The man dressed and the woman standing

Feminists around the world are outraged by the performance of a famous singer and his wife at the Grammy Awards this week. The singer's name is Kanye West and his wife's name is Bianca Censori. I didn't know who they were, and I try to keep up to date. 

Beyoncé was stunned by the Grammys. The scene went viral. I don't usually listen to Beyoncé or singers like her, but I love that they exist in this context. I don't particularly like the music they make, much less the cultural industry they serve. At least they are women trying to be in control of their own lives. 

Trying to own one's own body and image in spectacular 'patriarchal capitalism' is no small feat. 

In fact, we don't really know what's happening when this image of the couple appears, where she is the merchandise on display and he is too, except he isn't. Let's try to understand. A woman and a man arrive at an awards party full of musicians and celebrities, she dressed in a giant fur coat. He in sunglasses. They pose for photos, she seems tense, he perhaps. Maybe they're indignant. He stands like a lamppost and tells her to start the show. She obeys the command, or the agreement, and takes off her coat, standing naked in front of the cameras. 

Not him. He's still dressed. 

Perhaps they're trying to steal the spotlight from others, maybe they made a bet, are fulfilling a promise, or have been blackmailed. We don't know what's going on between them. It seems like an agreement. Maybe not. 

Yes, everything is patriarchy, everything is advertising, everything is a commodity body, morbid plasticity, fake empowerment, male exhibitionism, the reduction of the body to plastic and image, etc. He remains standing, clothed. She remains in the position of a prosthesis for her husband. Some have spoken of women as cars. That's not wrong. 

We've just had a lesson in how patriarchy and its anatomopolitics work. A woman, mutilated in reverse, sculpted by the aesthetic industry, undresses next to her famous husband who remains clothed. We hope she's happily laughing at the suckers of the spectacular system that we all are—the rest of us uninvolved in the scene except as spectators, displaying the sexualized body as if it hadn't been sexualized—the silicone body, the Barbie vagina—but we have to ask ourselves why he remains clothed and wearing sunglasses in this game of spectacular grotesqueness. In that clothed man next to the naked woman posed, all the answers reside.