‘WAP’ & Why Normalising Female Sexual Desire is an Intersectional Feminist Issue
Love it or hate it, you can’t deny the success of what my guest is now calling Cardi B’s feminist anthem, WAP. So why did a song about women’s sexual desire cause such a stir? In this episode, I chat with Rhea Cartwright about sexual liberation, the male gaze, the fetishization of black women’s bodies, faking orgasms, sex workers, the fascinating roots of animal print, unpacking our internalised biases, calling in allies and so much more.
Rhea is a London-based journalist and consultant. With an extensive background working in the beauty industry, she writes for publications such as Vogue, Refinery29 and PopSugar. In her multi-discipline career her aim is always to inspire, motivate, educate and empower.
If you’re looking for a fresh perspective on this pop sensation, this interview will provide you with some incredible insights you may not have considered before. Enjoy!
This podcast is for YOU, so if you ever have any questions you’d like me to answer on the show, or topics you’d like me to cover – reach out to me on email here or over on instagram @eleanorhadley
Links & Resources
Read the article: “WAP” Highlights the Hypocrisy That Sex Is Taboo When Women Steer the Conversation
Connect with Rhea on instagram: @its_rhea
Start your journey to explore your own personal pleasure language with my free quiz, including a bonus worksheet with journaling prompts to help you dive even deeper. Take the quiz now: www.eleanorhadley.com/pleasurelanguage
~ Other links / resources mentioned in episode ~
→ Book a chemistry call
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Sensuality Academy Podcast!
Subscribe
Are you subscribed to the podcast? If you’re not, I’d LOVE for you to do that today – it’s free! When you subscribe, you’ll be notified when new episodes are released and always have the episodes ready and waiting for you! Simply hit the ‘subscribe’ button in your podcast player or click below.
Click here to subscribe in iTunes
Click here to subscribe in Android
Leave a Review
Can I steal your attention for another two minutes? If you found this episode helpful, I’d love for you to leave me a review! Reviews help me know what makes you tick, and also helps me share this magic with more beautiful souls (plus, I do a little happy dance every time I get a review!)
Just click here, then select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what you love about the podcast. Thank you!
Episode Transcript
Hello hello and welcome to The Sensuality Academy Podcast!
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve likely heard all the controversy that is Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion’s newest song WAP - W.A.P, which stands for Wet Ass Pussy, of course.
In it, the artists share quite graphically what kind of sex they like, what they want from their man and refer consistently to just how wet their pussies are. It’s caused quite a stir because - how very dare two fully grown women rap about their sexuality so openly, right? It’s not like male rappers have been doing so for years - singing and rapping about their dick size, what they like to do to women and quite often in a rather problematic and derogatory way, more than an empowering way as we see with WAP.
But oh no…as soon as women sing about their sexual fantasies and their own bodies in an, albeit colourful, but overall consensual way - all hell breaks loose and people loose their minds.
As someone who teaches all about sexual empowerment - especially that of women, it’s no surprise to me that this song caused such a stir. And clearly you all know me very well because I received a message from a past student of mine sharing an article all about WAP and why it is somewhat of an anthem, spearheading a new wave of female empowerment.
I read this article, written by Rhea Cartwright, and damn near broke my neck nodding along because every single point she made was pure gold. I loved this article so much that I just *had* to reach out to Rhea and I’m so honoured that she agreed to come on the podcast today to speak to us about WAP and share insights about this epic song from a perspective that I couldn’t have provided on my own.
Rhea is a London-based journalist and consultant. With an extensive background working in the beauty industry, she writes for publications such as Vogue, Refinery29 and PopSugar. In her multi-discipline career her aim is always to inspire, motivate, educate and empower.
This discussion with Rhea is incredibly eye-opening and I know you’re going to learn a thing or two. Enjoy!
ELEANOR: Hello Rhea and welcome to The Sensuality Academy Podcast I am so happy to have you here, thank you for joining us.
RHEA: Thank you for having me it’s pretty early here in the UK, it’s quarter past 7am so if I seem a little bit raspy I haven’t long woken up. So I apologise in advance.
ELEANOR: I am really flattered that you woke up early for me.
RHEA: Well, I don’t do it very often so yeah, you’re lucky. Also, an amazing topic and subject matter that I have to speak about. It’s definitely worth waking up early for.
