Annie Lennox doesn’t think so, having described her declaration at the VMAs last month as ‘tokenistic’, and accusing her of using the title ‘to promote herself’. But is this fair? Is the badass booty-shaker genuinely passionate about the Feminist agenda of equality for the sexes, or is she merely jumping on the bandwagon without really understanding what it means?
Sexualisation of women in the music industry is something has been under scrutiny for what seems like forever. The difficulty when discussing whether female artists such as Beyoncé are anti-feminist arises most frequently when sexual freedom is mistaken for a more problematic concept: sexualisation for male gaze. When Beyoncé wears skimpy outfits and dances ‘provocatively’ onstage, she is exercising her right to be a sexual being. Criticising her and other artists like Miley Cyrus and Nicki Minaj, and calling them anti-feminist whores, which is very frequently suggested of all three of these women, is aggravating the problem and, ironically, anti-feminist in itself. For me, this is what Beyoncé was trying to convey in the section of(CUT) her performance at the VMAs and in her song ‘Flawless’. Whether or not she does understand all the other aspects of Feminism is something that can only be answered by her, and I (unfortunately) don’t have her phone number to give her a quick ring and check.
What the three artists I mentioned above have in common, is that they all come under the generic heading of ‘Strong Woman’. This in itself is problematic in terms of perpetuating the false idea that Feminism is about power and man-hating. Nicki Minaj is majorly underestimated in terms of her grasp on certain issues in society. She makes this point about being a strong woman brilliantly, when in an interview she stated: “When I am assertive, I’m a bitch. When a man is assertive, he’s a boss. He bossed up. No negative connotation behind ‘bossed up.’ But lots of negative connotation behind being a bitch… When you’re a girl, you have to be everything. You have to be dope at what you do but you have to be super sweet and you have to be sexy and you have to be this, you have to be that, and you have to be nice. It’s like, ‘I can’t be all those things at once. I’m a human being.’”
This observation is clearly made by a woman with her head screwed on, and not just an airheaded product of the music industry.
Plus, Nicki Minaj’s song ‘Anaconda’ does a lot to celebrate the female body, by calling out the sexism of objectifying women and their ‘big butts’, on both a racial and gender basis.
I feel I’ve opened up a can of worms here and am going to quit while I’m ahead to leave you to mull over the questions I’ve raised. Ultimately, with high profile female artists such as Katy Perry defining Feminism as ‘I love myself, but I also love men’, we should be grateful for the likes of Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj for positively spreading the message, even if it is being misunderstood by some.
Sources
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/katy-perry-seems-confused-by-what-feminism-is#3mh36mp
http://www.nme.com/news/beyonce/80075
Image Sources
http://humanistmom.blogspot.co.uk/
Edited by Amelia Bauer-Madden