There’s a story about Bono, mid-show, ushering the crowd to be silent. He starts to clap his hands.
“Every time I clap my hands, a child dies somewhere in Africa,” he says.
An audience member yells out – in a broad Glaswegian accent, so the story goes – from the crowd: “Stop clapping your hands then!”
It’s true that this may be less an accurate record of an exchange and more an amusing dig at Bono’s sanctimoniousness.
But, even if it isn’t true, it’s not as funny as what I’m about to type next: Bono has become the first-ever man to be honoured at Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year awards.
Yep, you read that right. Bono is one of Glamour magazine’s women of the year – well, technically their first man of the year – alongside several other worthy, er, women, including the five-time Olympic medal winner Simone Biles, the three founders of the Black Lives Matter movement and Nadia Murad, who was nominated for the Nobel peace prize after escaping enslavement by Isis.
I can’t speak for Murad but if my being held prisoner in Mosul was implicitly put on a par with Bono’s “trying to do good for as long as he’s been making music”, I’d feel a bit put out.
I thought peak Bono was him hacking our phones with his garbage album.
— Vann R. Newkirk II (@fivefifths) November 2, 2016
But it appears I was wrong.
“We’ve talked for years about whether to honour a man at Women of the Year and we’ve always kind of put the kibosh on it,” said the editor-in-chief, Cindi Leive, proving that her first impulses, at least, are sound. “You know, men get a lot of awards and aren’t exactly hurting in the awards department.
“But it started to seem that that might be an outdated way of looking at things and there are so many men who really are doing wonderful things for women these days.”
There you have it: Bono’s win – Finally! An award for Bono! – is actually a win for gender equality, bringing an end to sexist discrimination observed by Glamour’s Women of the Year awards.
Either men’s rights activists are a big market for magazines, or I’m missing something.
Here are some other “outdated way of looking at things” that I’d far rather we put behind us: that contraception is the responsibility of women. That their sports are not as demanding athletically, nor as entertaining to watch as men’s. That abortion involves “ripping the baby out of the womb of the mother”. That young women feel more valued for their looks than their intelligence or ability (and on that point, at least, Glamour could actually have some influence).
I’d say the gender pay gap too but we already know that’s going to take more than half a century.
Of course the real take away here is that such accolades are essentially meaningless.
When you’re asked to conflate the achievements and impact of Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, with those of the victim of Brock Turner (both of whom are also among Glamour’s Women of the Year), the result’s inevitably going to be a bit embarrassing.
But Bono?
Sure, he has sold 170m albums, won 22 Grammys, raised money for and now spearheaded a new Poverty is Sexist campaign, aimed at helping the world’s poorest women.
But, in terms of impact and effectiveness, to honour him at an award ceremony for women about rivals naming Wonder Woman as the UN’s ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls.
The appointment of the fictional character was made two weeks ago amid protests from staff members, who noted the damning implication: that the UN “was unable to find a real-life woman” who fit the bill.
If the goal was to promote the forthcoming Wonder Woman blockbuster, there’s even a real-life woman to do that – its director, Patty Jenkins, attended the ceremony.
If you employ women or otherwise give them money – if you listen to music made by women, or read books written by them; even if you retweet women sometimes – you are doing more for equality than Wonder Woman is. That is a laughably low bar that the UN would do well to meet; perhaps they could start by paying their interns.
Of course Glamour magazine and the UN both stand to gain from even outraged coverage of their honorary titles, certainly more than Bono and a fake superhero do from receiving them. In fact both organisations are likely well aware that if they’d bestowed their honours on more worthy recipients, most of us would be unaware the titles exist at all.
As Jay-Z and Kanye West did before me, I find myself reaching for the quote from Blades of Glory, a strikingly prescient moment in an otherwise forgettable film: “Who cares what it means, it’s provocative! It gets the people going.”
Well, consider me got going, Glamour. And it’s not even an original stunt.
Like the US election campaign before it, Bono’s award is a plot twist lifted directly from the US comedy series Parks and Recreation. In one episode, Ron Swanson is named female empowerment award winner by a women’s organisation determined to give their award “to the opposite of a woman” for marketing purposes. (“Awards are stupid,” he responds, “which is why I fully intend to decline this nonsense and recommend it go to Leslie.”)
I am not deigning to list men who would have been better than Bono as man of the year at the Women of the Year awards – though “woke bae” Matt McGorry is more likely to have tweeted a picture of himself shirtless with a copy of the magazine in one hand and The Feminine Mystique in the other.
I plead instead that we stop bestowing these attention-seeking, arbitrary, ridiculous awards and honours, especially for “achievements” in feminism and gender equality. Because these “wins” are starting to look a lot more like losses.
