Real people make real role models
IF THE fragmented and bathetic correspondence between Sinead O’Connor and Miley Cyrus has taught us anything, it’s that the time has come to abandon the hopelessly naive phrase, “role model”. Cyrus, I think we can all agree — assuming that “we” are no longer adolescents — is not the stuff of which role models are made. But she certainly is influential.
I feel I am bound, using the now-standard measure of influence, to note she has almost 15-million Twitter followers; admittedly, on this score, she is still behind Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, Britney Spears and fellow “thought leaders” (another phrase we should consign to the dustbin). Still, I think you get my point.
The problem is that anyone who tries too hard to be a role model almost inevitably comes across as a moralising prude and a killjoy. This has happened to O’Connor, despite her best intentions. Furthermore, it’s difficult to shift from iconoclast to wise maternal figure without being called out for hypocrisy and condescension.
The fact is that nobody’s life bears too much close scrutiny. The more we praise famous people and idealise them as “examples”, the more we set ourselves up for disappointment when we discover their failings. We are, bizarrely, surprised to discover that even utterly likeable celebrities are imperfect. Lionel Messi is a tax dodger. Cory Monteith was the poster boy for clean living until he died of an accidental drug overdose.
But back to Miley, a fine example of what media scholar Nicky Falkof (citing cultural theorist Angela McRobbie) described as the “hegemonic co-optation of progressive language”, with the consequence that feminists “have to listen to endless dispiriting arguments about why … Miley Cyrus licking a wrecking ball is ‘empowering’ for girls”.
As always, the trouble starts at the semantic level. The words used to describe famous people are not a sound basis on which to construct an identity, particularly not if you’re a preadolescent female.
Nonetheless, although wanting to become like someone else (or the image of someone else) is a dangerous impulse, there is tremendous value in learning about other people’s experiences — especially if those people are not famous.
For this reason, I was delighted to discover that my recent visit to the Women’s Jail on Constitution Hill (1 Kotze Street, Braamfontein) coincided with the arrival of pupils from a local girls’ school.
As a physical space, a historical symbol and a repository of stories, the Women’s Jail is one of Joburg’s most important sites. This month — the month of the United Nations’ Girl Child campaigns — one of its rooms has been set aside for Our Stories, a photographic exhibition curated by the self-designated “pan-African storytelling movement”, Behind the Faces.
Twelve banners carry blackand-white portraits of women from various countries: SA, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Somalia. The close-ups are flattering and striking, but the real interest lies in the text on the walls behind them, where short passages of their narratives have been transcribed.
Some of the women fit into a “subaltern” demographic — they have HIV, live in conditions of poverty, are victims of domestic abuse or xenophobia. Others have achieved measures of success in their fields: music, work in nongovernmental organisations, psychology, entrepreneurship, poetry. But they are not famous, not yet.
Among the speakers who opened the exhibition last week was Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who took the opportunity to promote her new book, 491 Days, an account of her detention in 1969-70.
As her reputation demonstrates, one woman’s struggle champion is another woman’s manipulative, self-enriching deceiver.
I find myself in the latter camp, and was relieved that I couldn’t attend her talk. Fortunately, however, Our Stories is not skewed by Madikizela-Mandela’s presence; the everyday heroines it depicts may not be “role models”, but young women across SA would do well to see their faces and read their stories.