We haven't spoken or read much about sexual assault in this course, about crossing the boundaries of consent. I saw something about it on a feminist blog recently that really disturbed me. A 26-year-old famous musician with an ultra-curvy figure was on the Regis and Kelly Show. After her performance, Nicki Minaj spoke with the hosts of the show. Regis, almost 80, complimented her fashion sense. "I like this hem," he said, reaching his hands around the bottom of her short dress. Then he deliberately patted her butt a few times.
I saw the video a few days ago and felt really upset by the way he looked at her, touched her, and talked to her. Maybe the cartoonishness of her look - the neon hair, bright tight short dress, bright lipstick, tiny waist and huge butt, kind of vacant stare - added to his queasy tripped-out feeling. A blog called Super Hussy compared the spectacle to the 19th century freak show "performer" Sarah (or Saartjie) Baartman. Subject to many caricatures and pejorative terms, Sarah was an enslaved African woman forced to exhibit her dances and body parts, particularly the large butt (steatopygia) and extended labia genetically found in her ethnic group. Europeans viewed Sarah as so profoundly different and inhuman that normal rules of propriety and boundaries did not apply.
Back in 2010, do parts of Nicki Minaj's identity make this seem more okay? That she, like Sarah Baartman, is a black woman with a big butt? That she wears tight clothing and presents herself primarily as a sexy girl? Her style seems to parody something about the performance of girliness but in interviews she expresses no real desire to be anything but cute. Is her parody that is too subtle for me, or are costumey outfits just a trend? Either way, she didn't respond at the time, but tweeted later "Lol. I was in shock!"
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A few reporters - men of color, incidentally - have been fired recently for their supposedly racist musings. Juan Williams, author of several books on black history, said he gets nervous on airplanes when he sees Muslim passengers wearing "Muslim garb," and National Public Radio fired him. Rick Sanchez, arguing that there is a racist bias in TV reporting, said Jon Stewart is not oppressed as a Jew because "everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart." CNN fired him.
These stations decided that these men's racial comments were outside the boundaries of legitimate discourse, or that the men were to embarrassing for the stations.
I've seen no one on the internet suggest that Regis Philbin should be fired for crossing a boundary of consent and inappropriately feeling up Nicki Minaj. Maybe it's because talking honestly about race is new for many reporters, but treating female guests like sexual objects is not new for talk show hosts.
I think that, as Sarah said, there is a perception of what one can do and what one cannot do in public media. Truly, racial and ethnic intolerance have become inacceptable. However racism is still a part of our society, racist remarks from part of public figures is enough to fire them, if nothing else. However, this is definitely not the case for sexist and non-concensual actions, as the case that Sarah pointed out.
ReplyDeleteWe can take an extra consideration when we put the Nicki Minaj event in racial lines. Definitely there is still an image of the hiper-sexualized black female. However, I think that what Regis did is wrong in a lot of levels, race being only one of them. I think that my main problem with behaviours such as Regis´s is that it undermines the importance of consent. I think that, although many people might disagree, what Regis did in the program moves in the same lines than victim blaming in cases of sexual assault. Nicki Minaj does have an nice body, and she was using a really short skirt, however, that is not a reason nor an excuse to negate her right to personal space. The fact that she was wearing a short skirt does not equal a universal permission to touch her. The hostess laughed, and by doing so, even when they did not actively accepted the behaviour, the non-negative response to the behaviour validated it.
I think this goes back to what we have discussing to the visual signs of sexuality. In the same way that there is stereotypical signs of how gay people should look, there is also signifiers of women´s sexuality. In the same way that Europeans in the nineteenth century saw Saartjie Baartman´s body characteristics as a sign of sexual primitiveness, there is still characteristics that we consider signs of a faster woman. The belief of “her hips are big because she is not a virgin,” as a way to controlling behaviour by establishing fear of physical signs of sexual deviance or the sexual assault perpetrator’s common response, of “she was looking for it” by taking sensual clothing as a sign of sexual will from part of the female, show that we do hold physical signifiers of an active sexuality.
Going back to Regis, I think that his behaviour should not be validated. In my opinion, his behaviour towards Nicki Minaj is only accepted when we blame her choice of outfit or the way she looks. If we take his behaviour as a joke we are just normalizing a behaviour that, just as racist comments and actions, should be unacceptable.