Celebs, bless ’em, say the funniest things. Usually it’s along the lines of 'Kale changed my life!' or 'I exist in a very down-to-earth, minimalist way – I only have two live-in stylists now.' But sometimes the famous attempt to take on issues with greater global significance. And right now, two paparazzi favourites - Kim Kardashian and Shailene Woodley - are going head-to-head in order to try to win the title of 'Most Ridiculously Ill-Informed Person Alive.'
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In the red corner, we have Shailene Woodley, who is finding feminism less useful and applicable to her lifestyle than a unicycle with a built in Betamax.* (*obsolete ’80s video player. Ask your dad.) 'I love men, and I think the idea of "raise women to power, take the men away from the power" is never going to work out because you need balance,' Shailene told Time magazine, implying the Battle Of The Sexes is going to turn into a balls out, Mad Max affair in which men and women are going to start setting people on fire in order to steal each other’s cool buckled biker jackets.
But in the blue corner is the never knowingly out-dunced Kim Kardashian, who has just realised, oh my god, you guys! – that racism is really, really bad. She blogged: 'Before I had North, I never really gave racism or discrimination a lot of thought. It is obviously a topic that Kanye is passionate about, but I guess it was easier for me to believe that it was someone else’s battle. But recently, I’ve read and personally experienced some incidents that have sickened me and made me take notice.' That’s racism, eh, Kim? Not a problem until it’s your problem.
There has been no shortage of people screaming 'Check your privilege!' until the internet resembles an echo chamber of righteous liberal indignation
As a result of course, there has been no shortage of people screaming 'Check your privilege!' until the internet resembles an echo chamber of righteous liberal indignation. 'Shailene Woodley wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for feminism!' everyone tweeted angrily. 'She’d be sat at home waiting for someone to marry her while trying not to trap her fingers in a loom!' (At some point we all decided that feminism was intrinsically linked with the industrial revolution.) It’s a little different with Kim, because there has long been a bitchy, unsisterly consensus that she might not be the sharpest knife in the cutlery factory, based on the fact that she seems to spend her days up to her elbows in eyelash extension glue, while Kanye shouts 'Honey, look! I drew some new trainers!'
But why are we being so bitchy? After all,when my younger sister told me that she thought Al-Qaeda was a single, bad man named Al, I didn’t shout at her for being ignorant and ridiculous. I tried not to giggle and did my best to explain what I knew. And it turns out, that isn’t very much. It took me three goes and a Google search just to spell it. But imagine my sister was Miley, who is just a couple of months older than she is, and imagine how cruel we would have been had this nugget popped up in an interview.
I hope Shailene does identify as a feminist sooner rather than later, but I wasn’t comfortable calling myself one until well into my early 20s. In fact, I remember a shudderingly awful argument I had with a friend at uni, where I said: 'I just don’t think feminism is for me!' I was a little like Kim Kardashian, in that I only became aware that I needed it when I directly discovered sexism. I’m ashamed that it took me so long, but at least I got there in the end.
If we want Shailene to understand why feminism is for her, we’re not going to help her get there by shouting at her or laughing at her for being an idiot
If we want Shailene to understand why feminism is for her, we’re not going to help her get there by shouting at her or laughing at her for being an idiot. Kim might have revealed that her world view is entirely Kardashian-centric, but it’s opening up slowly. Her statement is well intentioned, and she’s high profile and powerful enough to generate worldwide discussions about racism and equality. If major problems had been passing her by, they probably weren’t being picked up on by a few of her fans too. She might be late to the party but that doesn’t exclude her from contributing to it.
It’s interesting that we focus so heavily on female stars saying stupid or selfish things, when the guys have to go a lot further in order to raise our ire. Anecdotally, it seems that we’re angrier at Shailene for not being a feminist than we were with James Franco for creepily propositioning a teenage girl on Instagram. Kim’s post was met with just as much horror and schadenfreude as Shia LaBeouf’s full-blown plagiarism-themed meltdown. Women are under that much more pressure to be perfect – or perhaps, when we talk about women we’ve been trained to search for flaws and weak points that will allow us to pull them apart.
I really hope Shailene embraces feminism and realises you can love men and still recognise sexism needs to be fought and shut down. I’d love it if Kim focused all her energies on working to raise awareness of racism. But neither is likely to happen if we keep laughing, sneering and making cruel comments that only really serve to make us feel superior in the face of celebrity stupidity. Too many people are keen to deny women their voices and make them feel scared to speak. If we continue to contribute to this, we’ll do more damage to feminism than we believe Shailene to have done.
Follow Daisy on Twitter @NotRollerGirl
Picture: Rex
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.