fem·i·nism
noun \ˈfe-mə-ˌni-zəm\
: the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities
: organized activity in support of women's rights and interests
Scrolling past my news feed a few days ago, I realized someone being mentioned every few posts: BEYONCE.
More commonly, Beyonce being heralded as THE ideal feminist and her songs being substantially powerful anthems for female empowerment. I have a friend who quite possibly worships Beyonce and when her wall isn't being inundated with Beyonce's new videos, it's usually with status updates on how she was inspired to break out of that shell she'd so bashfully hid in. Huffington Post was/is being generous in its Beyonce-worship and hell, she even made it onto the cover of Time for being one of its 100 Most Influential People of 2014.
Now, I love me some Bey - as fans call her - from time to time and hell, Say My Name will forever be my jam. But moving from that, I was thrilled that they put a woman of colour on the cover and try as I may not to see the world through that lens, I couldn't help but to feel that it was a remarkable step forward for women of colour everywhere.
But something didn't quite sit well with me. Was I jealous? No, I'm comfortable with my aesthetic anti-appeal and gross lack of talent :D
Was I upset that Malala Yousafzai didn't make the cover? Maybe. But why? Why did I put Malala above Beyonce? Wasn't Beyonce in a lot of ways, empowering women through her songs by telling them to be confident in their own skin, be the boss of their own life, not be pressured by societal standards of beauty etc?
And then it hit me.
It wasn't the issue Beyonce wasn't empowering women as much as Malala [I'd argue they're equally empowering through different angles. Malala with education, Beyonce with self-actualization].
It was that Beyonce was on the cover of Time, not wearing pants. It was the issue that for the 90% of times I've seen pictures of her, she'd been wearing a leotard, or underwear-cum-shorts [What the hell are this called? I wanna call them Butt-Itchers] or basically performing clad in what my momma taught me belongs in the bedroom.
 |
| "Oh my God, how DARE they label her a feminist dressed like THAT?" |
So all hell broke lose in my head, I was essentially debating with myself going from
"But but but SHE'S REDUCING HERSELF TO HER LACK OF CLOTHES. DID YOU EVEN WATCH THE VIDEO FOR DRUNK IN LOVE? LOOK AT JAY Z BEING ALL FULLY CLOTHED WHILE SHE'S LIKE FROLICKING AND GYRATING IN HER SHEER NEGLIGEE"
to
"Well what's it to you what she wears?"
Cue epiphany numero dos for the night.
By questioning her wardrobe choices and for passing off judgment on how much of a feminist she is based on what she's wearing, I might as damnwell be on the opposite side of this issue. The hard-hitting, disgusting truth is that I was working off the image she presented alone and not what she was standing for. I'd refused to believe that she was as influential as she was empowering to females solely based on the clothes she was wearing (Or lack-there-of) I'd been so invested in thinking that you need to look a certain part to be a feminist and in that, I'd went against the most basic thing I believed in:
That women should have a choice.
My behaviour appalled me :(
Yes, her image is whipped with sex appeal, yes her lyrics are suggestive and raunchy at times but I have a bigger question to ask.
SO WHAT?
Widening the scope, so what if women aren't dressed in what I deem to be "modest"? What gave me [or anyone for that matter] the right to be a judgmental asshole who only preached empowerment but spent most of her time [Okay, not really] doing the complete opposite, i.e., tearing them down? It was hypocritical and counter-productive. It was a lot like calling myself an all-accepting, all-loving Christian and then saying "You're going straight to hell" to my LGBT friends.
To sum it up, HERE'S a fantastic post by a Tumblr user, Rosalarian.
This particular paragraph resonated well with me:
"Some women would feel naked without a veil. Some women would find it restrictive. Some women would feel restricted by a bra. Some women would feel naked without one. Some women would feel restricted by a tight corset. Others love them. Some wear lots of clothes with a corset. Some only wear the corset and nothing else. What makes any article of clothing oppressive is someone forcing you to wear it. And it’s just as oppressive to force someone not to wear something that they want to wear."
