Female Empowerment Has Become a Joke
I didn’t watch the Grammy’s. I didn’t have to. Cardi B’s “WAP” performance continues to fill my social media feed despite my best efforts to avoid it.
What I saw was simply revolting.
When the song was first released last year, my 10-year-old daughter heard it. She didn’t really understand the words, but knew enough to feel upset and nauseated by it. I don’t blame her. My first thought was, “Gross”, followed by, “Is this what music has become?”
Many people are celebrating “WAP” as a symbol of female empowerment, of women taking control of sexual pleasure and celebrating their bodies. I could not disagree more.
Gyrating on a stage rapping about your genitals isn’t female empowerment. It’s lurid.
What Women’s Empowerment Was Supposed to Be
Ask 10 people what female empowerment means, and you’ll probably get 20 different answers. The UN defines 7 core principles of women’s empowerment ranging from promoting gender equality and fair treatment at work to promoting education and professional training for women.
Within my own network of family, friends, colleagues, and business associates, we tend to see female empowerment as a collaborative effort. It’s about encouraging young girls and women to pursue their dreams with confidence, to support and mentor one another, to give them the tools to balance careers and motherhood, and finally, to celebrate their achievements.
What Women’s Empowerment Has Become
It feels like society is moving so far to the left that anything that smacks of traditional values — however you define that — is automatically labeled bad.
Classic films like Gone with the Wind are suddenly controversial while children’s and family movies like Dumbo and Peter Pan are banned due to claims of racism.
But get on a stage half naked, grind your hips around, and throw out phrases like “empowerment” and suddenly, you’re a progressive feminist icon.
Who wouldn’t want their daughter to grow up and be just like Cardi B?
No thank you.
We Can’t Have It Both Ways
In the constant tug-of-war between fighting for equal rights vs. living in a hyper sexualized entertainment culture, how can there be a winner?
There can’t be, and this is why (sadly) feminism has gotten such a bad rap.
We talk about women’s rights, closing the gender pay gap, and ending gender discrimination, yet we expect to be taken seriously when marching for justice wearing pink hats made to look like body parts. We speak out against those who persistently objectify women, while pre-teen girls gleefully twerk and sing “WAP, WAP, WAP”.
Sorry, you just can’t have it both ways.
The irony of the Grammy’s performance taking place 1 week after International Women’s Day isn’t lost on me. When Dr. Seuss is considered more harmful to children than Cardi B gyrating on a pole singing about her genitals, we have a HUGE societal problem.
And that should concern everyone.
