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Grace Jones has not always had the best reputation because she always refused to stay trapped into the straightjacket women were supposed to fit into. 

She didn’t want to be a man, her want of freedom didn’t have anything to do with Freud’s theory of the penis envy, she wanted to be a woman on her own terms.

Firstly, Grace Jones wanted sex, and she wasn’t afraid to let it known. The journalist Jess Zimmerman once commented on the attitude women are expected to assume in our society : "The low-maintenance woman, the ideal woman, has no appetite. A man's appetite can be hearty, but a woman with an appetite is always voracious: her hunger always overreaches, because it is not supposed to exist. If she wants food, she is a glutton. If she wants sex, she is a slut. If she wants emotional care-taking, she is a high-maintenance bitch or, worse, an 'attention whore': an amalgam of sex-hunger and care-hunger, greedy not only to be fucked and paid but, most unforgivably of all, to be noticed.”6 Grace Jones didn’t care about what she was supposed to do or be, she only cared about what she wanted to do or be. When she’s been confronted in interviews for “enjoying to shock people” she replied “What’s shocking? To do what you want to do, when you want to do it, if you want to do it?” 7

She would not let society or men shame her for anything that she felt like doing, and through her personal journey, she transformed and liberated women's sexuality, changing the understanding of “slut” for “empowered” and “free”.

Natalie Portman actually had something to say about that during this year’s woman march “Even at 13, I understood that if I were to express my sexuality, I would fee unsafe, and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body. I quickly adjusted my behaviour. I rejected any role that even had a kissing scene, I emphasised how bookish and serious I was, I cultivated an elegant way of dressing. I build myself a reputation for being prudish, conservative, serious, nerdy, in an attempt to feel like my body was safe and my voice would be listened to. (…) So I’d like to propose one way to keep on moving this revolution forward. Let’s declare loud and clear : This is what I want, this is what I need, this is want I desire, this is how you can help me achieve pleasure.”8

What Portman is talking about is precisely what Grace Jones started doing almost 40 years ago. The movement is now finally taking over society. What Grace Jones was doing alone in the 80’s, women want to all be entitled to do the same without being called sluts or attention seekers. If you look at today’s feminist landscape, you can see Grace Jones’ signature all over it. What she told all women and what Natalie Portman understood and is claiming today, is that we don’t need to inhibit our nature to be taken seriously or to be respected. Our nature isn’t reprehensible nor shouldn’t it be, and acting as if it was only reaffirms this misconception. 

What she also did for us was rejecting what she was supposed to look like as a woman. By constantly swaying between extreme femininity, raw sexual provocation and heavily butch looks, she stated that all of that was making her a woman, a human being and that was it. She called people out for drawing conclusion about her sexuality and personality based on her looks. Or for calling her “masculine” “What does it even mean to be masculine?” she asks. Saying that a woman asking for the same privileges and liberties as men isn’t making her masculine.

Feminism today is meeting a lot of critique. Feminists are often called feminnazi, we think that they all are extreme men-haters and that (with the #metoo movement) they are making women completely unreasonable. Some people argue that feminism and femininity just aren’t compatible. Laura explains in "The Female Thing" 9 that femininity is in fact a strategy that women adopted to cope with  their inferior situation. They would turn the physical features that made them inferior to men into weapons against them. Being small and weak makes you unable compete with a men, but women used those features as advantages, winning men over because of them. Feminism on the other hand would refuse to use that strategy in the least bit as the strategy is based upon acceptance of the inferior situation of women. Yet feminism completely rejects this beliefs and wants to throw it out of the picture once and for all. Therefore feminism and femininity and in essence a 100% incompatible (according to Kipnis).

While I understand the argument and reading it I couldn’t really poke holes in it, I still felt a little uneasy about it as I definitely cultivate my femininity, but I also consider myself a feminist. If I really had to put my finger on something here, I would say that it seems to me like Kipnis, when saying that feminists want to throw the men-women inequalities out the window once and for all, she almost says that women want to become men. Which I don’t agree with, of course women want the same rights as men but that doesn’t mean that they believe that biological and physical differences will be obliterated as soon as we get equal pay.

What Grace Jones does is being a feminist without pointing fingers at anyone. She fights for her freedom as a woman, but not as a woman against men. She states that she loves and want men as well as women, that if people call her masculine it is because she has greatly been inspired by the men in her family.. She doesn’t reject men, or tries to fight them, she just tries to emancipate herself.

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6. Jones, G. (1985) Interview. Australia: Day by Day

7. Portman, N. (2018) Speech. Washington, The Women's March

8. Jones, D. (2017) Grace Jones and the Power of Sex. London: Noisey UK. [online] available at:

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/z4npvj/grace-jones-and-the-power-of-sex

9. Kipnis, L. (2009). The female thing. New York: Vintage Books.

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