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We Need Feminist Cultural Criticism — But There’s Nowhere Left To Go
As Bitch Media shuts down, generations of feminists ask: where will feminist cultural criticism go?
When I first watched Anitta’s “Vai Malandra” video, I desperately wanted to write about it, but I found it difficult to find anywhere to publish me. The video was controversial in Brazil at the time: was Anitta reproducing a hypersexualized stereotype of the Brazilian woman? Was she appropriating blackness that didn’t belong to her? What are the boundaries between reclaiming and reproducing our own bodies in audiovisual content? Are we allowed to sexualize ourselves or is that too close to what the white colonial gaze for it to be recouped?
Because Western media is depressingly US-centric, I struggled to find a space to explore these questions. Nobody cared because Anitta is not American, her song was not in English and the genre she was singing was not recognizable to Anglophone listeners. Still, I thought it was important to analyze those images because of the histories they invoked and played around with. Problematic or not, Anitta was pushing boundaries, and I wanted to explore what she was trying to say an whether she succeeded. I also wanted to do this analysis with love — I was not invested in calling anybody out, just in engaging the text and produce something with my engagement.
Bitch Magazine was the only publication that became enthusiastic about my pitch about “Vai Malandra”, and after a wonderful editing experience that taught me so much and left me hungry for writing more, they printed my analysis in their magazine (you can also read it online here). It was one of the first times I saw my name in print, and I was so proud to be mixing my love for cultural criticism with my love for Brazilian culture.
As a feminist, I have often felt that my analysis makes me into a killjoy — though I have always tried to critique pop culture with love and appreciation, I felt like I was always killing the vibe. But Bitch taught me differently; pop culture can be enjoyed and it should be challenged. In an online world of “Your Fave is Problematic” blogs and where outrage was just beginning to be monetized on social media, this lesson was essential. I began writing for Bitch…
