In Franklin’s anthems, women heard an empowering message
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 second-wave 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.”
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.”
Franklin would later say she intended to convey a message about respect that was broader than any one movement. “The statement was something that was very important, and where it was important to me, it was important to others,” she told Vogue magazine. “Not just me or the civil rights movement or women – it’s important to people. … Because people want respect, even small children, even babies. As people, we deserve respect from one another.”