Madonna wore the Like a Prayer bra with the
dizzying cone spirals in 1990, Lady Gaga held a lit ice fountain of some sort
wearing a plastic see through “dress” with plus signs covering her nipples in
2011, and this year, at the Grammy's Beyonce wore a La Perla thong to show her
“fatty.”
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| Associated Press |
These aren’t examples of feminism or anti-feminism (each
of these women have struggled to call themselves feminists).
These are examples of women who are clearly comfortable with starting
pseudo-sexual revolutions -- for profit.
In the book Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, Bell Hooks, a leading black feminist and scholar said, "It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation, I choose to re-appropriate the term 'feminism,' to focus on the fact that to be 'feminist' in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination and oppression."
In the book Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, Bell Hooks, a leading black feminist and scholar said, "It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation, I choose to re-appropriate the term 'feminism,' to focus on the fact that to be 'feminist' in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination and oppression."
When Forbes
questioned whether the Drunk in Love performance was for
record sales. The answer is yes, and Bey should not disagree.
Off the Grammy stage, however, Beyonce is liberating
herself from the sexist role patterns by taking up a good cause. In a recent campaign to ban the word “bossy” as being damaging to young girls’
desires to be leaders, Mrs. Carter one of #BanBossy’s spokespersons said, “I’m
not bossy. I’m the boss.”
But the best bosses -- and Beyonce is one; she made $53
million last year out earning Jay-Z -- get the “good good” for their companies.
"I'm never satisfied," she told Forbes in a 2009 cover story. "I'm sure sometimes it's not easy working for me... I've never met anyone that works harder than me in my industry."
"I'm never satisfied," she told Forbes in a 2009 cover story. "I'm sure sometimes it's not easy working for me... I've never met anyone that works harder than me in my industry."
Part of what the media perceived as feminist was
Beyonce’s argument in the letter she wrote for The Shriver Report which
pointed out the fact that the gender inequality gap is largely economic.
“Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes. But unless women and men both say this is unacceptable, things will not change. Men have to demand that their wives, daughters, mothers and sisters earn more – commensurate with their qualifications and not their gender. Equality will be achieved when men and women are granted equal pay and equal respect.”
“Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes. But unless women and men both say this is unacceptable, things will not change. Men have to demand that their wives, daughters, mothers and sisters earn more – commensurate with their qualifications and not their gender. Equality will be achieved when men and women are granted equal pay and equal respect.”
Tapping in to that “equal respect” idea, when Target choose not to sell the self-titled album
after she gave iTunes a one week digital exclusive, Bey went to a Wal-Mart
store in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, and
offered every customer the “first $50 on me”during the Christmas season, effectively giving Target the finger and figuratively saying ‘here’s some extra money to buy my album.’ That's what bosses do: protect their brand.
But in the quest for the almighty dollar, do artist's pause for a moment to consider how much power they have? Great art foes require great responsibility.
Recently, on the Bill O’Reilly show, the Fox host gasped at guest Russell Simmons’s (the
co-founder of Def Jam) belief that Beyonce’s Partition
video, which is about sexual interludes in the back of a limo, is art. O’Reilly
asked Simmons if that video gives “girls of color” who look up to her a bad
impression.
Simmons just said, “She’s a great artist.”
Bey gives her hubby space to croon on Drunk in
Love by role playing with the lines Ike Turner forced on Tina as their relationship became even more abusive. "I'm Ike, Turner turn it up / Baby no, I don't play / Now eat the cake, Anna Mae / I said eat the cake, Anna Mae. I'm nice."
These examples aren’t oozing with feminism. And if
feminism is about embracing sexuality, it does so with some morality.
What is moral about Beyonce’s Beyonce are her
references to African novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TEDx talk from which she sampled lines for her song Flawless.
"We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are,” Adichie said. “If we have sons, we don’t mind knowing about our sons’ girlfirends, but our daughters’ boyfriends? God forbid. But of course when the time is right we expect those girls to bring back the perfect man to be their husband.”
But girls are not boys. So girls, by nature are not going to be sexual beings in the way that boys are. It’s not a learned thing. It’s a gender thing.
For example, boys/men think about sex 19 times a day, according to scientists. Girls or women think about it 10 times a day.
The pop icon quotes Adichie’s definition of a feminist as “a person who believes in the social, economic and political equality of the sexes.”
"We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are,” Adichie said. “If we have sons, we don’t mind knowing about our sons’ girlfirends, but our daughters’ boyfriends? God forbid. But of course when the time is right we expect those girls to bring back the perfect man to be their husband.”
But girls are not boys. So girls, by nature are not going to be sexual beings in the way that boys are. It’s not a learned thing. It’s a gender thing.
For example, boys/men think about sex 19 times a day, according to scientists. Girls or women think about it 10 times a day.
The pop icon quotes Adichie’s definition of a feminist as “a person who believes in the social, economic and political equality of the sexes.”
Women should not have barriers to being their own bosses, or starting decent sexual revolutions, but when we continue to allow men to accept what is unacceptable, then one third of feminism falls into nothingness. And that, then, is not feminism.
What do you think?
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