Remember this time last year, when checking the news rarely meant hearing the word pussy' You know, outside of that one band from Russia'Then came the tape.The Washington Post, breaking news of Donald Trumps now infamously vulgar Access Hollywood comments in early October, didnt put the most outrageous word in its headline, writing insteadthe rather blandTrump Recorded Having Extremely Lewd Conversation About Women In 2005. As news organizations reflect the linguistic conventions of their audiences, the paper was considering its readers who werent comfortable with the slang for vagina. Others reporting on the tape, including The Huffington Post, and alsoavoided using it in theirheadlines, emphasizing instead the inappropriate nature of the remarks.On TV, where perhaps our highest standards of decent language are meant to live, pussy was bleeped. In the aftermath, more headlines began appearing with the offending word partially present: p***y.But then U.S. voters cast ballots and, through the ancient magic of the Electoral College, it was determined that the candidate who once bragged about sexual assault against women would become president.And the word began cropping up again ' in a different way.Women Knit Thousands Of Pussy Power Hats To Support The Womens March On Washington, The New York Times reported in January, as women knitted in part against Trumps vulgar remark about their bodies. The Huffington Post alsolet the word fly free, uncensored, while other organizations referred to the pussy hats not by name but rather their iconic pinkness. As people began talking about pussy hats, knitting them and wearing them, the word pussy seemed increasingly normalized. Case in point: pussy hats are ending up in museumsaround the world to represent our present cultural moment.A moment when we said pussy and it wasnt offensive or embarrassingly porny, but powerful and unifying for regular women.Its too soon to tell whether women have truly reclaimed the word, in the aftermath of a contentious election marked by criticism over a sexist candidate. Thanks to repeated references in the newsand pop culture, pussyfeels neutered, part of the natural fabric of our language. Does it still have the power to shock'Maybe not as much.Pussy hats, though, might be merely the more ubiquitous version of Pussy Riot ' the all-female Russian punk group. Seemingly another pop-culture lifetime ago, in 2012, Pussy Riot was getting in trouble for their protest performances, thrusting the word pussy into the media in a quieter version of recent events. Pussy Is Having A Moment, declared Slate. Can We Reclaim And Redefine Pussy' Sure, Why Not, said Jezebel.The former reminded us about the effort to re-contextualize words offensive against women, including pussy, kicked off by riot grrrls way back in the 90s. Slates Lindsay Zoladz also brought up the examples of musicians Iggy Azaela, with her song PU$$Y, and Grimes, who introduced a line of rings (pussy rings) shaped like vaginas. Women ' a few, at least ' have embraced the word, claiming it for the feminist movement.With their constant syntactic companions, maybe pussy hat and Pussy Riot allowed women the chance to warm up to the word by diluting it ever so slightly. Seeing it on its own, then, as on a pussy grabs back T-shirt,becomes more of a ho-hum affair, whether we feel empowered or simply desensitized.As always, context is everything.From the mouth of a man, the term can retain its cruelty when intended as a crass reference to a womans genitals, and its hostility when used to criticize anothers masculinity. Grab em by the pussy still makes for a grotesquely sexist string of words.Womencould begin saying pussy as casually and freely as the LGBTQ community reclaimed queer, gradually pushing out those who would use it to demean them as a mere part of their whole selves ' perhaps gradually turning it into a word we would have a hard time reading with malice.Language can be that way: like the society that uses it, it evolves.You can be highbrow. You can be lowbrow. But can you ever just be brow' Welcome to Middlebrow, a weekly examination of pop culture. Read more here. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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