Shakira has broken YouTube records with the release of a new diss track aimed squarely at her ex husband, former Barcelona and Manchester United player, Gerard Piqué.
“I won’t get back with you, not even if you cry, not even if you beg me,” she sings and, later, “No hard feelings babe, I wish you good luck with my so-called replacement” (rumoured to be a 23-year-old public relations graduate who works for Piqué’s production company and, honestly, is not responsible for any of this).
It’s not really “the done thing”, is it, all of this public derision? It’s far more common for the “scorned” woman to accept her lot quietly – Hillary Clinton springs to mind, as does Victoria Beckham, perhaps more for the football association than anything else, but who has forgotten David’s alleged “dalliance” with one Rebecca Loos, who then went on to appear on Celebrity Love Island (lol) – and take the high road a la Michelle Obama.
But honestly: where’s the fun in that?
There’s a certain “put up and shut up” attitude that comes into play when any woman is publicly demeaned, whether that’s by a philandering partner or simply by strangers in online forums criticising her parenting, her decisions, her personal style – we seem to think that the classier, wiser response is to do and say nothing, to remain dignified in the face of a kind of indignity.
It’s something I’ve come up against a lot (yes, I’m just like Shakira, but taller) in my work on social media, my sporadic appearances on TV and radio. There is a certain perceived inevitability to the criticism I would weather; I did, after all, put myself out there, so I must expect a certain level of “feedback” from the people who are… what, forced to watch my Instagram Stories? Taped to chairs and made suffer through fashion segments on Xposé?
I’m not sure who, exactly, is forcing these people to pick up what I’m putting down, but they’ve had to suffer through looking at my face and, by God, are they going to make their displeasure clear.
If I have a choice to “put myself out there” – although true choice can only ever exist where there are no economic incentives or imperatives at play, and without social media, without “putting myself out there”, I would have had to find a different career – then surely people have a choice as to whether or not they consume what I produce?
Either way, the criticism, constructive or otherwise, has become par for the course. Any woman with an online presence, a seat at the table in print or on screen, a face that is recognised by any number of members of the public, has come to expect that she will be forensically examined and picked apart.
If she shares stories about her children, she will be criticised for her parenting; if she uploads a photograph of an outfit she particularly likes, her fashion sense will be mocked; if she shares details of her money diaries (merely an example), her spending will be forensically examined and lambasted.
I am also very aware that Shakira, Hillary Clinton and Victoria Beckham are thin, white, rich, straight (to our knowledge) cis women; I myself am a white, middle-class, straight, cis woman. Depending on how you look at it, I am either lucky or unlucky to be what they call “small-fat”, but that hasn’t prevented my body being condemned by anonymous strangers online.
For fat, Black, trans, disabled women – and more – their very existence online is cause for criticism. Should they just… say nothing? Accept their lot?
The shocking part, to me, isn’t that this kind of online assault takes place; as human beings, we have long enjoyed the view as we watch other people being torn apart, and as women, we are conditioned, from birth, to view other woman as competition for the vanishingly small number of seats at the top – as CEOs, board members, “top earners”. It’s no wonder that, for a lot of us, our first instinct is to try to tear down those we feel are rising above their station – tall poppy syndrome.
What I do find shocking, though, is the idea that we should just… take it on the chin. Grin and bear it. Remain silent in the face of other people’s criticism. “Don’t give them the oxygen,” people will say. “That’s what they want!”
But what about what I want? What about what would make me feel better, in this moment of hurt and vulnerability?
You’ll forgive me if I’m not entirely consumed with what the anonymous strangers who’ve spent hours of their day talking about how I should get a “real job”; asking how my husband puts up with me (“he seems to go to the gym while she just sits around on her arse all day”; the implication of that sentence was not – is not – lost on me); refusing to accept that some things I say are tongue-in-cheek, meant light-heartedly, not meant to be taken seriously, not that deep, want.
Other things I say, though, are deep. It’s up to you to figure out which is which. I contain multitudes.
The very notion of stoicism, in this context, is so tied into the idea of being classy, whatever that means. Being classy surely involves remaining silent; a classier woman would say nothing, act as though she doesn’t even know what’s been said. What other people say about you is none of your business, after all.
Isn’t this all just another way – a smart way, an effective way – of keeping women silent? Tell them that speaking up or defending themselves or clapping back is the tacky, classless option; tell them that, in this instance, becoming invisible is actually a show of power.
How about… no? No to taking the high road. No to remaining silent. No to denying air time to bullies.
Remember: evil flourishes when good men do nothing. Why should it be any different for women?
This is, of course, all a roundabout way of saying that Shakira was dead right. DRAG HIM.
(This is also a way of me writing something down that is not Prince Harry-related, because I have finished Spare and now all I can think about is the royal family and, weirdly, the art of flying an apache helicopter, so help me.)