{"id":57639,"date":"2013-12-28T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2013-12-28T17:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=57639"},"modified":"2013-12-28T14:51:50","modified_gmt":"2013-12-28T19:51:50","slug":"my-two-cents-on-feminism-and-miley-cyrus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/12\/28\/my-two-cents-on-feminism-and-miley-cyrus\/","title":{"rendered":"My Two Cents on Feminism and Miley Cyrus"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re celebrating the end of the year with our most popular posts from 2013, plus a few of our favorites tossed in. \u00a0Enjoy!<\/em><\/p>\n

Oddly, three high profile female musicians find themselves in a public debate about what it means to be a feminist.\u00a0 We can thank Miley Cyrus for the occasion.\u00a0 After claiming that the video for Wrecking Ball<\/a> was inspired by Sinead O\u2019Connor\u2019s Nothing Compares to You<\/a>, O\u2019Connor wrote an open letter<\/a> to the performer.\u00a0 No doubt informed by Cyrus\u2019 performance at the VMAs, she argued that the music industry would inevitably exploit Cyrus\u2019 body and leave her a shell of a human being. \u00a0Amanda Palmer, another strong-minded female musician, responded to O’Connor<\/a>.\u00a0 She countered with the idea that all efforts to control women\u2019s choices, no matter how benevolent, were anti-feminist.<\/p>\n

I keep receiving requests to add my two cents.\u00a0 So, here goes: I think they’re both right, but only half right. \u00a0And, when you put the two sides together, the conclusion\u00a0isn\u2019t as simple as either of them makes it out to be.\u00a0 Both letters are kind, compelling, and smart, but neither capture the deep contradictions that Cyrus \u2013 indeed all women in the U.S. \u2013 face every day.<\/p>\n

Cyrus in Wrecking Ball<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot_7\"<\/a><\/p>\n

O’Connor warns Cyrus that the music industry is patriarchal and capitalist.\u00a0 In so many words, she explains that the capitalists will never pay Cyrus what she\u2019s worth because doing so leaves nothing to skim off the top.\u00a0 The whole point is to exploit her.\u00a0 Meanwhile, her exploitation will be distinctly gendered because sexism is part of the very fabric of the industry.\u00a0 O\u2019Connor writes:<\/p>\n

The music business doesn’t give a shit about you, or any of us. They will prostitute you for all you are worth\u2026 and when you end up in rehab as a result of being prostituted, \u201cthey\u201d will be sunning themselves on their yachts in Antigua, which they bought by selling your body…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whether Cyrus ends up in rehab remains to be seen but O\u2019Connor is, of course, right about the music industry. This is not something that requires argumentation, but is simply true in a patriarchal, capitalist society.\u00a0 For-profit industries are for profit<\/i>.\u00a0 You may think that\u2019s good or bad, but it is, by definition, about finding ways to extract money from goods and services and one does that by selling it for more than you paid for it.\u00a0 And media companies of all kinds are dominated at almost all levels by (rich, white) men. These are the facts.<\/p>\n

Disagreeing, Palmer claims that O\u2019Connor herself is contributing to an oppressive environment for women.\u00a0 All women\u2019s choices, Palmer argues, should be considered fair game.<\/p>\n

I want to live in a world where WE as women determine what we wear and look like and play the game as our fancy leads us, army pants one minute and killer gown the next, where WE decide whether or not we\u2019re going to play games with the male gaze\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Palmer\u2019s utopia, no one gets to decide what\u2019s best for women.\u00a0 The whole point is to have all options on the table, without censure, so women can pick and choose and change their mind as they so desire.<\/p>\n

This is intuitively pleasing and seems to mesh pretty well with a decent definition of \u201cfreedom.\u201d\u00a0 And women do have more choices \u2013 many, many more choices \u2013 than recent generations of women. They are now free to vote in elections, wear pants, smoke in public, have their own bank accounts, play sports, go into men\u2019s occupations and, yes, be unabashedly sexual.\u00a0 Hell they can even run for President.\u00a0 And they get to still do all the feminine stuff too!\u00a0 Women have it pretty great right now and Palmer is right that we should defend these options.<\/p>\n

