Oh That’s So Raven!
It seems nowadays Ms. Raven Symone is coming for everyone! This ranges from her comments on Oprah, on Harriet Tubman being on the twenty dollar bill, defending Univision anchor Rodner Figueroa’s racist comments about Michelle Obama, and now she is coming for Queen B herself — Beyonce. During The View Whoopi Goldberg discussed about Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s comments about Beyonce’s sexuality in her music and her performances. Ms. Raven seemed to be siding with Mike Huckabee stating that Beyonce should, “put some pants on when people [Beyonce] are performing nowadays…I think there does need to be some class in the female pop world” as well as comparing her to the the female pop star Miss Janet Jackson. Ms. Symone argues that Janet Jackson is doing the right balance of sexuality in her music and performances saying that she is, “staying classy”. But, Raven is uplifting one woman’s ownership of her sexuality while denouncing another woman’s ownership of her sexuality. She is building up one, while tearing down the other one at the same time! Umm…Ms. Raven who died and let you decided how a woman should go about owning her sexuality and how she goes about representing it?
Beyonce just like Janet Jackson is taking back her power, owning her sexuality, and she is in charge of herself as well as her body. Some women are more comfortable and happy wearing a high buttoned collar long dress while some women are more comfortable and happy wearing nothing but a bra and a jean mini skirt. A woman is the only one who gets to define herself, her body, and her worth; no one else! One way of a woman expressing herself and her sexuality is not above the other woman’s way of expressing herself and her sexuality! It is about female empowerment, a woman is in control of how her body is seen, and control of her own sexuality.
No one can tell her to be sexy, but not too sexy. To be promiscuous, but not too promiscuous. No one can tell her how long her hem on her skirt should be, how her hair should look, how much makeup she should put on, and what dances she can; and cannot do. If Beyonce wants to run around the stage shaking her booty in short shorts or in a little skimpy bikini piece, than she can! Raven Symone is regurgitating what society has trained us into believing of how a woman’s body should be, what the woman’s body should do, and how a woman’s body should be seen.
Judith Butler goes into this training of how we as people are, “performing gender” through our postures, our actions, and through our daily tasks. We become disengaged and become docile bodies, because we conform to these expectations of our genders. We associate the value of the body by what is its “originating principle” just as we do with any other object. Butler illustrates this mistaken concept with an example from Ancient Greece about how a hyle is a wood or timber where construction is made and also is the principle of origin as well as development. She summarizes up this issue that stemmed from this double meaning when she states that, “that which matters about an object is its matter”. She is saying that a body becomes a body from its matter (or value), it seizes to exist as an individual physical body. It becomes an illusion for which we forget is an illusion. The female body and the women than are, “fully restricted to the reproductive domain”. The body becomes only matter (only comes to exist) through this value that is rooted within its origins. The individual body isn’t seen as it is, but as its use.
Women are individuals, there is no woman who is the same as another, and we shouldn’t be treating them this way. We shouldn’t be lumping them up all together and forcing them to act a certain way, dress a certain way, and be a certain way! We shouldn’t be shaming or dictating how a woman should be or how she presents herself. This especially shouldn’t be the case of a woman shaming another woman for her sexuality, how she dresses, and how she acts (that’s right I’m talking to you Ms. Raven!)
I usually am very supportive, and I usually agree with Raven especially when she brings up social issues and social standards that are just not fitting the bill, but I am very disappointed in her trying to put down Beyonce in this way. I have to be honest seems a bit shady to me. It’s just sad really.
Try to do better next time Ms. Raven I know you can!