As I am sure most of you have seen already, Gigi Hadid was attacked while she was leaving the MaxMara fashion show in Milan, Italy. She was walking to her car with her sister and her bodyguards when a supposed prankster came from behind, picked up Hadid while she struggled in his grip. She elbowed him in the face and fended him off, telling him to “F**k off” and shouting “Who the f**k do you think you are?”
Now while I myself applaud her for this, multiple news outlets have been reporting it as Gigi Hadid lashing out at a fan, and that she aggressively attacked a fan. This is where Feminism is important. It’s important because a woman was picked up against her will and news outlets are trying to portray Hadid as the bad guy. How is it okay for a total stranger to grab a woman and think it would be okay, and how is it okay for people to be reporting that she is aggressive and that she lashed out a fan?
Let’s break this down: Gigi Hadid leaves an event swarmed by paparazzi, she gets picked up by a total stranger who she doesn’t know, she fights back defending herself from the attacker, she ends up the bad guy because he “was a fan”. The fact that this guy honestly thought it would be okay completely boggles my mind, but the fact that he is portrayed to be the victim in all of this is what gets my blood boiling. Why does he get made out to be some great guy who was a fan and was randomly savaged by a star he looked up to, and why does Hadid get made out to be a crazed diva who doesn’t appreciate her fans and is “aggressive and angry”? And what’s even worse, if you just google her name, the top four articles that come up are titled along the lines of ‘Gigi Hadid lashes out aggressively at male attacker.” It even has the word attacker in the title, and her attitude towards how she handled the situation is still a bigger headline than the fact itself that she was attacked. This isn’t the first time things like this have happened, though. Celebrities are ambushed all the time, and yes to an extent it does come with the fame. However, what about us normal people? What about someone like you or like me who doesn’t have that celebrity status and people filming our every move? What about the countless number of women who get assaulted and attacked daily, but they are not believed once they recount their stories? What about the women who are attacked and are asked what they did to provoke such an attack, as if it was their fault to begin with? And what about the men who attack those women and walk away as if nothing happened?
How many more times does a woman have to be attacked and deprived of her rights to her body before this ends? How many more men need to be telling women how they should behave and how they should dress and what they should and shouldn’t do? It’s 2016, why are we acting as if women still have no rights?
Gigi Hadid was right to hit her attacker, and many more women deserve the right to see their injustices rectified. Women have the right to do, say, be, act and wear whatever they and however they want. We are sick of it, and we need to stop accepting men dictating our lives for us.
