Why no nudes would be good news for women
If female celebrities want to empower other women, they can do it in other ways apart from stripping off, writes Eilis O’Hanlon
IT’S not hard to understand why tennis legend Serena Williams might want to pose naked on the cover of Vanity Fair. Since she first came on the scene, there have been legions of unkind comments about her muscular frame and typically “masculine” waist indentation. What better way to prove them wrong than by stripping off ?
It’s depressing, though, that Serena Williams feels a need to “prove” her femininity by stripping off, as if being brilliant at what you do isn’t enough, you also have to show the world that you’re hot as well. Her accomplishments should speak for themselves.
That’s what was so refreshing about her response last week when middle-aged moaner John McEnroe declared that the world’s No.1 female tennis star would only be ranked around 700 if the ratings for male and female players were combined.
McEnroe’s complaint was absurd. Of course Serena wouldn’t do as well against men. That’s why there’s a women’s circuit. Does he really struggle that much with the idea of “different but equal”?
Rather than rising to the bait, however, Serena dismissed him with withering scorn, retorting: “Respect me and my privacy, as I’m trying to have a baby. Good day, sir.”
And what further proof, come to think of it, does Serena need to show for being a real live woman than having a baby? Men don’t have wombs.
She’s not the only female celebrity to whip her clothes off for the cameras, though. Danish tennis player Caroline Wozniacki has also just bared all on the cover of ESPN’s Body Issues magazine, and no one ever accused her of secretly being a man. Her former boyfriend, Irish golfer Rory McIlroy, would surely have noticed, for one thing.
Seemingly, it’s all about accepting the way you look. Big or small, we all look great. Or something like that.
If it sounds like the tag line for an ad, that’s no coincidence. Wozniacki may want the world to embrace bodies of all shapes and sizes, but it certainly helps that she looks better than most in the buff. Nor does it hurt the commercial potential of her brand.
The same goes for Serena Williams. She might be posing nude, cradling her baby bump, as a defiant gesture against a culture which, the argument goes, sees pregnant women as fat and undesirable, but she learned she was having her first child earlier this year whilst in the middle of a photo shoot for a lingerie company.
Was that a bold statement of female empowerment too? These days, the short answer to this seems to be that it is if the woman in question says that it is. As long as she insists she’s is in control of her nakedness, that’s all we’re meant to need to back her to the hilt. You go, girl. And all that.
When that woman also happens to be a strong, politically-aware African-American, whose body has become a battleground for undoubted racists and sexists to fight over, then the hurdles that must be overcome before we’re permitted to criticise her become ever more formidable.
But one doesn’t need to be a professor of Women’s Studies to feel uneasy at the commodification of female bodies, or to see that the very fact there are large amounts of money to be made by getting one’s kit off may complicate somewhat the ideological purity of the transaction.
Women should be free to take off as many or as few items of clothing as makes them feel comfortable, sexy, powerful, autonomous.
Indeed, it would be nice to think that, as part of the resistance against ultrareligious puritanism, the same support would be given to working class girls who strip off for peanuts as celebrities who do it for millions. You shouldn’t need to be rich before your right to disrobe is stoutly defended by other women.
But must we really nod politely and pretend to agree when they insist it’s some grand feminist statement?
Professional media feminist Caitlin Moran, who wrote an astonishingly silly, if successful, book called How To Be A Woman, even tried to claim that Lady Gaga is challenging masculinity when she takes off her clothes because her sexuality is “neurotic, damaged, freakish”, and is therefore something “for women and gays to talk about. It’s self-expression, not a peepshow.”
Anyone tempted to fall for this nonsense is directed to the video for Telephone, the song which Ms Gaga (we’re all about equality here, there will be no aristocratic titles) recorded with Beyonce.
It begins in a women’s prison. Sure, you know what those places are like, right? Before you know it, Gaga and her dancers are gyrating around the cells in their undies.
The video has been watched more than 280 million times on YouTube. Let’s assume for argument’s sake that half of them were men. How many of these 140 million men does Caitlin Moran seriously believe were sitting at home, saying: “Oh, my masculinity feels so challenged now. I just can’t get turned on by these half-naked women at all. Their defiant display of intersectional feminism has completely emasculated the little chap in my trousers”?
If so, she is seriously underestimating the ability of heterosexual men to derive satisfaction from the female form in all its many guises.
Whether it’s done for cash or the sisterhood, the reason men look at the pictures is exactly the same. Not a single one of them is sitting there, thinking: “Phwoar, look at the gender equality on that.”
Raunchiness should be one of the options for women. No one in their right mind is arguing with that. Sexual identity can be a formidable weapon.
Increasingly, though, sexiness seems to be the default option for young women and girls.
It’s becoming as obligatory now as modesty ever was in the past, and the flashing of celebrity flesh is an essential part of selling that message.
They shouldn’t get a free pass from criticism just because they happen to come from groups who’ve historically faced prejudice because of race, gender, or sexuality.
However much they may feel like victims, they are extraordinarily powerful compared to the young girls who hang on their every word. “You don’t have to strip off, pose and pout to get attention” may just be the most radical precept you could give them.
Oprah Winfrey inspired and empowered millions with a book club. I still don’t know what she looks like naked. Women and the world at large are none the worse for it.
‘You don’t have to strip off, pose and pout to get attention’