Senior computer engineering major
When I scan headlines and feeds for gender-equality news, I am inundated by commentary on this or that music video and celebration or condemnation of the views and actions of celebrities. As someone relatively new to feminism, I am one part surprised, two parts distressed that (as far as I can tell) a majority of the discourse about these issues is so limited.
I’ve never really been into pop culture. I listen to enough radio to be sick of whomever is in the top 10, but I don’t go out of my way to watch interviews or generally pay attention to the personal lives of stars. Many people I respect follow that stuff much more closely, and I can see how healthy criticism of the culture that absorbs so many people is not wasted.
Unfortunately, this criticism isn’t very effective. The culture of criticism works well in academia, in which respectful, intelligent, opinionated people disagree but often change their mind or the minds of others if given a good argument and evidence. It doesn’t work on stars. Criticism does not seem to change the way artists behave; instead it feeds the media machine that drives their fame or infamy. The old “any press is good press” belief is working in favor of the stars, to the detriment of everyone else.
When stars take the spotlight, our writers and readers have much less room to discuss everything else. Sure, it matters whether Frozen was good feminism or not, but it doesn’t matter nearly as much as the upcoming higher court challenges to the new health care law or anti-violence movements or a million other things we ought to care about.
Why is this happening? Why do we get drawn like moths to the flame wars over Jennifer Lawrence or Miley Cyrus or Robin Thicke? You’re in the minority if you know who Kathleen Sibelius is (U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services), but the decisions she makes will have a much greater impact on real lives than anything those artists do.
Why, then? Because it is easy. Pop is saccharin, familiar and digestible. You can take a stance and feel like a part of a group, feel the thrill of identifying with the right side. You can like and share and your friends will like and share in return, instead of ignoring you for caring about real things. You can be a good feminist as long as you are up-to-date on who said what and what the right, sex- and body-positive, intersectional response is. You don’t need to dig, you don’t need to strive to understand, you don’t need to face the hard realities that gender equality and feminist movements were founded to confront; real people are treated unfairly in large part because of the implicit biases of those in power.
The deafening noise of celebrity coverage and deadly silence of the issues of real people is amplified by the prioritization of a few choice issues. Rape culture becomes synonymous with two or three highly public court cases, instead of the pervasive, you-and-your-friends-and-family problem that it really is. Wins at the voting booth for gay marriage means for too many that the battle for equal treatment is over, when other marginalized groups still suffer unequal treatment in public spaces.
I am not that good at feminism or activism. But I know that posting, commenting, sharing and liking only stories about pop culture isn’t going to solve real problems, no matter which side you are on.
This is part of the opinion section’s Friday package on gender equality.
