Typically, I’ve lost the link to the report that prompted this post. But it’s basically about Keira Knightley’s recent insistence on unedited appearance in print – for the photos themselves, here; for an overview of the situation, here will do as well as any.

The version of the story I can’t find (and so you’ll have to take this on trust, sorry), included some more of Knightley’s comments, most notably on the flesh-revealing and sex-faking expected of female film actors, even quite mainstream or even personally conservative ones, along the lines of:

it’s knowing what to say yes and no to … you want to be liberated but not that liberated, you know?

This in the context of complaining (I believe rightly) about heavily gender-skewed oversexualisation and lack of choice over that.

The idea that sexualising women always constitutes freeing them from the asexualising / repressive / infantilising forces of Victorian patriarchal chauvinism has been a convenient and much-used pretext for (often male) offstage media decision-makers to push for more flesh, more Photoshop, more double entendre, more importing of the subtler end of pornography’s repertoire of devices into the mainstream. Chiefly where women are concerned because of the assumption (prevalent and ultimately damaging to both genders) that women are never really interested in being titillated and men always are.

Liberating women means just that. Liberating people means just that. Replacing one form of pervasive social pressure (to be the innocent child-wife angel in the house) with another (to be the slightly sublimated whore) is not liberation – pressure, including effectively leveraging the desire or need for an ongoing career and income, to be libertine even in performance persona is in no way liberating.

If there was a genuine presence of gender equality and the liberation of the much more generally historically oppressed gender, then there would not be pressure from one gender to another, especially not mixed up with power, influence and money, to be more or less libertine. If women wanted to be extremely publicly sexual, they could (though I suspect in most cases they underestimate the degree to which they are being used by others cashing in on such behaviour, and leaving themselves open to career downfall as they cease to conform to industry notions of ‘young’ and ‘attractive’ – which is another story entirely). If, equally, they wanted to keep their sexuality out of the public eye, they could do so – I mean you obviously would be unlikely to get cast as Moll Flanders in that case, but that’s a career choice; you would probably be more likely to be allowed to tour in the Dominican Republic.

This is essentially another post not about music, but the visualisation and the sexualisation of music is in fact prevalent. It’s a little less gender skewed, possibly, than some visual media, but still heavily so. Musical success, in certain particular strands, is heavily tied up with music videos, photo shoots, red carpet appearances, photostory-worthy tours, the media spotlight in between and alongside actual musical activity. That’s the price of social media. And the result is all of the above applies just as much to musicians (often under just as much pressure from producers, record labels, management, etc. as screen stars are from directors) as to actresses.