We Were Feminists Once

by Andi Zeisler

  Ms., in its early years, courted Hollywood types as ambassadors for what was in the magazine’s first decade a key issue: ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The provision drafted to ensure that “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex” was first introduced in Congress in 1923, but failed to pass both houses of Congress again and again, even with bipartisan support. By 1972, it looked like the ERA’s time had come, despite the organized efforts of Phyllis Schlafly and her STOP ERA crusade.2 But though it passed Congress, it still required ratification by three-quarters of state legislatures. By 1979, with the deadline looming, and three states short of ratification, passing the ERA was mainstream liberal feminism’s most tangible goal—and a logical rallying point with which to garner celebrity support. A 1978 issue of Ms. featured Mary Tyler Moore, M*A*S*H’s Alan Alda, Good Times’s Esther Rolle, and thirty-four other TV, film, and music personalities in what the cover line promised was “Hollywood’s new act”—stumping for the ERA. Robert Redford, Shirley MacLaine, Warren Beatty, and others were publicly on record as supporters; Alda became an official feminist heartthrob when he stated that “Feminism is not just women’s business.” (The ERA was still three states shy by the extended deadline of 1982; as of 2016, the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex.)

  Celebrity participation in politics and culture has changed as politics itself has shifted to be more and more about celebrity, as presidential debates turn into clown-car clusterfucks, and “Would you have a beer with this candidate?” is considered as crucial a factor as policy positions. Politicians today have to be entertainers, on top of everything else, because unless we know whether our future leader can crack wise on The Tonight Show or gamely dance alongside Ellen DeGeneres, dammit, we just won’t know whether they’re personable or friendly or not-uppity enough to lead the country. This, too, is less about the players than it is about the game; conglomeration of media creation and an increased focus on the bottom line functionally privilege soundbites over substance and virality over rigor. (I would definitely vote for Hillary Clinton, but that doesn’t mean I want to see her attempt to do the Whip with Ellen or stumble over dialogue on Saturday Night Live.)

  When actual entertainers get political, things often seem just as ungenuine. In the churn of Web sites, podcasts, talk radio shows, social media platforms, and gossip forums competing for fickle eyeballs, the difference between a bombshell scoop and a dud retread rests on the name of the celebrity involved. Fashion magazines regularly include pages documenting the celebrity attendees of charity events for nonprofits you’ll never hear about again. Marches and boycotts are out, replaced by art-directed “brand ambassadorships” on behalf of socially-minded corporations. Hollywood’s PR ecosystem includes firms that exist solely to match celebrities with humanitarian causes, and though plenty of stars are low-pro about buffing up their brands, they still have to tread lightly lest their names get mixed up with partisanship, moral or religious judgment, or hot-button controversy. (AIDS activism in South Africa? Too political. Children’s aid in South Africa? Perfect—the adorable photo ops alone are money in the bank.)

  But as a social issue that celebrities get behind, feminism is categorically different than fighting against tiger extinction or hosting fundraisers for the World Food Programme or Heifer International, and more complicated as well. Rather than simply pushing awareness of gender-equality issues beyond a strictly activist arena, we still need celebs for the far more basic task of proving feminism’s legitimacy as a movement to begin with. If we can’t get an action-movie star with gazillions of impressionable young fans to understand, for the millionth goddamn time, that feminism isn’t about hating men or not wearing deodorant, what chance do we have of convincing anyone else? This is why the wave of celebrity feminism that began cresting in 2014—in which a number of famous actors, comedians, and pop stars jostled to claim the term like a free tennis bracelet in an awards-show gifting suite—has seemed so full of potential. And so consequently disappointing, but we’ll get to that shortly.

  Starting in 2014, headlines that used to invoke feminist refusal began glowing with admiration for those who nodded to its importance. “We Heart: Terry Crews, Fierce Feminist” cooed Ms. about the burly Brooklyn 99 actor and author of Manhood (who does seem like a total badass). “Kiera Knightley Deserves a High Five for These Feminist Truth Bombs,” insisted MTV News, while “Benedict Cumberbatch Just Became Everybody’s Favorite Feminist,” offered Elite Daily. Reading Twitter feeds and headlines on any given day has begun to feel like watching election-night results roll in on one of CNN’s giant interactive maps: We’ve got Swift! We’re getting close to winning Portman . . . closer . . . we’ve got Portman! Aziz Ansari and John Legend are in! We lost Kelly Clarkson, well, but . . . Joseph Gordon-Levitt, he’s good too! What’s that? We’ve got Ruffalo? HIGH FIVE FOR RUFFALO!