ELEANOR: Absolutely, I know that my audience is going to be very happy that woke up for us because this is such an interesting topic. When I read your article a past student of mine actually sent it to me and I read your article on PopSugar and I was blown away. You managed to articulate some incredibly layered themes from WAP and I knew I needed to have you on the Podcast. So, I am excited to chat all about this epic song with you today.
RHEA: Oh, Thank you. I feel like it was very decisive, and still is, because obviously it is still out there, very divisive song and video but when I first saw it I had very instinctive first initial thoughts. We need to speak about this and open up the conversation a bit more.
ELEANOR: I think I was the same. I first saw it and listened to it, I could feel my internalised misogyny just come reeling at it. And then, I teach a lot about conditioning. I was like OK, why do certain things make me feel uncomfortable? And what’s that about and you really dove into that in your article. I’m going to put the article in the show notes for everybody to read.
Let’s dive into it.
In the article you spoke of what I thought was very interesting - the inseparable irony that the current US President can claim that it is ok to grab them by the pussy but two women cannot discuss the moistness of their own - I think that was a great line. Why do you think that we have such a disdain for women expressing their sexuality?
RHEA: Ultimately the disdain for discussing it is really a method of control. I think when you look back like historically through anthropologically which I do - I am such a geek in terms of the history of stuff - when women traditionally had any kind of freedom whether it be emotional, financial, sexual, she almost becomes too powerful for the patriarchal society that we all live in and obviously when we think about now in 2020 I think that people particularly straight white men empower like to think the patriarchy isn’t as explicit as it used to be hundred years ago. When you do look back you see a woman who reclaims her sexuality, she gets labelled a witch or she is evil. There is always some negative connotation attached to her. I think it has stayed with us as society has progressed obviously it has changed - she is not a witch, she is a whore or a hoe or a slut or any other derogatory term that is linked to women and having some kind of promiscuity. Which is ridiculous. The line linking the US President, who will remain nameless, is like Voldemort for me - I can’t say that name.
ELEANOR: Totally.
RHEA: That was, it was the quote that was liked the most. Which is so true - why is this ok? why is a man who is holding power in the most powerful offices in the world allowed? - we know he said that, it’s not like ‘he say’ we know he said that. But yet, we then have American politicians declaring that Cardi and Megan are these awful women that they are to blame for the downfall of humanity. It's a double standard. It’s quite worrying that we still have that now.
ELEANOR: Absolutely, you made a really great point that surely there are more important things for politicians to be focusing on then some new song. You actually shared a quote from former congressional candidate Deanna Lorraine who called the song disgusting and vile. This word disgusting is used so much to explain women expressing their own sexuality and I actually placed a question sticker up asking people on Instagram what they thought of WAP and predominantly my followers were ‘Amazing. Feminist anthem. Here for it’ I had a few people who actually said it was disgusting.
RHEA: I find that so weird. First of all, disgusting is such a strong word to have disgust for something will have to be, I can't even imagine to be honest anything in which a woman who can speak about her own body can call someone disgust. Is it the fact they are speaking about it so publicly? If it was a quiet conversation between friends would that be disgust? This is what I don’t understand, when people who live negative attitudes towards it. The video even, if it has anything to do with the video, is not any more explicit than videos before it. It is also very important to bear in mind, I want to add this in but my word count ran out - in a lot of Hip Hop videos in the past you would have the version for the TV channels and also an explicit uncut version. You will then have TV channels - not sure if this is the same case in Australia - like MTV Base which prominently plays music of black origin like R n B and Hip Hop. After a certain time would play the uncut, x-rated version where women would literally be naked - like 50 Cent’s P.I.M.P with Snoop Dog - there is a version that is ‘safe’ for children, safe for work should we say, where women would be in tight fitted clothing or bikinis and there is another version where women are literally naked, full areolas are out and this is what I mean - why is that ok, because that for me is disgusting and the fact that it is ok to have a man to literally naked women in videos that we only show after a certain time but a woman can’t shake her own body, not around men, talking about her own body. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
ELEANOR: I had no idea about that whole uncut thing and it's so bizarre because the clean version of that video is probably akin to WAP. They’re fully clothed, not fully, but the parts that cause ‘offence’ are covered. They are dressed very sexy and really expressing their sexuality but it’s probably on the same level as most male rappers.
