January 7, 2022
Slut-shaming and using abusive language is bullying. Discussing her ableist language and highlighting her privilege is not.
The gist:
Molly-Mae, “the influencer turned Love Island alumni turned Creative Director of fast fashion brPretty Little Thing,” was called out for insensitive comments on The Diary Of A CEO, in which she said:
“Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day” and can be as successful as her, no matter their background.
Molly-Mae, of course, has a massive platform, with millions who idolise (sic) her for apparently, ‘reinforcing the idea that you can positively think yourself out of poverty and disregarding the forms of privilege that make success easier for certain people to achieve.”
After “talking about why Molly-Mae’s comments were damaging,” the article’s author, Chloe Laws, “received a few messages telling me that ‘as a feminist, I should support all women’ and that criticising (sic) her was akin to bullying.”
But when a woman “is so blinded by their own privilege that they are only supporting the equality and equity of a certain kind of woman (they might not know they are doing so), it is okay and necessary to call them out. For example, ‘you must support all women’ is a line often used by women who do not want their beliefs questioned by proxy,” and is “trying to push cis women even further into their privilege, rather than trying to make society better for all women.”
As “conversations around ‘White Feminism’ have become more mainstream, following Black Lives Matter, “in the same way that women are collectively having conversations about holding the men in their lives to account more, the same must happen with other women who are acting as agents of the patriarchy.”
It’s also “a tricky line to toe,” if criticism of a woman’s actions “can quickly be co-opted by sexist men, and turned into a conversation laden with misogyny.”.
In conclusion, Laws says, “for me, the goal of questioning another woman's toxic behaviour is in hopes of them changing and educating themselves, so that more of us can unite against social issues that, in the long run, only damage women and uphold the patriarchy.”
Link to Glamour post here.
