In Franklin’s anthems, women heard empowering messages
NEW YORK — Aretha Franklin never saw herself as a feminist heroine. That, she quipped, was Gloria Steinem’s role. But she leaves a legacy of indelible anthems that resonated deeply with women by celebrating their strength and individuality — and demanding, well, just a little respect.
“I don’t think I was a catalyst for the women’s movement,” she told Rolling Stone in 2014. “Sorry. But if I were? So much the better!”
The women’s movement was just getting going in 1967 when Franklin took on Otis Redding’s “Respect,” which soon became known as an anthem for civil rights and for feminism. Franklin changed the song’s meaning, radically, just by singing it in her own, inimitable voice. She may not have intended it to be a feminist anthem, but she surely knew how it would resonate. Instead of a man asking for his “propers” when he got home, a woman was asking for — no, requiring — that same respect, from her man and, in a broader sense, from society.
“‘Respect’ is THE secondwave feminist anthem, more than any other song I can think of,” says Evelyn McDonnell, editor of the anthology “Women Who Rock” and professor at Loyola Marymount University. “Aretha was intersectional before the term existed.” She notes that Franklin’s version of “Respect” was the quintessential “answer record” to Redding’s — in this case, with the very same song.