RHEA: Exactly, the only difference is that there are no men. So that is why I find it very interesting so ok it’s completely fine for women to wear these “sexual or explicit outfits’ when there are men around and nobody is really questioning it but when you take men out of the equation all of a sudden it creates an uproar. Why? Why is that the case?
ELEANOR: Absolutely. And, you speak in your article about these unwavering fear toward female sexual pleasure and the fact there is this deep seeded belief in many cultures that women do not have the right to own their sexuality and for me obviously this is a topic that I am so passionate about and most of my work is about empowering women in particular to reclaim their sexuality and to give them permission to be sexual beings.
I guess my question is - do you see WAP as something that encourages reclamation or do you see it as something that could potentially push this further away and take this further away from empowerment considering the controversial reception that we have had of it?
RHEA: I think that is difficult to answer - which one do I agree with - for me, for the most part I think anything, any topic that invites discussion or open dialogue is a catalyst for change so I think that it is very easy for the more traditional feminist standpoint to claim that WAP is idisgusting and actually anti-feminist, belittling all the work they have put in… but I think again it is because people have a really rigid view of feminism and what it looks like. I think that for the most part that view hasn’t evolved in the same way our mentality has evolved in terms of other subjects like the Intersex of Feminism, that’s still so new and even for feminists that have been doing this work for decades like our mothers age or our grandparents age, they still find it very difficult to get to grips with things like WAP. It almost feels to them like ‘how can this possibly be now the solution or driver for everything we have been working towards or against, however you want to word it, for the last 50, 60, 70, 80 years’? That’s the whole point that there isn’t one - we are not cooking - not one cookie cut solution, it looks different for everybody and I think that part, that it’s different for everybody, is very difficult for people to understand because in the same way - like your favourite pasta isn’t my favourite pasta but we can both enjoy pasta - and I think with feminism it is the same thing - we are going to have different things we are fighting for based on our own upbringing, based on our own differences, what’s important to us. At the same time we still have code for it. As society progresses and intersect is pushed more then people will start to understand this a bit better hopefully.
ELEANOR: I think that is a great point because we might have different idea of what our feminism means to us but we all still fighting the same fight and WAP might resonate with certain people - yes this is helping us - and other things might resonate with others and I think what you mentioned about intersectionality it is really important that - like you said, you have your favourite pasta, I have my own favourite pasta but when we are talking about feminism it is so important that we especially as white women, I know a lot of my audience are white women, we understand the layers, the way that things intersect when we’re thinking of feminism - yeah, I have my own favourite pasta, you have your own favourite pasta - but I am actively stealing your pasta that is a problem and that is why white feminism is such a problem. I think that this song has really made a lot of conservative people and also a lot of white feminists really angry because they don’t understand the importance and intersections of race and sexism. You really spoke so well to this in your article and I would love to explore this a little bit more.
RHEA: I think it is one of those things that, like you said, not only do we have intersectional feminism but then that is obviously, in case people aren’t clear, literally feminism isn’t for everybody - there isn’t one vanilla form of feminism that only suits one section of society, it is opening up to everybody regardless of where people want to sit on the gender spectrum regardless of their ability. It is feminism for anybody that wants to get involved in this fight. Therefore when you are a black woman you sit at this very dangerous access not only of gender but also of race. There is a very famous quote, I don’t know it exactly - The most disrespected person in America is the black woman like she sits at the bottom of the hierarchy because not only is she already black, on the back foot, but she is also a woman on top of that. So, the kind of history of black women taking up space in society is very complex and it has been a very hard fight and I use the word fight within intention here because what then happens they have had to fight, we have had to fight but when you fight too much you get labelled the strong and angry black woman so it's kinda like a vicious cycle in where black women have been placed at the bottom of the pile and therefore had no choice to grapple their way out from there to reclaim some sense of power and autonomy and yet in doing so they have silenced even more because they are being told they are being too loud or being too black even often gets thrown around.
When it comes obviously down to speaking about that in feminism with the black woman, I don’t about Australia but in the UK we hear about the self reject movement and you think about how that goes back to your childhood. You watch Mary Poppins and you’ve got the Auntie in Mary Poppins and she is a self reject and you don’t really hear about how the feminist movement applies to non-white people to be honest. You don’t hear about it at all. With votes, the right to vote, we can't take away from the work that women did of course we can’t but the right to vote only opened up for white women. Again, it didn’t open up for everybody. It’s not necessarily their fault but it just means that our stories are different and therefore our stories also need a voice and place to be shared.
