Saturday Night Live decided to pay an homage to feminism in song by not actually writing a song about feminism—and the anti-anthem ended up being a glorious primer on the intricacies of intersectional feminism anyway.
In the video sketch for “This Is Not A Feminist Song,” the female members of the SNL cast (i.e. mainly Aidy Bryant, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon, and Sasheer Zamata), alongside episode host Ariana Grande, detail how they spent an entire day trying to pen the ultimate tune about female empowerment in order “to fight [and] to right the wrongs of all of time”—only to find that it ended up being too difficult for them to do. This feminism thing is “pretty nuanced stuff,” after all, and it’s “hard to all in one song.” Yes, it’s very tough, as Cecily Strong scribbling furiously into a journal indicates.
And what do you do if you can’t do that? Frolick on a beach boardwalk with a lot of diverse women staring off into the middle distance, and framed by all of the lens flares, presumably. If it’s not a feminist song, it “technically can’t be wrong,” right?
Highlights in the subversively hilarious music vid include Leslie Jones reminding us that a woman shouldn’t be reduced to just her hands just because they might look old, Grande chiming in that women have the right to choose (to “bail on this whole song”—it’s not a pro-choice reference or anything), and every face that Kate McKinnon makes (which is also a rule of thumb for everything she does, generally). Oh, and the shout-outs to the Notorious RBG, Madeleine Albright, Maya Angelou, and Malala Yousafzai weren’t so bad either.
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Verdict: “This Is A Feminist Song” might just be the ultimate third-wave feminist ode that we didn’t know we needed.
Contact the author at jamie.reich@jezebel.com.
Image via YouTube.