Singer’s messages of strength, spirit resonated with women
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 both 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, here 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.
To music writer Caryn Rose, Franklin’s message in that song was deliberate. “She knew what the message was, and she intended it,” says Rose, who wrote the essay on Franklin in “Women Who Rock.” Redding himself basically conceded defeat — with good humor — when singing the song at the Monterey Pop Festival. “This next song is a song that a girl took away from me,” he said. “A good friend of mine ... but I’m still gonna do it anyway.” It’s hard now to imagine a male voice singing the song.
Though “Respect” was probably her most famous anthem of female empowerment, there were other songs of great resonance to women, like “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” written by Carole King. It’s a love song, of course. But in Franklin’s rendition, somehow it became, unmistakably, about womanhood. “It’s celebrating in the gloriousness of being female,” says McDonnell. “So yes, it’s a feminist anthem, too.”
No performance of that song was more lauded than when Franklin performed it for King herself at the 38th annual Kennedy Center Honors in December 2015. As is customary, King didn’t know that Franklin would be there to honor her. She was overwhelmed from the first second. As for President Barack Obama, he was wiping away tears. When Franklin threw off her fur coat toward the end and raised her arms, the crowd erupted.