The black female body has been the most scrutinised, sexualised, oppressed, taken advantage of than any body in the history of mankind and it really does stem back to colonisation and I touch on this in terms of the motifs. I don’t think it was intentional from there costume department in all fairness even with the motifs of animal print, it means so many things in fashion that’s is why it is such a relatable thing, it is the height of luxury but it is also the height of tackiness. It’s a print that really transcends culture and class and revenue stream. We all know someone whether they are - we can think of famous people like Hollywood glamour stars, reality TV stars and not as traditionally classy animal prints. Animal prints come from an animal and those animals come from the most part from the African continent and you go back the only people that can afford to have real Leopard skin jacket or clothing would have been African royalty. I think it is important to look at the way the video kind of - I don’t think that it was intentional I just think a Leopard print is on trend but it is very important the leopard print is very regal background and therefore to have it on women who are half naked as a nipple covering - I think is a really cool nod to yeah we can know it is part of our history but we can also kind of modernise it and reclaim it for 2020.
ELEANOR: Honestly, that part of the article was so eye opening for me as I have never ever considered what you call the access of classy and trashy when it comes to the history of animal print and you really opened my eyes when you talked about how it had roots in the African Atrocity and you reference the suggestion of a woman wearing animal print being savage, wild and exotic and those are words that have such deeply rooted in colonialism and fetishisation of the black female body. Can you speak a little bit more about that?
RHEA: Obviously those three words - exotic. I’m laughing because it is quite scary because I am a mix, obviously people can't see me. I am half black and half white and people are like ‘ooo aren’t you exotic?’ It is such a bizarre word to call someone exotic when you look back to the history of exoticism and where it comes from and it really comes from romanticisation of things that were other, for no other reason apart from they were just different. It is great, I guess that is the whole, the melting pot of other is what makes society so good. London is so cool, you have all of these others blended together like a fruit salad but to purely like it just on the basis that it’s so different is very bizarre for me.
ELEANOR: It’s a micro-aggression isn’t it?
RHEA: yeah, it’s also the difference between admiring something and enjoying something like exploiting it. Exotistism was essentially a business in which commodities were sold from countries stripped of their natural resources whether that be people or otherwise and then sold on the base of/exotic and I think when we look into the whole thing of exotic, savage, wild and how those terms of the black female body. I was doing some research and often we talk about now about rape - it has nothing to do with the output of the woman she was wearing hot pants and just a bra. Her outfit doesn’t mean she was asking for it by no stretch of the imagination now when colonisation first arrived to Africa and Colonisation were from Northern Europe where it is cold, for anyone that hasn’t visited the UK, France, Belgium. Africa is hot so of course what people wear is incredibly different and I found a lot of reading when colonisation were first going to Africa and to see the women who were wearing far less clothing than in London England in the 1400s or 1500s that for them was an invitation ‘asking for it’. These women deserve to be raped because they were wearing less clothing, they were wearing less clothing because the climate was significantly hotter than in England and again it is very interesting how we still kind of have those conversations now surrounding what women are wearing therefore the validity of being sexually assaulted or not. Again, I think the women wearing far less clothing again in time of colonisation is also linked to words such as savage and exotic because people acted differently. When you think about the traditional British rhetoric of stiff upper lip and you don’t cry and don’t really express. You are taught traditionally not to express too much emotion, not to ask too many questions naturally if you go to a different culture things are different. Even between Northern Europe and Southern Mediterranean Europe we express things very differently. The idea that because of what somebody is wearing - of course they are not going to be wearing petticoats and corsets when it is like 40C, it's just logic I don’t think it's an invitation that those women deserve to be rapped, abused, killed and all the other disgusting atrocities happening to them. It’s ridiculous.
ELEANOR: Absolutely and I think this actually hits on a general point that we all have our own world view and the way we have experienced the world and i think there’s a problem when so many people are not willing to expand it and consider other people's views and to be empathetic and that’s a prime example, going to a different country, a different entire continent with a hugely different climate and expecting like ‘ ooo, the way that I am used to dressing is right and I am only wearing minimal clothing when I am showering or having sex and that is the only context available for me and so its like they are taking that and implanting it, this is just colonisation in general, implanting it, this is what we believe works and we are going to plonk it here and enforce it on everybody.
