The internet seemed a very angry place yesterday. People pissed at Seth MacFarlane. People pissed at The Onion. People disgusted by “We Saw Your Boobs.” People subsequently clicking Jezebel‘s “Cleavage, Sideboob and See-Through Dresses at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party” gallery to the tune of over 2 million pageviews (by far the top-read post on their site at the time this article was written). Anne Hathaway’s nipples got their own Twitter account while #LesNipperables trended (why hasn’t anyone yet pointed out that the offending bumps were actually the DARTS on her dress??). People outraged that 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis was jokingly called a cunt for her overeager antics. People then bitching about how much they hate that cunt Anne Hathaway for her overeager antics. All in the name of feminism.
Through it all, I didn’t read one piece that said anything new. Not one that struck me as clever or meaningful. They all hit the same five (or so) points then neatly tied themselves in a bow, ready for a chorus of supportive tweets and “You Go Grrl” comments. Pop culture critique, not meant to provoke or stimulate, but to preach to the choir and be rewarded with a mountain of clicks.
When your haughty New Yorker Seth-MacFarlane-is-a-big-bad-misogynist think piece is just a Buzzfeed listicle with more words, you don’t have a think piece. You have a trend piece. And that’s what I worry mainstream media’s seemingly ubiquitous train (wreck) of feminist articles has become–trend pieces geared towards pageviews and, ultimately, ad dollars.
The formula is simple: Watch pop culture event; pray someone says something about women; reference most recently published piece of self-proclaimed feminist literature (in this case, Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In); toss in something about Rhianna/Lena/Adele; incite fauxrage to best of one’s ability. Bonus points if nudity is involved (guaranteed extra clicks). And if there’s a cat present, you don’t have to write anything else for a month.
In the same way women have been turned into commodities, so too has our political and social movement. The almost-guaranteed spike from an article shouting SEXISM is too tempting for some editors who, consciously or not, are more than willing to literally sell out the women’s movement by posting cheap ideas for cheap hits.
There’s nothing people love more than to be angry on the internet, and it’s so much easier, and safer, to band together in fury over Seth MacFarlane than it is to confront the RCMP about (allegedly) raping aboriginal women. Not to mention using their state-sanctioned power to intimidate said women, then refusing to investigate further until the very women the RCMP officers (allegedly) threatened to kill come forward. Where’s the hashtag for that one, huh? Where’s the chorus of opinion pieces? It’s easier to pontificate about high heels’ affect on feminism than a femicide in Italy where a woman was stabbed to death with her own stiletto. (Catch yourself chuckling there? But it’s Seth MacFarlane who’s a bad, bad man? Riight…)
What it all amounts to is controlled anger– anger controlled by corporate agendas. White-gloved punches that don’t even produce the shadow of a bruise. It’s not enough to make money off women’s bodies; women’s rage must also be commoditized because society’s existing power structure relies on females as consumer goods. We are most easily controlled as entities that are bought, traded, and sold. (Notice how about zero of these articles encourage anything but more clicking. Protest who? Rethink what?).
It’s only when women start to circumvent that role that we become unpredictable, become dangerous.
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Sabrina Maddeaux is Toronto Standard’s managing editor. Follow her on Twitter at @sabrinamaddeaux.
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