So, both are making a feminist argument.\u00a0 What, then, is the source of the disagreement?<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor and Palmer are using different levels of analysis.\u00a0 Palmer\u2019s is straightforwardly individualistic: each individual woman should be able to choose what she wants to do.\u00a0 O\u2019Connor\u2019s is strongly institutional: we are all operating within a system \u2013 the music industry, in this case, or even \u201csociety\u201d \u2013 and that system is powerfully deterministic.<\/p>\n

The truth is that both are right and, because of that, neither sees the whole picture.\u00a0 On the one hand, women are<\/i> making individual choices. They are not complete dupes of the system.\u00a0 They are architects of their own lives.\u00a0\u00a0 On the other hand, those individual choices are<\/i> being made within a system.\u00a0 The system sets up the pros and cons, the rewards and punishments, the paths to success and the pitfalls that lead to failure.\u00a0 No amount of wishing it were different will make it so.\u00a0 No individual choices change that reality.<\/p>\n

So, Cyrus may indeed be \u201cin charge of her own show,\u201d as Palmer puts it.\u00a0 She may have chosen to be a \u201craging, naked, twerking sexpot\u201d all of her own volition.\u00a0 But why?\u00a0 Because that\u2019s what the system rewards.\u00a0 That\u2019s not freedom, that\u2019s a strategy.<\/p>\n

In sociological terms, we call this a patriarchal bargain<\/a>.\u00a0 Both men and women make them and they come in many different forms. Generally, however, they involve a choice to manipulate the system to one\u2019s best advantage without challenging the system itself.\u00a0 This may maximize the benefits that accrue to any individual woman, but it harms women as a whole.\u00a0 Cyrus\u2019 particular bargain \u2013 accepting the sexual objectification of women in exchange for money, fame, and power \u2013 is a common one.\u00a0 Serena Williams<\/a>, Tila Tequila<\/a>, Kim Kardashian<\/a>, and Lady Gaga<\/a> do it too.<\/p>\n

We are all Miley, though.\u00a0 We all make patriarchal bargains, large and small.\u00a0 Housewives do when they support husbands\u2019 careers on the agreement that he share the dividends.\u00a0 Many high-achieving women do when they go into masculinized occupations to reap the benefits, but don\u2019t challenge the idea that occupations associated with men are of greater value.\u00a0 None of us have the moral high ground here.<\/p>\n

So, is Miley Cyrus a pawn of industry patriarchs?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Can her choices be fairly described as good for women?\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how power works. It makes it so that essentially all choices can be absorbed into and mobilized on behalf of the system.\u00a0 Fighting the system on behalf of the disadvantaged \u2013 in this case, women \u2013 requires individual sacrifices that are extraordinarily costly.\u00a0 In Cyrus\u2019 case, perhaps being replaced by another artist who is willing to capitulate to patriarchy with more gusto.\u00a0 Accepting the rules of the system translates into individual gain, but doesn\u2019t exactly make the world a better place.\u00a0 In Cyrus\u2019 case, her success is also an affirmation that a woman\u2019s worth is strongly correlated with her willingness to commodify her sexuality.<\/p>\n

Americans want their stories to have happy endings.\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry I don\u2019t have a more optimistic read.\u00a0 If the way out of this conundrum were easy, we\u2019d have fixed it already.\u00a0 But one thing\u2019s for sure: it\u2019s going to take collective<\/i> sacrifice to bring about a world in which women\u2019s humanity is so taken-for-granted that no individual woman\u2019s choices can undermine it.\u00a0 To get there, we\u2019re going to need to acknowledge the power of the system, recognize each other as conscious actors, and have empathy for the difficult choices we all make as we try to navigate a difficult world.<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re celebrating the end of the year with our most popular posts from 2013, plus a few of our favorites tossed in. \u00a0Enjoy! Oddly, three high profile female musicians find themselves in a public debate about what it means to be a feminist.\u00a0 We can thank Miley Cyrus for the occasion.\u00a0 After claiming that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":57678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[279,98,55,2096,2095,2093,868,120],"class_list":["post-57639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-objectification","tag-capitalism","tag-gender","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-feminismactivism","tag-gender-objectification","tag-power","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/10\/Screenshot_118.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57639"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60835,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57639\/revisions\/60835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}