Some see her as a victim of a domineering and abusive husband. Others assert her right to dress (or not) as she pleases.
Bianca Censori, the wife of rapper and designer Ye, the man formerly known as Kanye West, has been notoriously tight-lipped about what she thinks about nudity, the female form, her husband or even, for that matter, the weather. That inscrutable face reveals nothing that the body attached to it so generously reveals.
Since she got married in 2023, Censori has almost always been photographed wearing very little by Kanye’s side in what New Yorker calls a “pure, mute spectacle of flesh”.
That script remained unchanged at the Grammys on Sunday. Was the couple invited? Were they asked to leave? Amid that fervid speculation, was the less ambiguous outcome of a premeditated red carpet moment where (Kan)ye and his wife took their positions. In the videos you can see him say a few words to her—reportedly to “make a scene” according to lip readers—she then turns around and drops her floor-length fur coat to reveal…nothing. Or to be precise apparently nothing, since she’s in a sheer dress, minus underwear, standing beside her husband clad in his usual all-black toe-to-head.
At an award ceremony where Shakira spoke up for immigrants, Alicia Keys for DEI, Lady Gaga for trans lives and Doechii for young black women, Censori’s performative nudity was designed to shock, if not awe.
Speculation was fervid.
Were they promoting Ye’s new album? Is this performance art?
Was this display legal or did it cross the lines of public decency?
And then: Is Bianca Censori, a victim of abuse, controlled by a husband whose past actions cannot always be categorised as normal. Certainly, if the experience sparked even a smidgeon of joy, Censori hid it well, robotically going through the motions of her husband’s instructions.
Performative nudity
From Marilyn Monroe’s flesh-coloured gown worn for John F Kennedy’s birthday celebration in 1962, the female body via the “naked dress” has become a bit of staple, if not a cliché. What was once considered shocking has “through the years and the different iterations, lost much of its power to surprise,” notes Vogue.
By choosing to go near practically full Monty, Censori/West—Bianca executing Kanye’s vision board—have leapfrogged over trite imitations.
“The naked non-dress stole the show from elaborately costumed mega celebrities,” says columnist and author Shobha De. “I saw it as a huge anti-establishment statement.”
Nobody, De continues, “will remember or care what anyone else wore. It was a priceless private joke!” As Kanye gloated on social media, “My wife is the most Googled person on the planet called Earth.”
Everyone, says designer Tarun Tahiliani, should have the right to wear what they want. But, wearing an outfit just for shock publicity is beginning to lose its lustre. “This is very gimmicky. There’s shock value for a few minutes, and then it’s just a tired and tacky gimmick.”
But, the naked, or even merely outrageous dress, dress as a PR stunt is catching on in India as well. Guaranteed to make its wearer “stand out in a world of readymade celebrities” says film-maker Vinta Nanda, “women are going all out. How else can they make it to the centre of the conversation in Bollywood where the star kids just walk in and become stars?”
When influencer becomes a legitimate job title that lands endorsements, roles in reality shows and OTT platforms, you have a new crop of stars banking on a currency of shock’n’skin. From Sherlyn Chopra to relative newbie Kangana Sharma, these women are playing the game with the paparazzi and entertainment media as accomplices, to their great advantage.
Known for her DIY fashion style, Uorfi Javed burst onto the social media scene from relative obscurity in Lucknow. The way she tells her back story, she’s one of five children who survived an abusive father. In the early days, she says, she couldn’t afford to buy clothes, so made her own. Today, she has 5.4 million followers on Instagram and her own reality show on Prime called Follow Kar Lo Yaar. “From absolutely nothing, she now has a flat, a car, an entire team and is supporting her family,” says Vinta.
Shobha De calls Uorfi a “spunky, realistic, creative, intelligent and hard-working modern woman professional, making her way in life, one risqué outfit at a time.”
Naked power
The naked female body has a long history of being the site of both feminist assertion as well as sexual exploitation. In India, the idea of modest dressing was imported by the British colonisers. Miniature paintings, points out Tahiliani, are replete with images of women draped in revealing diaphanous garments.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, says feminist publisher Urvashi Butalia, feminists began discovering the female body and the question of agency in choosing how to examine or use it. Sex work, for instance, began to be seen as a woman’s right to choose her profession.
All over the world, women are using their bodies to protest everything from sexual violence to enforced dress codes. Earlier this week in Iran, a naked woman jumped on top of a police car to protest against her country’s hijab laws.
Perhaps the most powerful political protest using the female body remains the one in India in 2004, when 12 Manipur Mothers stripped in front of the Assam Rifles headquarters against the rape and killing of a young woman, Thangjam Manorama in the state.
In June 2017, over 100 women stripped in front of the president’s palace in Buenos Aires, Argentina to protest against violence against women. In November last year, women protested topless against sexual violence in Paris. And on it goes…
There is only one way to interpret the visual image of a powerful music billionaire fully dressed directing his near-naked wife to strip. This is not a protest. It is not even a political statement about the commodification of the female body. It’s a visual that is deeply unsettling because of the power balance inherent in the couple and because the woman who acts gives us no clue into her state of mind.