RHEA: Yeah, exactly so widely ad then not only so widely, we still see the echoes of it now. Now what I think is scarier is that, not to say ‘ok, well I kind of understand I don’t know any better back then. I think that is ridiculous, fundamentally people did know better they just wanted to abuse their power to capitalise for financial gain. The fact that now in 2020 when frankly we are 100% know better yet we still very much see the echoes and undertones from 400 years ago, we still see it in today’s culture and society. That is very scary and very worrying that some people have not progressed, not matured, not rationalised the fact that what someone is wearing or acting or being is any invitation to treat them in a distasteful or potentially lethal way it is not an excuse.
ELEANOR: It is not an excuse. I think that there is so much access now to learn and to constantly educate yourself. You never arrive at a point ‘now I know everything and I am woke, it is constant learning. That is why I really wanted to get you on the podcast to talk about this specifically who may, I am hoping most of them, are quite socially aware. Maybe we haven’t explored these issues and even just the notion of the animal print I had ever thought of that and you brought up so many topics in your article that opened my eyes and I just think that we constantly allow ourselves to learn and to recognise the harmful behaviours that we have just kind of picked up living in this society the better we can do.
RHEA:I think it goes back to the beginning that truthfully especially as a writer or any broadcaster, you as podcaster not everyone is going to agree all the time. Another thing is not everything I write or maybe what you say that might not always be our 100% belief but it's kind of your job and your duty to do the work, to invoke discussion because for me that’s the catalyst for change. Conversations and dialogue have to be open to invite change and I think something that people don’t often realise is that when people see an opinion especially with today’s digitised media you can be very quick, if they disagree with it, to jump their throat. I really invite everybody to invite critical thinking because critical thinking allows you to listen to what you have heard or read, or watched. Maybe do your own research on it, have a look, explore it rather than just having a rapid response that actually doesn’t add anything to the conversation. When you hear something, whether it has anything to do with feminism or sensuality or any of the work that you do or anybody does you have got to invite it into your life and really look why your people are really quick to dismiss it without doing any extra learning. That is a scary place for me you know? If there is something I don’t agree with or I wasn’t sure about it. I would have a think about number 1, I know we have discussed this before off this recording. What is it that is showing up for me? If my reaction is so negative what is that bias or what is that judgement in me, what is that linked to? Why do I have that? Is it because I am not confident in walking around in just a Leopard print catsuit with my nipple out? Is it because there is something about the way I have been taught to discuss my body that I don’t feel comfortable. You have to access it in that way. Rather than saying ‘I don’t agree that is disgusting’ but why? We can all make statements but if you can't back it up there is no point in talking in the first place, in my opinion.
ELEANOR: I totally agree, this is my thing that I bang on constantly with my students and everybody because I want them to question their conditioning and it's so uncomfortable to question your conditioning honestly we have been exploring this a lot lately with the apprising of the Black Lives Matter Movement and a lot of white people out there are super uncomfortable because they are realising that they are steeped in white fragility and they are waking up to the fact that yeah they are going to be inherently racist because they are part of the world and the world raises us like that and it can be so easy to be like ‘no, no, no I am not. I’m just going to push that away, push that to the side. That is not me and it takes work to stop and question your conditioning and go hmmm alright, I wonder what I think about this, I wonder where I got that idea from, I wonder why this makes me uncomfortable? but I just honestly think that we have to do this work. We cannot question our conditioning, this is about racism, this is about sexism, ableism, everything. You know, it’s so important.
RHEA: Completely agree. I think the thing that has shocked people again especially in the wake of BLM and what has shocked a lot of white people is actually how uncomfortable the work is. I think they would have thought ‘oh, that’s fine we can just read a couple of books, watch a few Netflix shows, a couple of Podcasts and bish bash bosh there we go’.