  Add to this those who have been on Team Gender Equality for even longer—Jane Fonda, Geena Davis, Rosie Perez, Lily Tomlin, Amy Poehler, and, whether you like it or not, Beyoncé—and there is something approaching a critical mass among big-marquee names. Many of them are even walking the walk, though even pointing that out reveals the puny standards of expectation for celebrity activists. Davis, Lena Dunham, Kerry Washington, Gabrielle Union, and Scarlett Johansson are among the celebrities who have appeared in ads or informational videos for Planned Parenthood in the face of its proposed federal defunding. Poehler launched the online girls-empowerment community Smart Girls at the Party in 2008. Natalie Portman, who in 2015 signed on to play a young Ruth Bader Ginsberg in the biopic On the Basis of Sex, made clear that she wouldn’t do the movie unless a female director was hired.

  Ironically, part of the catalyst for the celebrity-feminism boom of the last few years was not that so many stars were identifying as feminists, but that in many cases, they weren’t. Though “Are you a feminist?” was a question long asked of high-profile women and men interviewed by magazines like BUST and Ms. and Bitch, it’s a bit unclear how the question became a red-carpet staple wedged between “Was it hard to change your hair color for this role?” and “Who are you wearing?” Maybe the query’s popularity was tied to the increased presence of young women as leads in blockbuster action franchises like The Hunger Games and Insurgent. Perhaps it was just a result of stiff competition for celebrity scoops in an increasingly crowded field of monetized celebrity gossip, where one grabby headline can yield a whole lot of ad dollars. Actually, it’s probably both of those, but I’d argue that the growing awareness has also just reflected the more general tenor of conversation on reproductive choice, sexual harassment, high-profile rape and domestic-violence cases, and more spilling out from feminist news and social media spheres.

  It’s undeniable that, for a time, asking young female celebrities a question about feminism almost always rang up an embarrassment of triple cherries. There were the young kittens who didn’t understand the term, like former Teen Mom–turned–porn star Farrah Abraham (“What does that mean, you’re a lesbian or something?”) and actress Evangeline Lilly (“I’m very proud of being a woman, and as a woman, I don’t even like the word feminism because when I hear that word, I associate it with women trying to pretend to be men, and I’m not interested in trying to pretend to be a man”). There were a few who had absorbed the man-hater rumors, like Taylor Swift (“I don’t really think about things as guys versus girls”) and Lady Gaga (“I’m not a feminist. I love men. I hail men. I celebrate American male culture, and beer, and bars, and muscle cars . . . “). Katy Perry was among the stars who made it clear that it was the word, rather than the entire concept, that she rejected (“I am not a feminist, but I do believe in the strength of women”). Perhaps the most confounding was Insurgent star Shailene Woodley, who somehow combined all these things, plus a dash of zero-sum fallacy, into her free-associative answer: “No, because I love men, and I think the idea of ‘raise wom
en to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance. With myself, I’m very in touch with my masculine side. And I’m 50 percent feminine and 50 percent masculine, same as I think a lot of us are. And I think that is important to note. And also, I think that if men went down and women rose to power, that wouldn’t work either. We have to have a fine balance.”

  From these answers and others like them, a media cycle was born: A celebrity, usually young, white, and female, says something dopey that becomes fodder for barbed headlines (e.g., “Don’t Go Calling Taylor Swift A Feminist, Says Taylor Swift”). The celeb gets dinged for it in tweets and shares and Tumblr quotes, which causes the original clickbait to expand into a flurry of “write-around” stories—meaning ones that construct a narrative based on previous coverage—about the Fucked-up Thing She Said About Feminism. Those, in turn, spawn an attendant series of think pieces that insist said celebrity is a feminist whether she knows it or not (“Country Music Has Always Been Feminist, Even If Taylor Swift Isn’t”), followed by another string of articles that use the celebrity as a news peg to take a broader look at Why Young Women Are Rejecting Feminism. Then comes the backlash to the backlash, which involves a handful of contrary takes defending the celebrity from feminist attack (“Stop Shitting on Taylor Swift’s Feminism”). And finally, there’s the feminist-redemption arc, in which the celebrity makes headlines once again, this time for announcing that she’s rethought this whole feminism thing and, turns out, she is one (“Taylor Swift Changes Her Mind About Feminism”). Is everyone happy now?

