Feminism: Why Miley Matters OR Our Relationship To Pop Culture Does Not Exist In a Vacuum
Yesterday's post on Miley's VMA performance and the racism she put on display has gotten way bigger than I ever expected. I originally wrote it for Jezebel's Groupthink forum, then cross posted it here. Between the two, the article has racked up close to 12K shares on facebook, nearly 100K views, and enough tweets that I've been getting follow requests to my private twitter account all day; and the numbers will likely only have grown by the time I hit publish.
But while on a superficial level I'm glad that so many people have read and shared my work, the bigger emotion that overtakes me is relief. Relief that so many people get it. Relief that so many people understand that there was something very, very wrong with what Miley did onstage that night, and it had nothing to do with her costume. Relief that this many people understood that Miley's performance was not a stand-alone occurrence, but a symptom of a much, much bigger problem with the way that blackness, and specifically black womanhood is portrayed in our culture.
