Not a day goes by where celebrities and influencers fail to read the room. The Met Gala was yet another one of those days, only on a much larger scale.
While the likes of Lil Nas X pulled off a fabulous three-in-one look, and Billie Eilish paid true homage to American icon Marilyn Monroe, other guests at the exclusive A-list event missed the mark. Like, completely missed it.
The guests in question are model and actress Cara Delevingne and Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, known better by her initials AOC. Both outfits attempted to take aim at the structure of society, presumably in an attempt to look like girl-bossing revolutionaries. Unfortunately, they fell far short of all the above.
AOC’s “tax the rich” message, etched on the back of her white dress, obviously appealed to certain corners of the internet, where such messaging works a treat. Messaging, however, is all the dress was. It achieved nothing, and only served to demonstrate the widening gap between rich and poor, not just in the US, but around the world.
A Democratic Congresswoman walks into the Met Gala, where tickets begin at $30k and end at $250k, attended by multimillionaires, wearing the slogan “tax the rich”. There’s champagne socialism, and then there’s this.
You’d think that AOC, with all her passion and fury towards those who are, in her view, too rich, would actively refuse to participate in an event such as the Met, let alone take this performative activist approach. Did her values leave the second her invite arrived?
Outside the Met Gala that night was a BLM protest, where many activists were arrested. AOC will have wistfully bypassed this protest, wearing what she thought was a cool, anti-capitalist dress. She bypassed those protesting for their lives and instead enjoyed an evening with some of the wealthiest people in the world. Great anti-capitalist activism, isn’t it?
Then there was the worst take of them all: Cara Delevingne’s “peg the patriarchy” top.
This year’s theme should have been “girl boss”, with Delevingne wearing a rather controversial, half-offensive top, demanding what she thinks are equal rights. The top really translated as penetrate the patriarchy, though I’m not sure what exactly this even means.
First off, we have the issue around pegging. It’s often wrongly associated with male weakness and femininity. Why? Because of the patriarchy. It is the patriarchy that conditions individuals to think that men who enjoy penetration are less masculine. So, this “peg the patriarchy” phrase was a total led balloon.
Instead, what Delevingne did lift up is the idea that penetration is power. It doesn’t take a genius to work out just how toxic this attitude is. In a world where sex is used by the powerful to get what they want – see Hollywood’s own Me Too movement, and the brave women around the world speaking up about sexual coercion and assault. Obviously Delevingne isn’t supporting these men, but the statement she wore implies she’s clever enough to know all about society and what governs it. Clearly, she doesn’t.
Instead, all Cara Delevingne’s Met Gala top achieved was playing into the stereotypes of men created and enforced by the very patriarchy she sought to dismantle. As if a top at the Met Gala would do that in the first place.
And before we retaliate to these arguments by claiming “it’s not that deep”, I agree. The Met Gala shouldn’t be that deep. If a bunch of rich celebrities want to walk a red carpet in ridiculous outfits while they clamour to impress Anna Wintour, so be it. But they transform the event into something totally different when they try to get politics into fashion.
If you’re a man and “peg the patriarchy” at the Met has left you feeling uncomfortable with yourself, this is a real, genuine shame. Any man – regardless of sexuality – who enjoys being penetrated is still a man. It doesn’t make you any less masculine to enjoy what you do.
One thing the patriarchy and the rich don’t like is when those they control think too much. Maybe Met attendees next year should do a bit more of that, rather than arrive sporting the most dislikeable and hypocritical slogans they could find.
