By: Natalie Lopez
If you’ve been on YouTube lately, you’ll know exactly who I’m talking about when I mention the unavoidable ads. As much as I don’t understand how exactly the YouTube ad algorithm works, I’m pretty sure my watch history didn’t trigger her invitation to my feed. If you hadn’t already guessed it, I’m talking about Classically Abby, the conservative lifestyle channel headed by Abigail Roth Shapiro. If her name sounds familiar, you might be thinking of her older brother, Ben Shapiro. Taking a page from the family book, Ben Shapiro is also very publicly conservative and a political commentator that has attracted lots of media attention for his outspoken attacks on democrats and social issues. So it seems that everyone of her videos preaches among the same lines. With titles like, “Why I Came Out As Conservative”, “Why YOU Should Dress Modestly” and “Why We Should NOT Just #BelieveAllWomen” it’s easy to see that Abby wants to spread an ideology. Only, why is this being shared with me? Even after disliking, reporting and blocking her videos and channel, I can’t seem to shake her from being advertised to me.
I looked more into Abby and how her ads were so powerful in resisting my blocking of her channel. It seemed that I definitely wasn’t the only person that had a problem with the persistent ads. The videos with the boldest titles, the most advertised of course, all feature comments mentioning the same situation and spite for the bother. Abby is just under 70,000 subscribers, which were very recently gained, so why did she previously invest so much money to carry her message? More important, what is her message?
At first look-over her channel, Abby is teaching the world how to be – in her words – classic. If you didn’t know that was a thing that could be taught or even that it was a proper way to describe a modern woman, neither did I. Abby preaches a time when women were more conservative in thought, dress, and almost everything else. Seemingly as conservative as they come, the ClassicallyAbby channel is outspokenly anti-abbortion, religious (and believes you should marry within your faith), against the Me Too movement (doesn’t think you should believe survivors), and includes the occasional skin care routine. What I took from this is that Abby is very anti-feminist, among other things.
In her perception, Classically Abby lists that women play the victim in cases of sexual assault, believes women should conform to mens’ livestyles when entering a marriage, believes the gender roles should be clear and divided, and tells women to cover up and monitor how they dress. If you were ever unsure about what an anti-feminist sounds like, it’s her. Frankly, I’d never heard of such an outspoken anti-feminist before her, and there’s a good reason for that: her perceptions are insane and misogynistic. Classically Abby struggles through the dislikes and hate comments to produce videos which are intended to transfer value from her onto her husband (and all men). She teaches women that we need to cover up in order to leave something to be desired, as if a woman’s body is indubitably to be viewed as a sexual object that needs to be hidden just enough to stay respected. In insisting there is one right way to dress, she slut shames the women who choose to wear crop tops or who don’t want to wear ginormous scarves with their summer dresses. She tells that she needed to change much of her single life to adapt to her husband and advises women not to expect men to change their old ways. Why should a wife conform to a new lifestyle that their husband won’t bother to change for? Abby clearly announces that she believes it’s a woman’s job to focus on the relationship and by all means, not make your husband uncomfortable.
We shouldn’t be listening to Abby on these ideas. Feminism is always necessary. Always. It’s 2020, the centennial anniversary to the woman’s right to vote, yet there still exists an extensive gender divide. Even more, something that Abby might not understand, there exists issues between feminism and equal rights for women of color. In every space, the fight for gender equality is different for BIPOC who identify as women. Abby’s physical and identifying privilege is also coupled with the fact that she has a net worth of a few hundred thousand dollars while her brother exceeds a 25 million dollar net worth. Money is not an issue for the Shapiro family and as they aren’t a part of the working class, she wouldn’t understand the struggles that many women in this country go through with financial struggles and wage gaps. Often times there exists less obstacles for high-income, heterosexual, cisgender, white women, which is why Abby speaks from a privileged perspective that invalidates the struggles of other women.
It’s important that we don’t go back to believing we should shame women for problems that are “provoked”. (Intersectional) Feminism has the clear intention of advancing the voices of all women, and it’s not something anyone of us should try to speak (or make a YouTube channel) against. So no, we shouldn’t be listening to Abby when it comes to how to be a “proper, classic” woman. I still don’t know why these recommendations persist beyond every option I have to avoid Abby, but they’re not harmless, because Abby’s message is in itself dangerous. You may choose to follow her makeup tutorials, but even then I wouldn’t choose to participate in raising her view revenue on the chance that it goes straight back into advertising more conservative points that spell out anti-feminist ideas.
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