Amber Rose is not happy.
The hip-hop model turned activist was interviewed for the latest issue of US GQ about her recent role as a feminist role model and the release of her new book, How To Be A Bad Bitch, and was shocked to read the introduction to her feature:
Model Suki Waterhouse spoke out over a similarly disappointing cover line in August this year when ST Style sold her cover interview with the tagline: ‘Miss Waterhouse on fast fame and life after Bradley Cooper’.
By this point in her career, the 23-year-old had established herself as one of the bright young things of the modeling world alongside Cara Delevingne and Georgia May Jagger, having starred in two Burberry runway campaigns and embarked upon a burgeoning acting career. Never mind the fact that during their two-year relationship, Suki stayed resolutely silent on the topic refusing to answer questions about her boyfriend.
She was forced to call out the magazine for its ‘garbage headline’ as she rightly asked: ‘Would they have used male cover star exs name to sell mags?’
Identifying women merely by their previous or current sexual partners may seem like a mere point of reference for news outlets but it speaks to a much deeper, ingrained sexism that posits women as seemingly half-formed without a man to define themselves either with or against.
This will no doubt ring a bell for anyone who did GCSE English and read the American classic Of Mice And Men. Curley’s Wife, the only female character in John Steinbeck’s 1937 novel, is known merely by her husband’s name as if she were just another possession. Eighty years later women may have names, but dig a little deeper and we are still judged by our relationships with men.
Sometimes it is useful to have a man as your point of reference, as Jennifer Lawrence learned when the Sony email leaks happened last year and it came out that her male co-stars got paid double what she and Amy Adams did for 2013’s American Hustle. But for the most part, it is time to stop seeing women as half-formed things and pay attention to her as a whole.
***Words by Sophie Tighe. ***