking nonsense if you’re a C-list reality TV desperado trying to get on the cover of Nuts; it’s another if you are professedly one of the most powerful women in the entertainment business who has no need of such tactics.
Knowles rightly hates the fact that women are humiliated by being paid less than their male counterparts. But they are similarly humiliated by being fed the message that it doesn’t matter how successful, powerful or smart you are – all that matters is how sexually available you are willing to make yourself look.
I should feel happy, I guess, that Knowles is even willing to speak up about equality considering how notoriously few young women in the public eye are willing to identify themselves as feminists. That her Dworkin-ish call to arms comes served up with photos of Knowles jumping on a bed in a bikini, well, that’s the deal these days, apparently, in which famous women can sing about “independence” and “girl power”, as long as they’re wearing next to nothing. As I said, the feminist movement never did run smoothly. But half a century on from Friedan, it should be running better than this.
Betty Friedan and Andrea Dworkin? She could not even call up some feminist books written by women of color? What the….???????????????????????????????????????
They don’t read anything by WoC.
oh please kill me with this shit.
If this columnist had actually read the article that went along with Beyonce’s (hotttt) cover photo, she might realize that the piece is actually all about how Beyonce controls every aspect of her image, how she actually points the camera back at people who come to interview her (PAGING ALL MY FEMINIST FILM THEORY but that’s for later). How Beyonce has managed to create her own empire and is actually in charge of it.
Which actually made me think of the various questions that have been raised about images of Beyonce, like illegalplumpudding’s comments about her Photoshopped thighs and the controversy over those L’oreal ads that lightened her skin, because would a woman who maintains this much control allow herself to be on the cover of a major magazine without photo approval? (Which also reminds me of that wonderful piece in Vanity Fair by one of the last people to photograph Marilyn Monroe, who was also 100% meticulous about approving images of herself that would be published…but I’m digressing again.)
Like, I’m pinko commie scum loaded with class rage against the rich and this article made me love Beyonce, because if anything Beyonce is the apotheosis of liberal feminism or what liberal feminism should want if it was paying attention: a brilliant beautiful woman who controls her own image and product and sells it to the exact degree that Beyonce wants to do so, Beyonce is filthy rich and happily married and has a beautiful child.
Beyonce does have it all, shut up and go home Anne Marie Slaughter/everyone else.
Beyonce is about ten thousand times more interesting than being shamed for being naked. Reducing Beyonce to the cover photo is doing EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE MAD AT MEN FOR DOING, you are reducing her to an image of her body rather than allowing her to speak for herself, which she does, admirably and brilliantly.
(Wow, I have some feelings about this.)
(Oh, and could we please stop with the ZOMG PORN shit, let’s stop treating sex workers as the worst thing we could possibly ever be compared to, OK? I can think of about twenty professions that should be considered far scummier than people who get people off for a living, starting with Wall Street bankers.)
(via isabelthespy)
