Last week, Lainey posted in What Else? that she was really enjoying the new Shakira album. It was just a couple of days before Cowboy Carter would drop, I’d already stopped obsessing about eternal sunshine, and I got curious. I was on my way home from work and I only got half-way through the second song of Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran when I got a call from a friend and then I never bothered to press play again.
I haven’t listened to Shakira in years. I used to LOVE her. She was one of my first concerts. My parents and I saw her on the Pies Descalzos Tour at the Houston Music Hall on April 18, 1997–special shout-out to my stepdad for figuring out this exact date and venue, which was demolished just a year later! I don’t remember what I was wearing, but I remember what Shakira was wearing–a pair of black leather pants, a fitted dark top with a ¾ sleeve, and her dark BLACK hair straightened and down. Pies Descalzos was my Jagged Little Pill in Spanish and Shakira my Latina Alanis Morrisette.
But a few years later, Shaki and I would break up. The crossover broke us, lol. A few songs would briefly bring me back, but only a couple reminded me most of my early love for Shakira. These songs were always in Spanish, among them “Que Me Quedes Tú,” and what was probably my favorite Shaki song ever, “La Pared.”
Damn, I have not heard this song in YEARS!
The point is, “La Pared” and others from Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 notwithstanding, I never quite got into Shakira once she went blonde. So it is fitting, I guess, that her comments about another artificial blonde would make me groan.
The notification on my phone read: “Shakira says ‘Barbie’ felt emasculating ‘to a certain extent’ and her sons ‘absolutely hated’ it. Listen, excited as I was for the Barbie movie, I have my own critiques–for example, I could’ve done with less Ken (I mean, I never bought a Ken with my candy scheme profits! He’s just Ken! Now, at the Oscars, that was another story. That was the perfect amount of Ken). But Shakira’s comments are just above right-wing talking points–and old ones, at that! Still, let’s assess them in context, from the actual article in Allure:
Now, I can’t help but ask a question that’s been on my mind since we began this conversation, “Did you watch the movie Barbie?”
“I watched it, yeah.” Long pause.
“And?”
“My sons absolutely hated it. They felt that it was emasculating. And I agree, to a certain extent. I'm raising two boys. I want 'em to feel powerful too [while] respecting women. I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide. I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity. I think that men have a purpose in society and women have another purpose as well. We complement each other, and that complement should not be lost.” (emphasis mine)
The current Shakira narrative is that she is turning the pain of the relationship with her partner of 11 years and father of her children into art, that she embodies an empowered woman who “no longer cries” (title of her album). A woman who is in a video with Cardi B that takes place on a planet where “the men are happy to be dominated by women” and yet she cannot understand a movie that was so damn obvious in condemning patriarchy, rather than men, for the oppression of women? And that if her sons, who are 9 and 11, felt “emasculated” while watching this movie, maybe this was an opportunity to talk them through it–that recognizing how women have been oppressed historically does not negate or diminish who they are, but in fact might make them more responsible and thoughtful people in this world? Or that she might be limiting their perspective by assigning traditional gender roles that expect them to “protect and provide”? I have a 14-year-old kid and despite our best efforts, the outside world communicates misogyny and other forms of ignorance to him, but you bet your ass that we talk to him at any sign that he is not thinking critically, for example, of the nonsense he watches on YouTube. My son thought Barbie was a good movie. I just asked him if he felt emasculated by Ken. He laughed and said, “I thought that Ken was hilarious.”
When I first read Shakira’s comments, an old article and a comparison came to me–it was an Anne Helen Peterson piece she wrote for Buzzfeed on Gwen Stefani. The article is about the supposed confusion many had about the “newer” and more seemingly “conservative” Gwen Stefani in contrast to the “empowered” and seemingly feminist persona of her No Doubt days who made sweaty push-ups to a ballad look so damn good. But as the article lists example after example of Stefani’s “apolitical,” “traditionally feminine” or even conservative behaviors, we are reminded that she was always a girl from Orange County who was a rock girl “but not like those other rock girls.” Those rock girls who came across as “angry feminists.” I feel like I am having that moment of recognition with Shakira.
When you look at her lyrics–even those of my favorite songs–they are hardly feminist. As clever as she is with her pen, the Shakira in these songs is the Shakira in Allure.
This is just one example:
Después de ti la pared
No me faltes nunca
Debajo el asfalto
Y más abajo estaría yo
Sin ti
Eres la enfermedad y el enfermero
Y ya me has convertido
En tu perro faldero
Sabes que sin ti
Ya yo no soy
Sabes que a donde vayas voy
Naturalmente
After (loving) you I hit a wall
Don't you ever leave me
Beneath it is the asphalt
And even farther down I'd be without you
You are the sickness and the nurse
And you've already turned me
Into your lapdog
You know that without you, I cease to be
You know that I go wherever you go, naturally
Like Gwen Stefani, I guess the new Shakira is a lot like the old one. And now I know it.
Shakira is prompting an album after many years of having taken a back seat to her partner’s career. In Allure she shares that while she was growing up her mom “stopped working at some point. She stopped wearing miniskirts, and the length of her skirts got longer because my dad said so.” Now Shakira shares that her children felt emasculated by a movie about a girls’ toy and that “men have a purpose in society and women have another purpose as well.” Patriarchy is a hell of a drug (and many women are its biggest pushers and consumers).
Click here for more on Shakira in Allure.
Attached - Shakira at the Miami Open on the weekend.
