Spanish fashion designer Miguel Adrover made waves last week after he posted a screenshot of a controversial exchange he had with Rosalía’s team. In it, her team asked Adrover for a custom look for the Spanish singer, and Adrover’s team reportedly responded by saying, “Miguel doesn’t work with any artist who doesn’t publicly support Palestina.”
The caption on Adrover’s Instagram reads: “Doing ‘The Right Thing’….Silence is complicity, and even more so when you have a big loudspeaker where millions of people listen to you when you sing. That’s why you have the responsibility to use this power to denounce this genocide. Rosalia, this is nothing personal.”
The next day, Rosalía posted an Instagram story in response expressing that she was, in fact, horrified at what was happening in Palestine and expressed gratitude for people who were in the frontlines of the war. Then she added: “The fact that I haven’t used my platform in a way that aligns with others’ styles or expectations absolutely does not mean that I don’t condemn what is happening in Palestine.” Commenters had mixed responses about Rosalía’s post.
For the past several days, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this interaction, mostly because I’m a fan of Rosalía’s music, but also because it brought up a pretty valid question about what truly constitutes activism.
When she pointed out that she might not be protesting in line with people’s “styles or expectations,” I thought about anxieties that I’ve had myself while on social media: Should I be posting more about the injustices being committed in Gaza? If I do, is it actually going to help anyone?
And more importantly — am I posting because I genuinely think it’s going to help, or am I posting to signal to others that I care? I’m fairly certain others like me are contemplating the same anxieties.
On the other hand, I empathize with Adrover’s stance. We live in a time when speaking out about Palestine isn’t always the safe thing to do. And many famous artists hesitate to speak out because it comes across as choosing a side, therefore alienating fans and ultimately messing with their status and income.
Whether people agree with how he handled this particular situation or not, he did get Rosalía to publicly take a stance on the issue when she hadn’t before. It could be argued that we live at a moment of such moral urgency that a little bit of prodding and social pressure isn’t the worst thing, but I also believe that supporting Gaza has to amount to more than just reposts on social media.
Many of us who do care about social issues have become increasingly fatigued with social media activism, especially under the current administration, when we’re seeing new attacks on marginalized communities every day. A 2022 study even suggested that engagement with online activism can lead to increased mental stress.
Rosalía has a right to her opinion about people having different styles of protest — being vocal online is not authentic to everyone. But as a person who believes that not expressing a stance is, in itself, an indication of being complicit with oppression, Rosalía should be backing up her sentiment with evidence that she was participating in some other way. It could be by donating money to organizations behind the scenes, seeking out and hiring people of Palestinian descent for projects, or even incorporating her support for Gazans into her art. Her point fell flat when she didn’t provide other ways in which she’s actively participated in some way.
If there ever was ambiguity about the war in Gaza being a humanitarian disaster that we should all be condemning, there’s certainly none now.
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The question now is, how do we all participate in ways that feel authentic to us and are actually productive, and not based on virtue signaling and projecting valid frustrations on people who, ultimately, aren’t fueling the problem. If there’s one lesson I learned from 2020’s “racial awakening,” it’s that our attention is a limited resource, and we should be very intentional about how we use it.