Today was yet another day of chest-thumping for the self-congratulatory feminist brigade.
Adele, one of their icons, apparently has a hair problem since she doesn’t shave her legs more than once a month. On being asked by Vanity Fair whether her boyfriend minded it, she shot back, “He has no choice. I’ll have no man telling me to shave my fucking legs. Shave yours.”
Expectedly, this was hailed variously as “best reply ever”, “take that, men”, and “Adele will have none of it, and you shouldn’t either” by all those media outlets that find Hillary Clinton to be an angel.
Now, there’s a serious problem with that statement, and even more with the attitude that goes into making that statement. It gives the stench of an uncompromising megalomaniac who lives life all by her rules, refusing to bend the tiniest bit to accommodate what is for most men a biological need, and one that is by no means impossible to meet for a woman.
Scratch that. Adele is none of the above. She’s a hypocrite pretending to be a diehard feminist.
Know why she bothers to shave her legs at all? “Because people in the front row at her concerts might notice them when she runs up the stairs to the stage.”
To me, it sounds like she’s happily complying with (unsaid) requests of all men (and women) in the front row to look presentable. But she has a problem doing the same for her boyfriend, the man who probably sees her naked every day. Why? Because shaving one’s legs for one’s man automatically makes one a submissive sandwich-maker?
So not only is Adele hypocritical but also lazy and arrogant because she doesn’t shave her legs for her man knowing she can get another at the drop of a hat, but does so happily for her fans since she knows their replacement might be harder to come by.
Now, it’s hard to blame Adele for being a lazy, arrogant hypocrite when almost everyone on the planet is one too. The problem is that she’s a hugely influential figure, an icon of female power for the hundreds of millions of young girls and women around the world who adore her. Unwittingly or otherwise, she has added tinder to the already raging bonfire of gender war. Adele just instructed those hundreds of millions of young girls and women to adopt a cavalier attitude to the most basic need of all men that are, or will ever be, in their lives. So yeah, I’ll add “ignorant” to the list of adjectives I’ve used to describe her.
I don’t think it should be hard for any woman to realise that most men find female body hair unpalatable, just like I realise that a lot of men are downright assholes about expressing their preferences to women. It’s possible that Adele has had bad experiences that have left her bitter, and hence her issue with being asked to shave her legs. The problem is that such attitude simply forecloses all possibility of dialogue. Even a polite request at the right time and place will go unheeded. Note that such a request is completely different from lamenting one’s partner’s small boobs or tiny penis, since those are things they can’t do anything about. However, it is no different from a man asking for a blowjob but straightaway refusing to rid himself of the jungle down there. Imagine the earthquake that’d have struck the Milky Way had it been Adele’s boyfriend making a statement on the lines of what she did.
For far too long, we allowed men to get away with making statements (and actions) like that, and now we have this stinking patriarchy. I am afraid feminism is well on its way to the same infamy.
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