New feature: High heels of clay

Helen Monks considers the continuing unreasonable pressure on female pop stars to be role models.

 Remember when Lily Allen wrote that great feminist song about how women shouldn’t need to get naked in order to get attention and then objectified a load of naked, mostly black, women in her music video in order to get attention?

Remember when Beyoncé penned that great article titled ‘Gender Equality is a Myth‘ and then appeared at the Grammys a few days later, smiling along as her husband rapped at her to “eat the cake, Anna Mae”, a reference to the violent domestic abuse and rape of Tina Turner by her husband, Ike?

Remember yet another wave of disappointment rippling our way when, in the wake of the debut of her 10th studio album, Sinéad O’Connor controversially claimed, in an interview with The Observer, to not be a feminist?

In the midst of the online anti-revolution of the anti-feminists (most noticeably using their freedom to speak freely about how they don’t need it), this declaration could not have come at a more annoying time…

Click here to read the rest of Helen’s article and comment

Image description and credit:

Beyoncé, with microphone, on a polished black stage at the Dublin 02 on 4 June 2009. She looks slightly downwards to her right with a pensive expression. She wears a fur-trimmed wedding dress with a slit at the front, with a veil framing her head and shoulders. By Caroline Delaney and shared under a Creative Commons license.