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11 Awesome Women Who Do Feminism the “Wrong” Way

Editor’s Note: This post is satire.

Is there anything worse than a talented, intelligent woman accomplishing great things while doing feminism the wrong way? No. No, there is not. When I look at female actors and writers and musicians who have made a name for themselves, I don’t think about what an inspiration they are in a society where the glass ceiling still exists, or where politicians attempt to hijack our vaginas on the regular, or where magazine culture cultivates an impossible standard of beauty, or where the advertising industry wants us to hate ourselves. I don’t even think about how much I enjoy their music and books and TV shows. Instead, what I like to do is climb into my ideological echo chamber – or hop onto the internet – and shout until I’m convinced the ghost of Simone de Beauvoir has been placated.

So, here’s a list of 11 amazing, powerful, pro-women women who have pulled feminist ideology out of the ether and lived it out in a messy world. Sure they have achieved great success while promoting social, political, and economic equality, but who cares about that? There’s only one way to do feminism and these women did it wrong, wrong, wrong. BeyoncĂ© Who runs the world? Girls! Or so BeyoncĂ© – the richest, most revered musician of our time – wants to make you think she thinks should be true. Why else would she sing about female empowerment and why else would she have said this in a recent interview with GQ:

You know, equality is a myth, and for some reason, everyone accepts the fact that women don’t make as much money as men do. I don’t understand that. Why do we have to take a backseat? I truly believe that women should be financially independent from their men. And let’s face it, money gives men the power to run the show. It gives men the power to define value. They define what’s sexy. And men define what’s feminine. It’s ridiculous.
Nice try, Bey! But the feminist blogs tell me the reason you’re so good at looking good and dancing good and singing good and moving your body in truly extraordinary ways is because you’re pandering to the male gaze. It’s not that you’re proud of your body and your skills and that you’re claiming your sexuality as your own and doing with it whatever you damn well please; it’s that you’re in the business of giving men boners. That’s your main thing. Tina Fey First female head writer on Saturday Night Live, four truckloads of Emmys and Golden Globes and SAG and WGA awards, NYT bestselling memoirist, beloved showrunner, Mean Girls scribe, mom, wife. Pretty much the beacon of inspiration for those wide-eyed “third-wave” feminists. OK, but what about the fact that Liz Lemon, her fictional meta-counterpart, was a neurotic single woman who was ridiculed by the male characters on her show for eating too many sandwiches and wearing too many lesbian shoes? Huh? What about that? And then how about the fact that she got married to a man in the final season of 30 Rock? Marriage is the way The Man keeps us down! Even if that marriage happens in a Princess Leia costume. Hillary Clinton Blah, blah, blah, most well-traveled, beloved Secretary of State of all time. Trotting around the globe advocating for equality for all human beings. Every Democrat’s first choice for the 2016 presidency. I think what we’re forgetting, though, that she dropped her maiden name, “Rodham,” and sometimes even called herself “Mrs. Bill Clinton” when her husband was in office because it freaked out southern voters. And let’s not forget that she stay married to her husband even after he engaged in the most highly publicized sex scandal of all time. When I read about “Mrs. Bill Clinton” digging drinking wells with her bare hands in Rwanda, all I can think about is how she sold all us women out back in the ’90s.

