Beth Ditto = Fat, Queer, Feminist… and Naked?
Paul posted over at Big Fat Blog about Beth Ditto’s appearing naked on the cover of NME magazine. For those (probably few) who haven’t already heard it, this is the cover that’s sparking all the celebration (and some of the criticism):
Paul (as well as the folks on Time Out Chicago) questions whether this is empowering or objectifying - after all, it is a naked woman on the cover of a magazine. C asked me sort of the same question last night. What’s the difference between Beth Ditto naked and the women of the Lo Rider video prancing in lingerie?
As I was saying to Colleen, I think my main objection to the Lo Rider video is the lack of the participants subjectivity, or at least the perceived lack. For whatever reason, they were cast by the producers/directors/musicians for a video that was to feature fat women doing domestic chores in skimpy lingerie while apparently getting off on it. I’ve already commented in another post about my problems with this video, so I won’t really go into them in depth here.
But the fact is that the actresses, whether they were enthusiastic about participating or not, were tools by which the artists - Lo Rider - were expressing their own … let’s call it artistic vision. If one of the girls declined participation, the producers could have easily found another beautiful fat woman to take their place fairly easily. In this way, the video was less about the women’s subjectivity than their position as hyper-sexualized objects.
Beth Ditto, on the other hand, is the artist in this shoot. While someone is certainly shooting her, if Beth had declined participating in a nude Beth Ditto shoot… well, they wouldn’t have been able to get another Beth Ditto, or as far as I’m aware another fat, queer feminist punk rocker. Furthermore, unlike the Lo Rider video (or any other music video featuring sexualized fat women), there aren’t men peeking around Ditto’s body or leering at her from the corner of the frame. The focus here is on Beth Ditto as a fat feminist punk artist expressing her subjectivity; we’re viewing her fat naked body because she wants us to, because she realizes that it is a revolutionary act that can advance her cause and her art. Unlike Dworkin or MacKinnon, I get the feeling that Beth Ditto is a fairly pro-sex feminist. As such, she recognizes how being naked in a magazine - even a magazine for men - can be an act of feminist rebellion simply by showing those who consume those images the diversity of bodies.
Leave a Comment
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
The criticisms of my students would serve as a good warning to visitors of Seeworthy: she talks too fast, she's too hard on us, she assigns too much work, and you have to be a dyke to get a good grade.
In other words, I'm a big, fat, queer, feminist meanie, and I am totally out to get you. Graaagh!
Basically the only difference is that Beth Ditto is famous then? I mean, thats really the only reason she’s irreplaceable here.
I’m 100% positive the women in the Lo Rider video also thought they were doing something completely revolutionary as well. We viewed their fat, mostly naked bodies because they wanted us to.
I agree that the Lo Rider video had the added layer of the smirky men and, hello, they were getting off on “women’s work”, so I can see where that part is different. But objectification is objectification any way you slice it, and all I see Beth Ditto doing here is participating in that objectification.
Like I said last night, I really want to see the difference, but I just can’t make myself see this as anything other than Beth trying to prove that she can be sexy too and that, to me, doesn’t help anyone’s cause.
Aside from my personal politics (which I know you know
) surrounding the Lo Rider video, even if the women intended to do it to be revolutionary/radical, they still ended up being objects in the creative process of two heterosexual men who ended up making a video that just further subjugates women and normalizes a certain kind of beauty.
I think the reason that I *don’t* see this as Beth trying to “prove” she can be sexy is that she doesn’t *need* to prove it - she knows it, she knows her fans know it, and she’s basically posing naked saying - as it says on the cover - “Kiss my ass,” this is my naked body and I love it. It’d be the same if Candye Kane decided to do that photo shoot on the cover of NME, because the story would be about Candye Kane, rather than just hot naked XXX women.
The Lo Rider women were about being hot naked women. Yeah, they were fat, but I don’t see that video as any different from a lot of the really degrading BBW porn that already exists out there. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it *does* matter that the creators of the video were men using women’s bodies for their pleasure, rather than if the women in the video were also the musicians or the directors or whathaveyou.
I completely agree.