The fight for feminism
KAYLA LAWSON, NEWS COLUMNIST
I don’t keep up with the Kardashians. But when Piers Morgan declared feminism dead after Kim Kardashian and model Emily Ratajkowski posted a topless photo on Twitter, I had to pay attention.
Morgan tweeted a photo of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst next to the photo of Kardashian and Ratajkowski, adding the caption “RIP feminism.”
Ratajkowski fired back: “However sexual our bodies may be, we need to hve the freedom as women to choose whn & how we express our sexuality,” she tweeted.
Thank you, Emily Ratajkowski.
Maybe Morgan forgot — the definition of feminism is the political, economic and social equality of the sexes. Feminism is supposed to make people uncomfortable. It’s meant to expose inequalities and injustices.
When Morgan sent out that tweet, what he did was encourage an attitude that says it’s socially acceptable for men to go topless but it’s unacceptable for women to do the same. Morgan showed us how much further we have to go as a society. I thought we were past the time when a man could dictate how a woman should dress, pose or act.
Society needs to change the way they view women. Photographs and art of the female body, made popular by feminists and artists, are one way to do this.
Teri Hofford, a boudoir photographer in Winnipeg, uses her camera to empower women, support female sexuality and spread body positivity. Boudoir photography can be gritty, which is beautiful. It’s a tool to express female strength through a feminist lens.
“I’m not offended by Kim & Emily getting their t*ts out. I’m offended by them saying it’s in the name of feminism,” Morgan later tweeted.
The female body is not to be distributed or portrayed according to men. “The cultural regulation of female nudity and portrayals of sexuality is also a powerful way in which women’s bodies are used to pit us against one another and to reinforce hierarchies among men,” said Soraya Chemaly, a writer for The Huffington Post.
In other words, men don’t get to decide what’s appropriate for women or what’s empowering for women. And men certainly don’t have any right to demand that we censor the female body.