Lena Dunham It’s like, “Oh, look at me, I’m Lena Dunham. I wrote and produced and directed and starred in my own indie film that caught Judd Apatow’s eye and now I have my own Golden Globe-winning show on HBO called Girls and it’s about girls and it’s written and directed and acted-in by me, a girl with a regular human body, and sometimes I show my body, and in an entertainment world saturated with male antiheroes – about whom no one complains about “lack of fuckabiliy,” mind you – I created complicated characters who make really terrible decisions sometimes because that’s how stories work.” Which: Fine, whatever, I guess. But way to only show entitled girls. And way to infantilize them. And way to employ only the actors who are the children of famous people. If Dunham had been a true feminist, she would have written about a highly-functioning 24-year-olds who have their careers and love lives sorted and survive in one of the world’s expense cities without any help from their parents. Also, she would have hired real unknown actresses. Well-educated, un-connected, serious thespian ladies. Like happens so often in Hollywood. J.K. Rowling It’s always struck me as odd that we celebrate JK Rowling for creating the “best-selling book series in history” and “breathing life into a dying industry” and “bettering the lives and imaginations of innumerable children” and “spending tens of millions dollars every year to combat poverty and social inequality” when the books in question are about a boy. In fact, two of the three main characters are boys. You want to be a feminist icon, Rowling? Write a book with a female heroine. It doesn’t count if her name isn’t in the book’s title. Oprah I don’t know, I just think that if I had the most-watched nationally syndicated talk show for half a century, and also was a self-made billionaire, and also was the world’s most influential woman, I’d spend a little less time talking to housewives and stay-at-home moms with pedestrian language like “be your best self!” and more time talking to like-minded, highly-educated ladies about things that matter, like the institution of heteronormativity and the deconstruction of phallocentric hegemony.

Taylor Swift This girl. In an industry that chews up young women and spits them out as carefully branded virgins or whores, she is the queen of her own creative commonwealth. She moved to Nashville when she was 14, and in nine years, she has put our four multi-platinum records, all of which contain music she wrote, music she sings, music she accompanies, music that resonates across oceans and generations. Some critics say it’s because she is speaking universal truths with her hopeful and heartbroken lyrics. But whatever. She sings too much about wanting to honor the patriarchy with heterosexual love and marriage. And in her music videos, the villains are always brunettes. (Color-shaming much?) And instead of only calling out the men who do her dirty in her lyrics, she also calls out the “other women” who participated in the dirt-doing. (Slut-shaming much?) Plus she said in an interview one time that she understands feminism to be “men vs. women,” which is incorrect, and I will never forgive her. Lady Gaga Lady Gaga said with her very own mouth that she is not a feminist, which, of course, is the first sign that a woman is doing feminism wrong. Other signs: Too blonde! Too thin! Too commercially mainstream! So what if she turns both gender and sexuality on their heads and refuses to conform to society’s binaries! So what if her music and her persona provide a refuge for the “little monsters” that choose to embrace their otherness! So what if her music videos are social and political critiques on par with the writings of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens! So what if she spends her money and her time and her artistry to promote equality! She also hails men. Hails them! She said so in an interview. “I hail men, I love men, I celebrate American male culture— beer, bars, and muscle cars.” Kristen Wiig That she wrote and starred in an all-female comedy that eventually became the highest-grossing film of Judd Apatow’s career is of little consequence. Neither is her role in Whip It, another all-female film, this one a coming-of-age drama about finding empowerment in the camaraderie of badass ladies. See, because with Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig lost her place at the feminist table because she capitulated to a gross standard of male humor. She turned the feminist ideal into an equity of stupidity by appealing to the only people who belch and vomit: men. Also, when she was doing her press tour for Bridesmaids, she refused to call herself a feminist. Instead, she danced around the question and said she’s “pro-women.” Pathetic. Diane Sawyer & Katie Couric At first glance, you might think think two of America’s most celebrated female journalists – and the only two women who have ever hosted nightly network news programs solo – would be shoe-ins for the title of “feminist.” But how wrong you are! Luckily, I found out all the way back in 2009 that they were suspect because they are “newsmommies.” The problem is that they seem kind of maternal, which makes them seem kind of non-threatening, which means that they’re not assertive or independent. It’s like, when you think about Tom Brokaw and Charles Gibson, what’s the first word that comes to mind? Threatening, right? Just absolutely menacing. Until women like Diane and Katie start asserting themselves and acting like their aggressive male counterparts, we’re never going to have equality in televisual journalism.

This post is obviously satire. I need to point that out because: a) the internet translates things weirdly sometimes, and b) even fake-talking bad about J.K. Rowling hurts me in my heart. Who runs the world? Hermione! But let’s use my sarcasm as a springboard: What do you think of the feminist critiques – all of which I’ve read on feminist blogs and in feminist magazines – of these successful, beloved women?

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