It is uncomfortable, but when we think about it logically all growth is uncomfortable. If you are going to the gym all of a sudden because you want to get a firmer bum or you want to lose 10 pounds or if it is like a business you want to go from making 3000 a month to 13000 a month it is uncomfortable, all growth is uncomfortable. So this idea that can just do a little bit of work again on systems that have been ingrained in people for centuries where you can be ‘I’m just going to read a few books and I am done’ No, that is so naive its really unlayering what you have been taught and shown and internalised for the eternity of your life, your parents life, your grandparents life. It’s like a generational trauma that affects everybody. In the same way I kind of think of the stories that my dad has told me, or my grandmother and I think how worse it would have been before that and before that. I feel that pain. Obviously not in the same way, I want to thank God not in the same way but I can feel that fight and I think that in the same breathe for white people you also have a generational trauma. Nobody is blaming a 26 year old white woman for the things that have happened but at the same time there has to be an element of responsibility for what your ancestry has caused and being able to dissect and therefore understand our perspective. No one is saying ‘OMG white people you better send all us black people a thank you card and a sorry card, I apologise for all that was done’. No, no, no there has to be more of an understanding, you can see how challenges it can be for non white people to move through this world. It doesn’t matter that we have had Obama, it doesn’t matter that we have Beyoncé, it doesn’t matter that we have Lizzo. Those things don’t matter because having a token non white person in a position of power doesn’t mean that the situation is still not dire for the majority and it is dire and you only have to look at the news whether that is American news, British news, Australian news obviously you have your own indigenous people that have been I guess they have been raped both literally, metaphorically.
ELEANOR: Yeah, our Australian history of our treatment of Indigenous folk is abbonimal, it’s shocking. We have had over 400 deaths in custody just this year between the indigenous population and it’s horrific.
RHEA: I just think, like you mentioned earlier, there’s no excuse now not to do the work. I think Social Media makes you think that we have to do the work publicly whether you post your black square or you take an instagram of the book that you are reading, it can be private.
It’s like faith, I’m not religious but you don’t have to go to church and wear a cross to believe in God it’s the same with any kind of work, it’s private work ultimately the more work that you do privately is probably the stuff that comes across publicly better anyway. There has been a massive talk about performative allyship. I don’t want to see some book club that a few white girls have put together where they discuss books on racism and they discuss it via Instagram posts - no, no, no. - If you need someone to speak to of course discuss it with your friend, ideally you will discuss it with a friend that’s also non white otherwise that is getting the same perspective again but you have to do the work and everybody has to do the work and I think it's such a phenomenal time we are in right now having Covid where we really had to stop. Actually, I think going back to the song and the video I think that it being released at a time where things were already heightened as in race relations were already heightened, people have pretty much stuck in their houses pretty much all year so we are already in such a flamitary time that to release a video of that nature which we have had Little Kim and Foxy Brown not really had it to that extent in a really long time. It was like the perfect storm for it to be released. For me was genius.
ELEANOR: Totally genius. And I really honestly have so much respect for Cardi B. I think that she is smart as all hell and she’s really playing the game, she’s allowing herself to monetise the system that is built up to oppress her and I think that is remarkable and deserves a round of applause. You actually mentioned in your article that a common criticism of the video is that it is seen to be pandering to the male gaze but you shot back at it saying what could be more liberating than capitalising on the same construct built to suppress you. I think that this is incredible, I think she has done such a great job - yeah, I’m going to play into this and also pay me.
RHEA: Yeah, exactly, pay me. I think Cardi B is such a force. I don’t know if you have an American show Love & Hip Hop but that is essentially a reality show that propelled her. When she was first on it, about 4-6 years ago and she was on the show pretty much exactly how she is like now, part of the fact that she still had a gap in her teeth. She was very confident then, she would have conversations with people and she would say ‘I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that’ people were like ‘no you are not’ and to see where she is now, to see that she has been on the front cover of some of the leading luxury magazines in the world she has held conversations with Vogue. I love it when someone really breaks the structure before they don't want them there. When you think about Harpers Bazaar or Vogue they don’t really want Cardi B there. When you think of the senior executives at those magazines and what those magazines have traditionally stood for and shown and expressed. Cardi B is literally the untificist of what they have wanted and yet she is unfiltrated that space so perfectly and so seamlessly I think that it has shown people that again how somebody talks, how somebody dresses, that is not their full being.
