What do Kim Kardashian, Elena Ferrante, Hillary Clinton and Shakespeare’s Cleopatra all have in common?
As women they all know, far too well, about the extent to which society at large, primarily and especially men, like to tell them how they should and should not be living their lives.
Kim Kardashian and Elena Ferrante could not have opted to deal with their respective fame more differently. Kardashian, at one end of the celebrity spectrum, has used fame and exposure to generate more fame and exposure. Ferrante, at the other, has kept her true identity concealed behind a pseudonym despite the international popularity, sales and acclaim of her writing.
Ferrante’s identity was ‘revealed’ this week when an Italian journalist jacked up on derring do decided to ‘unmask’ her. Claudio Gatti has gone to great lengths to reveal the writer’s true identity, including sifting through financial records.
Why, you might ask, would someone devote so much effort to uncovering the identity of someone who wishes to remain anonymous? Well, Gatti felt that Ferrante’s wilful anonymity was a sort of publicity play. He says that because the author has previously said she is not inclined to answer questions about her ‘person, feelings, pressures’:
‘Ferrante has in a way relinquished her right to disappear behind her books and let them live and grow while their author remained unknown.’
Let’s get this straight: because she does not want to disclose details of and information about her personal life and, rather, wishes to preserve it privately she has forfeited the right to a private life?
Around the same time that Ferrante’s supposed ‘true identity’ was revealed to the world, despite the fact that few of us had asked to know of it, Kim Kardashian was robbed in an apartment in Paris. The reality TV star was gagged, tied up and threatened at gun point while thieves stole millions of pounds’ worth of her jewellery.
Since this incident occurred few have held back from voicing their opinions on social media. Piers Morgan has since decided that now is the time to pen an open letter to Kardashianimplying that there is somehow a link, although what that link is I can’t quite discern, between her robbery and her decision to flaunt jewellery on social media and post naked selfies. Karl Lagerfeld has also spoken out, blaming Kardashian for her own ordeal:
‘(She is) too public, too public — we have to see in what time we live. You cannot display your wealth then be surprised that some people want to share it…’
There you are: Kim Kardashian is too public; Elena Ferrante is too private. Both women are living their lives incorrectly, these men are kindly informing us. Reveal too much and you will be told to cover up, give away too little and you will be accused of having something to hide. Is it not a woman’s right to choose how much or how little of herself she wishes to reveal to the world? Apparently not. Thank god Karl and Piers are here to keep us all right.
Hillary Clinton, throughout the entire presidential campaign, has been subjected to similar scrutiny. Everything she does is wrong: she’s somehow simultaneously too open and not open enough and depending on who you are she’s either too sisterly or not sisterly enough.
Is Donald Trump subjected to the same scrutiny? We know about Clinton’s income; Trump has not declared his. Clinton has been transparent; her dirt is out in the open for all to criticise. Who will sleuth Trump’s in the public interest? Who will criticise him for revealing some information but not all?
Yesterday the head of Wimbledon High School, Jane Lunnon, argued that teenage girls need to be more like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra than Kim Kardashian.
Lunnon feels that girls should not aspire to be like Kardashian ‘who is a lot to do with inches – wither column or physical’ and, instead, should look to Shakespeare’s Cleopatra for inspiration:
'The thing about Cleopatra is it's ... about image and how she sells the myth of Cleopatra. Kim Kardashian is selling the myth about Kim Kardashian.
'Shakespeare's Cleopatra did the same thing ... a lone female voice when all the other women in Antony and Cleopatra are basically powerless.
'It sounds trite to say she had enormous self-confidence, but that's what you would be getting kids to recognise - how I see myself and what I project.'
It seems that Lunnon is somewhat missing the point. Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra was a divisive character. So loathed was she by some that Antony, the great Roman soldier, risked his reputation by falling in love with her.
She is disliked by the Romans for being a woman, a ‘wrangling queen’ and a ‘whore’. She is an enchanter who makes Antony ‘the noble ruin of her magic’ and thus deserves any disaster that befalls on her, such as being defeated by Caesar.
Cleopatra is at once a victim of male domination and a conqueror of men. Nonetheless, she carries on regardless and remains true to her character until the end. She is dramatic, performative, sexual, open and powerful – a character who defies the conventional Madonna/whore complex by which women are still judged to her own demise.
Shakespeare’s Cleopatra can teach us more about the treatment of women in the media this week than Lunnon realises: we are still subject to men’s policing when it comes to how we should and shouldn’t live our public and private lives, still expected to conform and rebel simultaneously but only on society’s terms, within the boundaries of what is and isn’t deemed appropriate.
Artowrk by Hanna Kunkle
We All Need To Believe Kim Kardashian Whether We Like Her Or Not
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.