  More vexing are the famous folks who embrace the label but then became “problematic,” to use a now-shopworn catchall of the social justice sphere. In the fall of 2013, for instance, British pop star Lily Allen released her video for “Hard Out Here,” a snarky tune that pulled few punches in excoriating pop music’s double standards (“If I told you ‘bout my sex life, you’d call me a slut/When boys be talking about their bitches, no one’s making a fuss”). The video, which opened with Allen on a gurney, undergoing liposuction (a dig at UK tabloids that constantly monitored her weight gains and losses) would “make feminists proud,” gushed one blog. Instead, it made many of them cringe when they saw that Allen, like so many male artists before her, had populated the video with a group of black and Latina female dancers. Or, to be more specific, with their asses. Where Allen stood tall, they crouched; where she preened, they twerked. The vision of a fully clothed white artist accessorizing with the scantily clad tushes of women of color while sneering “Don’t need to shake my ass for you/‘cause I’ve got a brain” was especially badly timed. Only a month before, at 2013’s MTV Video Music Awards, Miley Cyrus had committed the Twerk Seen ’Round the World alongside her own hired crew of black booties that Cyrus interacted with as though they were only incidentally attached to actual women. If Allen’s video was meant to be a parody of Cyrus, it didn’t land—it wasn’t clear whether she was critiquing the way nonwhite bodies are aggressively sexualized in pop culture, or just replicating the insult. Though Allen had plenty of defenders to argue the former angle, and addressed the criticism herself with a public statement, the video’s tacit assertion that brains were for white artists and butts for black ones sparked some well-deserved ire from feminists of all shades. It may have been a catchy song, but the most salient part of the “Hard Out Here” video was that it inadvertently highlighted the way celebrity-feminist high-fives are delivered almost exclusively to white celebrities. It’s no accident that Cyrus’s twerky-jerky sexual pantomimes and frequently-naked appearances in videos and magazines have been deemed to be the work of a “feminist icon,” while Rihanna and Nicki Minaj, both known for equally risqué presentations, continue to have onlookers shaking their heads and clutching their pearls.

  Cyrus’s journey from wholesomely perky preteen fame to hedonistic, tongue-wagging notoriety is a good example of how labeling celebrities as anything, really, is a losing game. In a time of 24-7 celebrity surveillance, corporate media has a habit of anointing famous women—especially young, white ones—as role models for the Youth of America, and then slavering over their eventual downfalls and snatching back their crowns. We’ve seen it with Britney Spears, with Lindsay Lohan, with Amanda Bynes, and with Miley. And yet it’s entirely likely that the actual parents wringing their hands over these reversals of fortune are far outnumbered by media outlets like The Huffington Post and TMZ, which leverage faux concern into scads of money by milking the incident for two solid weeks of content. Every time one of these stars crashes a car or goes to rehab is a new chance to resurrect ghosts of fallen role models past in online slideshows like “Top 10 Celebrity Girls Gone Bad.”

  And as with so much related to famous women, the boundless desire to drum up female competition makes role model–seeking into a kind of two-feminists-enter-one-feminist-leaves cage match. Emma Watson became an overnight sensation in November 2014 in the immediate wake of her speech to the United Nations, which was widely shared online. As the ambassador for the U.N. initiative HeForShe—“a solidarity movement for gender equality,” according to its Web site—Watson’s message, like Alan Alda’s before her, was a simple one: gender equality is not simply a woman’s fight. (“It is time that we all see gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals.”) Within hours of the video’s Web debut, media outlets were tripping over each other to find synonyms for “savior of feminism.” “Watch Emma Watson Deliver a Game-Changing Speech on Feminism For the U.N.” urged Vanity Fair’s Web site. “Emma Watson Gives Feminism New Life,” raved a CNN editorial.