Obviously it comes to the point in terms of her capitalising on the male gaze. Listen, sex sells right? We already knew that. Sex sells. It doesn’t matter frankly who started the fact that sex sells, but it sells. So, why on earth would a woman, a business woman, want to come in a create a brand new structure when she can absolutely capitalise one that already exists? As well, lets bear in mind that Cardi B was a stripper in which she was doing that to have financial freedom to get out of a abusive relationship and of course again strippers and sex workers already have a hard time in terms of their rights and in terms of taxes and their safety but I think to go from being a stripper in which you were ridiculed for being a stripper but to yet still kept some of that aesthetic but now you are making billion of dollars is remarkable. As I mentioned of course when you look at, I am a geek so I don’t write about something unless I know every single detail, I looked at every single person involved in the making of the video and yes the director is a man and there was some comments around how can it be feminist if a director is a man because obviously it is just pandering to the male gaze and I find that such a dismissive statement because number 1 you are really ignoring or overlooking Cardi’s interaction with the said director. If I get married and I have a wedding planner, just because the wedding planner is planning it doesn’t mean I don’t have a say. There’s still my ideas, they will execute it. You know what I am saying?
ELEANOR: For sure. I feel like we know Cardi B well enough by now to know that she had a huge influence on that. She is not going to just roll over and be like ‘Ok director’.
RHEA: 100% The other thing, when we speak about feminism we have to understand we need men as part of feminism. In the same way that we think about BLM we need white allies to support black people we therefore need traditional gender conforming male allies to support the feminist movement. We are not going to get there by ourselves if the people that control the seats are all straight white men. There’s a lot of comments about this now in terms of the director and the fact that he is a man and I just think that you are not really giving Cardi much credit, you are not really giving men much credit either. Also, anyone who has done any research, Cardi has done so many interviews surrounding the making of the video and the song and she is very much in charge. This is very much the Cardi Show and she’s created what she wanted to create and the other point is that there are so many women that I know that saw that video, women saying that is so powerful, that is such a sexy video. Again, we can discuss it further but why do I as a woman find it sexy? It’s just sexy.
ELEANOR: Yeah, it is. It’s just sexy and she’s clearly taking ownership of it and what I love about what you mentioned was about the fact that she was a stripper, she was a sex worker and one huge issue that we have, we have been talking about white feminism and the issues with the types of feminism that exclude people whether it be based on race or SWERF) (Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist and I think that a lot of people who claim to be feminists and a lot of women who have a problem with Cardi B and the video and the song itself they most often have an inherent bias against sex workers but as you said, sex workers are profiting off the system that it there to suppress them and i just think what bigger flex is there than to go ‘ok I’m going to use this against you and make money from you’ I have so much respect for sex workers and I just think that we really need to reframe that view that all sex workers must be down trodden and doing it because they have no other option and that it’s a power play when the man is in charge when really if you go to any strip club, or you speak to any sex worker they are in charge. They are the ones taking the money, they are doing it coz they know what the hell they are doing and I think the fact that Cardi was a sex worker it comes through, you can see that influence.
RHEA: Going back to that point in terms of as you said the more traditional feminist being anti sex workers are not going to have the same values as sex workers. Everything goes back to the history, everything has to go back to the history and tradition. Prostitution which is obviously sex work is the oldest profession in the world. So, of course for me when we look back to the true history of sex work. Wouldn’t it be some kind of oppression probably yes but plot twist, some people have no choice, some people actually have no choice to feed their children but to use their body as a vessel to gain money and frankly if the choices are you either have to have sex with a man you don’t want to have sex with or your children die. For me, like you said what is the bigger way? I would much rather my family survive rather than we all die because we cant afford food in goodness know what century BC, AD, whatever. You know what I am saying? The thought because a woman capitalises on her body means that she is anti feminist is such an arkeick view is based on what? What is it based on? It is just a job. In the same way of any other job is and I think regardless of their motivation, regardless of whether they are someone who is really forced to do that to support a drug habit or they are doing that because they are a stereotypical 6 foot tall Russian model who is an escort why is there then a difference in the way we treat these women? It’s a means to an end, like any job is and if that women feels liberated doing sex work it’s ok but if she is a oppressed or if she is forced or down trodden we look down, feminists would rather look down on them rather than think of a way to support them. No woman wants to have sex with a man for $20 to get some drugs. No one. Nobody wants to do that. But then where are the pillars in place to protect women like that? There really aren’t any.
ELEANOR: Absolutely. I think on the other side of it just acknowledging that women do enjoy sex. If we are talking about sex workers in the category of women who do have sex for money there are a lot of women who do that by choice because they do enjoy sex and kind of going off on this tangent of women enjoying sex I want to come back to your article because quite possibly my favourite quote from your article, and there are many. You said, ‘the echo of fake orgasms is deafening as women are still unaware that sex is supposed to be an enjoyable act. We should be encouraged active subjects in rather than merely passive objects’. So good.
