Having watching rapper Kanye West and his wife Bianca Censori get kicked out of the Grammy Awards on Sunday night—though West, of course, denies this happened—the public should ask: Is Censori OK? And why in the world are we all watching West’s erratic, problematic behavior and acting like it, or he, is acceptable?
As West and Censori walked the red carpet, he was fully clothed, while she was in a long fur coat. While posing photographers, he appeared to order her to remove it, and she complied; underneath, she was almost entirely nude, her breasts and genitals fully exposed.
It was far from the the first time a clothed West has appeared next to a nearly-nude Censori, though it did mark a new development in her barely-there attire. And there’s nothing wrong with nudity or women showing their bodies. But the West-Censori dynamic doesn’t feel like an empowered woman wearing what she wants; it feels uncomfortably like a man with very particular ideas about female sexuality parading his take on a “tradwife” around in an act of domination and debauchery.
That’s in part because of how West and Censori behave. She’s barely out of her 20s and moves through public spaces mute and dead-eyed, seemingly looking to him for direction and approval. He’s nearing 50 and appears to tell her what to do. Her friends have voiced serious concerns about their relationship.
It’s also in part because West has a long history of degrading women, and seems to revel in publicly humiliating them. This misogyny exploded into public view when West interrupted Taylor Swift, who was then just 20 years old (West was in his 30s), as she received an MTV Video Music Award in 2009; West broke into her speech, grabbed the mic, and argued that Beyoncé should have won in her place. (Beyoncé was clearly angry and embarrassed by the stunt, and when she later took the stage to receive a different award, she invited Swift back up to give her speech.)
Even though West was clearly in the wrong, the narrative of the event soon became complicated by race; Swift was often painted as a villain, a woman who used her whiteness as a shield—never mind that she didn’t actually do anything to invite West’s actions, and didn’t do or say much in the aftermath, either. In 2016 he mused on a track that “Me and Taylor might still have sex” because he “made that bitch famous.” When she noted in her Grammy acceptance speech that year that ambitious women should know that “people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments,” the press covered it as a “diss” and her attempt to “shame” West.
To this day, news outlets refer to the West-Swift “feud.” But a feud suggests two people engaged in a back-and-forth. What’s actually going on is West engaging in a decades-long campaign of harassment. To wit: After the Grammys, West unfollowed everyone on Instagram—except for Swift. It’s a move he surely knew would make headlines.
Many of his previous relationships with women are also revealing. He has spent years disparaging his ex, Amber Rose, in incredibly crass and misogynistic terms. After he started dating Kim Kardashian, he threw away her clothes and notoriously dressed her up like his own personal Barbie. (Sounds familiar?!) After the couple split, he engaged in a series of deeply creepy public acts—and again, the press covered it all as some sort of interpersonal conflict, even though Kardashian did not engage publicly. His rebound girlfriend Julia Fox, whom West also styled in clickbait costumes, has said she felt treated like a “pawn” and a “show monkey” during their relationship.
It’s clear West has a clear pattern of bad behavior toward women—and Black women in particular. He does not give them the professional respect they’ve earned, or the personal space they ask for. He treats his wives and girlfriends like objects that exist for his pleasure; things to dress up and display, and that feed his fury if they act out—and act like human women. And that’s before we even get into his broader racism, antisemitism and right-wing conspiracy theorizing.
West has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and has spoken openly of his mental health struggles. It is sad to see someone with a serious illness acting out in public. But it’s also not in any way clear that his serial mistreatment of women is wholly related to these issues. It seems, instead, to have a lot to do with simple misogyny.
Whatever the cause, it’s wildly irresponsible to keep this man in the public eye, let alone in the art and culture worlds’ good graces. Whether he and Censori (who has of course not commented on the moment or ensuing media circus) were kicked out of the Grammys or not, one wonders why West remained a man of good-enough standing to nominate and invite in the first place.
Of course people should be given the grace to own their mistakes, to apologize and correct them, but West doesn’t seem to have done much of that—and keeps behaving in similarly abhorrent ways over and over again.
In countless examples where famous men’s mistreatment of their wives, girlfriends, female employees and women more broadly, has become public knowledge, the aghast, collective question is: Who knew? Of course, a lot of people likely did. But with West, we all do—certainly we all know enough. The full details of his relationship with Censori, and whether she’s fully consenting to this or will, with some time and space, say she was coerced or abused, may not be entirely clear. But the scene at the Grammy Awards, with West acting like Censori was more his personal puppet than partner, made a lot of observers uncomfortable precisely because West’s bad acts have not been well-hidden secrets; they’ve been out in the public eye for years now.
The question now isn’t “what’s happening?” It’s “what will we do with what we see in front of us?”