  Watson’s speech was heartfelt, eloquent, and far more accessible to what she termed “unintentional feminists”—that is, people who basically believe in the idea but don’t self-apply the term—than a theory-heavy text or a 202-level blog post. And the media response was a perfect example of the volatile chemistry of celebrity, branding, race, and politics. The bulk of the news coverage was about Watson herself and the impact that her identification as feminist would surely have on feminism. Within that was a subcategory of missing-the-point stories like “Emma Watson Hits a High Note with Gender Equality Speech—and Wardrobe Choices” and “She Means Business! Emma Watson is Smart and Sophisticated in a Belted White Coat Dress at UN Event in Role as Goodwill Ambassador for Women”; and another subcategory of listicles reliving the groundbreaking speech itself (“The 5 Most Magical Moments from Emma Watson’s HeForShe Speech”). Amid all this, finding out exactly what HeForShe is about was not particularly easy.

  Then there was the immediate rush to hold other feminist-identifying celebrities up to Watson’s example to see who was more deserving of the title of top celebrity feminist role model. Vanity Fair promptly noted that Watson’s signature role as Hermione Granger placed her in pole position, with an influence on impressionable youth that’s “even stronger than other high-profile defenders of the F-word like Beyoncé.” Not to be outdone, the Ms. Foundation for Women actually ranked celebrity feminists in an end-of-year list, its undisclosed criteria putting Watson at the top and Bey at #4, which led to headlines like Billboard’s “Beyoncé Loses Feminist of the Year Title to Emma Watson.” In a competition that no one had asked for, corporate media outlets seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief, as though finally, finally, there was a straightforwardly appropriate celebrity vessel to express exactly the right amount of feminism in exactly the right way, with no complicating factors like scanty stagewear and Jay Z (Beyoncé), being outspokenly sexual (Rihanna, Nicki Minaj) and insufficiently angular (Lena Dunham), or doing whatever it is Taylor Swift does that precludes a wholehearted feminist embrace of her.

  The run of media Watsonmania was less about what Watson planned to accomplish in the name of feminism than it was about the “bravery” of her identity. Ditto for the cascade of fellow Hollywood types whose own declarations of feminism followed hers. Judging from the language that outlets used when reporting on this hot new phenomenon—“9 Ce
lebrity Women Who Aren’t Afraid to Call Themselves Feminist,” “10 Celebs Who Are Proud of the Feminist Label,” “10 Celebs Who Aren’t Afraid to Use the F-Word”—the big story wasn’t what feminist issues these stars cared about, but their revelatory lack of fear and disgust about aligning themselves with the word.

  In the celebrities-with-social-causes realm, this isn’t really the norm. Sure, when Elizabeth Taylor began the AIDS awareness activism that defined her post-movie life, helping to found the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), she shocked more than a few moralists; the combination of a relatively new, largely misunderstood disease and a fearfully closeted industry could have harpooned the profile of a less revered figure, and Taylor was certainly lauded as brave. But it was still the tangible content of her activism that was most often the focus. Contrast that with the list of “9 Male Celebrity Feminists Who Will Make You Swoon,” in which one marginally positive interview response, even a jumbled one (per Watson’s Harry Potter castmate Daniel Radcliffe: “I mean, yes, of course I’m a feminist inasmuch as I’m an egalitarian about everything and I believe in meritocracy”) is recycled in listicle after listicle. I’m not questioning Radcliffe’s beliefs about equality; for all I know, he has single-handedly constructed a school for girls in a remote village somewhere using cast-off scraps of Gucci tuxedos. And if young, male Harry Potter fans happen to read “6 Times Daniel Radcliffe Was Loud & Proud About Being a Feminist” while they’re, you know, perusing the women’s blogosphere, that’s great. But as with many aspects of celebrity feminism, this is setting a low bar and getting excited that it’s not actually touching the ground.

  Listicle feminism isn’t all pointless fluff; an important part of social change is shifting public perceptions with images, language, and a general subtext of This is no big deal, you guys. Representations of divorce, interracial relationships, homosexuality, and transgender identity are some of the formerly taboo subjects that have been normalized in large part because of pop culture and media representations. (Remember how weird it was when we had to pretend that Ellen DeGeneres just hadn’t found the right guy?) But there’s a fine line between transforming the controversial into the mundane and simply refashioning it into a hollow trend, and celebrity feminism is too often falling ass-first on the wrong side of it.