RHEA: Yeah, that for me was my favourite part of the article. The quote sums it up doesn’t it? It’s like we’ve been taught to believe and we’ve been shown in films whether it’s films you see in the cinema or if it's actual porn films that women really aren’t meant to enjoy this sexual process. It’s like this glorified dance that ends in male satisfaction only and that we are just meant to be there like a passive creature and even if we are incredibly active our end satisfaction hasn’t been given the main protagonist role ever. So, I think women should be shocked and we actually see it I think through all generations. You have got women who are much older than us that would schedule sex in like a retreat. You’ve also got really, really young girls that because of the speed which data is transferred now and therefore the fact that younger kids seeing sex and porn at such a young age, far even younger than me and I’m 29, kids are seeing porn when they are like under 10 now. The way that them is engrained in their mind is that it's all about the man. If you’re from 10 , or less than 10, whenever you are sexually active, you are just shown that it is all about the man whether you are male or female. You always see it is about the man then when you do become sexually active its going to have a massive impact on your sexual satisfaction of course so i think there are lots of women that don’t know what to say, that don’t have the confidence to become a sexual being and say what it is that they want or even more so than that, not that they don’t know what to say, they don’t know what they want. They are so far removed from their own pleasure that they don’t even know what it is that they want because their body has almost been removed from them. Their body is just a vessel and they’re not even linked to it. That’s really scary.
ELEANOR: We’ve never been given any encouragement to explore our own bodies that’s why I do what I do because so many women like you said are just not sure of what they even like and not even aware they deserve to feel pleasure and that’s exactly can be an enjoyable act. The amount of women out there who doesn’t enjoy sex that makes me so sad and it’s unfortunately so true because we are brought up in a society that everything is through the male gaze and honestly it really scares me that for so long, still men have this idea that women dono’t enjoy sex and yet they still have sex with women for their pleasure like how selfish.
RHEA: I mean as I see it, I feel like it’s an insane concept like you said to think that men don’t think women enjoy sex and yet men still have sex with women rather than asking or doing the required learning men would rather than just not. I think the female body black or otherwise has been a commodity that works for society when it wants to sell something. Like we discussed earlier, sex sells and there is a very rigid aesthetic of the female body that we often see that sells as you know quite often white, thin, tall, that traditional modelesque look regardless of the era of supermodel we are speaking about they all have very similar parallels.
So, the female body capitalised to sell something and yet when it gets to the vagina that is almost like ‘hold on, does female reproductive parts full stop, I didn’t technically mean vagina. I mean the vulva. With the vulva we then fear-mongered into that being the dirtiest place in the world with so many dirty words to describe it. It is very interesting that you have this concept that we love our body and we are trying to make money, we are trying to have sex with it, we love it and we want to plaster it across semi-naked women over a billboard to sell something as onoxious as toothpaste and it’s fine because she has her tits out so will probably sell millions of toothpaste and yet if we start speaking about her reproductive parts or her vulva or period it’s like ‘no, no, no, no, no, too much, too much.
ELEANOR: Yeah.
RHEA: It’s like, it’s where life began and its the most sensitive and pleasurable part of the female's body and you are choosing to ignore it. We can’t do this anymore.
ELEANOR: OMG. That’s just so very well put I just think that.
RHEA: Was it the tits out on the toothpaste that did it for you?
ELEANOR: Tits on the toothpaste, all of it. So brilliant. I couldn't agree more and I am concerned that we are going to run out of recording time but I absolutely love your brain. I love this article. It has been such a pleasure to chat with you Rhea, thank you so much for coming on and I'm sure everybody has learn so much from you so thank you.
RHEA: Thank you for having me. I don’t know if I have learnt but hopefully have some tidbits to do some further research and if you have not you have laughed. That’s all we ask.
ELEANOR: Absolutely. I hope we were very entertaining for you and you learnt a thing or two as well and don’t fake orgasms. How about that?
RHEA: Yeah that’s a good one to leave on. Just don’t do it.
ELEANOR: Just don’t do it and also go listen to the song because it’s fabulous and enjoy your WAP.
RHEA: Yeah, enjoy it, enjoy it.
