This runs through my mind every time I write about an artist or band who seems unaware of the existence of feminism -- which basically means everyone except maybe Le Tigre. Or, as
Renee from Womanist Musings wrote about her love for a Justin Timberlake/Jimmy Fallon "
history of rap " video :
"If I were to discard anything that perpetuated an ism or appropriated from a culture of colour, I could never read a book, listen to music, watch a movie or television. No form of entertainment is pure, because we live in a society that continually others and disciplines."
It can be incredibly frustrating, because I feel as though I'm being a hypocrite -- not measuring up to the narrative I've provided by authoring a blog that's (mostly) about pop culture that's supposed to be informed by feminism. Should a feminist listen to (or, for that matter, read or watch) that?
The answer, of course, is yes. A feminist can listen to anything she damn well pleases. Hopefully, she gleaned some awareness of the myriad ways women are under or poorly-represented in pop culture. But still, presenting such things uncritically is pretty disingenuous. I mean, that's what we're here for.
In the
Guardian this week, Zoe Williams
praised Beyonce for her place in history as the first female artist to headline Glastonbury -- a pretty big deal in the festival's forty-year existence -- but says her lyrics belie her achievements:
She sings a song about how, if you wanted to go out with her, moron, you should have pursued that desire with a proposal of marriage. "Put a ring on it," she sings, waving her hands about like an Andrews Sister on amphetamines. "Put a ring on it", mouth the girls in the audience, dead-eyed with the madness of crowds. As if the past 50 years had never happened, as if one's own sexual destiny were a meaningless bauble, to be hung off the first john with a bank account who shows an interest. It's distressing. And yet would you prefer it to have been Coldplay again?
This comes on the heels of what Emily Hauser wrote for
Feministe last month:
Seriously? Beyonce, what you’re saying here is: “You shouldn’t have tried to keep the cow for free once you’d had the milk.” I kind of thought we’d gotten past that.
Full disclosure: I'm not enough of a Beyonce fan to provide any sort of in-depth analysis of her lyrics, but as much as I think we need to critically look at the media we're consuming, I'm not about to vilify Beyonce for being... well, unfeminist. Or if I did, I'd have a long list in front of me and "Single Ladies" wouldn't even make the top ten. (The comments to that Feminist post provide better insight that the OP, in my opinion.)
Chloe for Feministing writes about consuming better media -- music, books, magazines and tv -- that doesn't reinforce restrictive gender stereotypes. I think this is hugely important, and, frankly, impetus for starting this blog in the first place. The problem with that is -- and I say this as a recovering music snob who, at one time, would sooner ram crochet hooks into her eardrums than listen to top forty pap -- it's not an easy job. The "good" media we're supposed to seek out isn't as readily available as the "bad."The Taylor Swift, Katy Perrys, Beyonces, and Lady Gagas are ubiquitous enough to reach the girl in a small or medium-sized town with no independent book or music stores (which, yes, are growing increasingly irrelevant as books and movies become available online), or theaters that show movies not starring Seth Rogen.
In short, I have no real clear-cut answers either. Isn't that great how that works out? What I have noticed since starting this blog, I'm less likely to consume media that's harmful to women than I ever was before. There are several things I've cut out of my life, that at one time I enjoyed, after gaining more of an understanding why they're harmful (Bill Maher's sexism, even when it's against women whose political ideology runs counter to my own; the aforementioned Seth Rogen movies). This, I think, is what we're all aiming for.
