Should She Suffer? Alright, Clap If You Think She Should Suffer.
Feminism means never having to say what feminism really is
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In a 2018 episode of The Wendy Williams Show, icon and absolute menace Wendy Williams discusses Georgina Chapman, Harvey Weinstein’s ex-wife and co-founder of the high-end fashion label Marchesa. Williams asks her audience if Chapman should also suffer the same public shaming as Weinstein, seeing as she undoubtedly gained a higher social status and furthered her reputation through her husband, who furthered his own career through misogyny and sexual predation, luring women in with false promises before trapping and traumatizing them. “Clap if you think she should suffer,” Williams instructs the audience. A smattering of applause rises through the studio. “Then you’re my people,” Williams responds.
To quote Janet Jackson, “This is a story about control”
Well, this is actually about Kylie Jenner and Hannah Neeleman, two women who made choices—not sacrifices, choices—to keep their sense of control, how they commodified and marketed their lives, and how pop feminism helped them do it.
The most recent wave of feminism has been hotly debated; some think it doesn’t even exist. If we look at the last ten years, I can understand why. In 2010s Pop Feminism: A Painful Look Back, YouTuber Lily Alexandre provides a retrospective on how much noise was made around the concept of feminism and how little was actually accomplished once the movement became more of a brand. It started with putting names to everyday casual sexism (think “mansplaining,” “manspreading,” “the pink tax,” and “rape culture”) and ended with feminist publications telling their readers to raise awareness, often by sharing the pieces on their sites. As Alexandre explains, these sites eclipsed the work of grassroots activists and organizers, many of them people of color with a vested interest in tangible changes for the women in their communities and beyond. Some of these women weren’t just ignored, they were shouted down.
2014 was also peak girlboss time; powerful, visible women with influence from Sheryl Sandberg to Leandra Medine gave feminism a neoliberal slant, which opened the floodgates for feminism to be anything you wanted it to be. Burn your bra or don’t; hate men or don’t; keep your hair on your head and off your legs, or vice versa. Feminism in 2014 told women it was okay to take up space and to do whatever they pleased with that space, regardless of the broader impact—fuck what men think.
But debunking the myth of the scary feminist also widened the scope of what effective feminist action looked like. There’s no need to go to protests or call your public officials; you don’t even have to watch the news—quote tweeting a headline about a random workplace sexual harassment scandal or sharing infographics on Instagram were enough. Progress was stalled in service of aesthetics, pink pussy hats, and mugs labeled “white male tears.” As Alexandre says in her essay:
“Feminism doesn't just mean you think men and women should be equal; lots of people believe that in the abstract, and it doesn't stop them from acting in sexist ways. The word feminism refers to a specific movement, a tradition of theory and activism that's accomplished a ton in the last century, that's greatly raised the status of women. When people describe feminists as bra-burning extremists, that's who they're trying to discredit. So, to see people demonizing the activists who won you your rights and to respond with ‘we have nothing to do with them, we just want equality’, well, kind of throws previous waves under the bus and normalizes the word feminist without doing much to normalize the movement.”
The culling of Feminism: The Movement made more room to stretch Feminism: The Belief. And the belief became that women and girls could literally do whatever they wanted. The choice feminism of the 2010s allowed for the mindset that anything a woman does is feminist. Breathing? Feminism. Having a job? Feminism. Having your own apartment? Feminism. Working at Lockheed Martin? Feminism. Playing an active part in gentrifying a neighborhood? Feminism. Portraying an unattainable lifestyle on Instagram to hawk your wares? Feminism. Plastic surgery and injections? Feminist as fuck!!! You’re not doing it for the male gaze, you’re doing it for you. Good for you! You deserve it.
What’s more un-feminist? To say you think most of the injections people get done look garish or to cheer on those around you succumbing to getting a two-for-one deal on a BBL and 250ccs of Juvéderm plunged into their face?
I felt terrible every time I would see women with obvious filler and think, “God, she looks terrible with all of that shit in her face. Kylie Jenner has struck again.” I would think that to express that opinion would be un-feminist of me even after my lengthy sociology tutorial in first year, where we talked about self-image, feminism, and plastic surgery, questioning if it played into patriarchal norms or defied them. Good For You Feminism had me in its throes.
People blew a gasket when Hannah Neeleman admitted that she doesn’t even know what feminism means anymore, but a lot of people never knew what it meant in the first place.
A world without feminism looks like women and girls of color who face domestic and state violence in their homes every day. States in the U.S. preferring women die in childbirth or putting them through broken criminal justice systems instead of letting them have self-determination over their own lives. Being last hired and first fired. Across the world, in places like Congo, Sudan, Palestine, and Lebanon, women are miscarrying, starving, and facing increased risks of sexual assault. Governments and systems contribute to women’s suffering every day, and women participate in those governments and systems. People working against the best interests of women are making choices for us; none of it will change if we’re so preoccupied with aesthetics.
In her 1969 essay “The Personal is Political,” Carol Hanisch explicates the reason why women’s issues are intrinsically tied to systemic issues:
“One of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution... I’ve been forced to take off the rose-colored glasses and face the awful truth about how grim my life really is as a woman.”
It almost feels like women (particularly women in the global north) are now too scared and confused to do as Hanisch did. It’s much easier to perform the doublespeak of telling a woman to love her body, even if loving her body means consistent trips to the aesthetician’s office. It’s much easier to tell women to find a man to pay for your lifestyle at the expense of your bodily autonomy; he’s paying for everything, so really, you have the jump on him. It’s much easier to think a conservative woman stalwart in her values was never told about feminism or lost her way and we need to herd her back into the fold. We found a better mascot for the case against patriarchy; Amber Heard may not have been the perfect victim, but Hannah Neeleman sure is.
We should all value the small amount of control we have over our lives. Sure, we recognize how little we have power over, but how are we using what we do have? What we do with that control says a lot about who we are. This is what these women have decided to do with theirs.
So, this is a story about control. Our control. Control of what we say. Control of what we do. And this time, Jenner and Neeleman are gonna do it their way. I hope you enjoy this as much as they do. Are we ready? They are. 'Cause it's all about control. And they’ve got lots of it.
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