As I've mentioned before, I'm in university for an honours BA in History and Women's Studies. If you'd like to know more about Women's Studies, feel free to email me!
My field of study teaches me to critically analyze the world and it's social structures, structures which are often extremely oppressie to women and other marginalized groups, such as people of colour, gays/lesbians/bisexuals/transgendered people, the economically disadvantaged, disabled people, and the list goes on.
Something that's really been upsetting me lately that I wanted to talk about is the whole controversy surrounding Adam Lambert's performance at the AMAs, during which he simulated oral sex with a male dancer, and kissed a male musician on stage. I'm of the opinion that Lambert's performance was absolutely amazing and I believe the sexually-suggestive acts committed were really awesome and liberating. Whether or not you share my opinion about the performance is irrelevent.
What I want to stress here is the aftermath of the performance and the double standards and discrimination at play. Lambert was scheduled to perform on a CBS morning program a few days ago, but the performance was cancelled and the network cited the controversy surrounding Adam's AMA performance as the reason. They also blurred the image of Lambert kissing his male musician when reporting on the story. I'm sure you all recall the infamous Britney Spears-Madonna-Christina Aguilera kiss from an awards ahow several years back.
The image of these women kissing was never blurred for public television, so why was the image of Adam Lambert kissing another male deemed inappropraite for public view? Patriarchy, my friends, patriarchy.
Women kissing one another feeds into straight male fantasies as is thus deemed socially acceptable and even encouraged in many situations (ever played truth or dare? Yeah.). This is why Katy Perry can sell a bajillion records singing about kissing girls, but Adam Lambert gets performances cancelled and his face blurred on TV. Girls kissing is "hot", yet a gay kiss is "gross", "inappropraite", "too controversial". On another note, while Adam Lambert was not allowed to perform on CBS, apparently it's okay to have Chris Brown go on-air to talk about how he beat his girlfriend in February. The message this sends? Being gay is not okay and not allowed on television, but if you beat up a woman, we'll TOTALLY give you even more airtime!
I encourage you to read
this article from Feministing.com for more information, and think critically about the media.
Love Always,
Amy
