ID RATHER GO BLIND
A RANT BY ANGELICA LINDSEY

Ok, so Macy Gray wants to be a social activist. At least that’s what she wanted the people who showed up at her naked concert to believe.

Yep, you read right, Macy Gray performed in a London concert as bare as the day she was born. Clad in nothing more than a necklace and seated in a gilded chair emblazoned with the words “I’d Rather Go Naked”, Macy Gray did something for the people. Or did she?

The July 5 London concert was staged to raise awareness and funds for AIDS. The infamous Ms. Gray was photographed during the concert in Jimmy Choo stilettos. The photos will be used as part of a media campaign featuring other nude celebrities who are involved in the fight against the AIDS epidemic. Now, I know what some of you might be thinking. “Macy Gray? Nude? I gotta see this!” And that’s precisely my point. While Gray’s intentions may have been genuine, her naked approach to AIDS awareness looks to me to be just another media ploy to use sex as a way of garnering attention.

Was this a progressive, liberating, and creative marketing tool designed to bring awareness to the AIDS epidemic? Or was it little more than a stab at self-promotion by an artist whose visibility in the public eye has been insignificant at best? At a moment when Bill Cosby is lambasted for presenting cogent arguments about Black youth in America, why are we applauding Macy Gray for doing something that has no artistic merit or intellectual value? I mean, after all, couldn’t she just have announced that the proceeds of her concert would benefit AIDS research?

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