Who is Ayesha Curry?
Ayesha Curry is the wife of superstar point guard Stephen Curry.
Ok, so she's the wife of a popular NBA player. But that doesn't explain why her name is the top trending topic today. I'm sure she's a lovely woman, but there has to be something else, right?
Yes! There definitely is something else. There are a shitload of something elses. This time last year, Ayesha was arguably the 6th most famous member of the Curry family, behind Steph, her daughter Riley (last year's sports media darling), her father-in-law Dell (a former NBA player), her brother-in-law Seth (a current NBA player), and even her mother-in-law Sonya — who received quite a bit of fans during Steph's college career during her stint as "The Hottest March Madness Mom Of All-Time." Shit, even Panda Express Curry Tofu Fried Rice was more popular than Ayesha.
To be clear, none of this is meant to be shade. She just was not in pop culture's general consciousness then. She was just known as the cute young mom who made YouTube videos; another member of the impossibly (and annoyingly) perfect Curry family.
But then in December, she tweeted something about how she chooses to dress versus how, um, "other" women choose to dress:
And these tweets served as the fuel for A Very Important Internet Conversation About Gender Roles And Slut Shaming that quickly devolved into a internet battle royale. Bones were shattered, lives were lost, and fuckboys were exposed.
So, what exactly was the problem with what she said? Why were people so upset?
Although Curry's tweets may have seemed like the innocent Saturday evening words of a wealthy Bay Area housewife expressing her thoughts about the Talbots spring collection, they were kinda sorta thinly veiled shots at women who dress more provocatively. Like, if I walked up into a hospital and said "Everyone's into being sick here, huh? Well, personally I like to stay virus-free" it would be considered a shot at sick people. Same thing.
That was a terrible analogy.
I know. But you get my point. Anyway, Curry's tweet started a relatively sane — at least by internet standards — debate about whether her tweets were subtle shots (they were), if there's anything wrong with her deciding to be a housewife (there isn't), and if slut-shaming was a bad thing (it is). But then "Nuance-Less Twitter" — which is primarily made up of the cousins whose Facebook friend requests you ignore — got a hold of this conversation, and made Curry their muse for their ongoing battle against the evil of feminism. And logic.
"How are men supposed to find a wife these days" they'd say "if upstanding females like Ayesha Curry get less respect than thots?"
And then, over the next few months, Ayesha Curry became a perfect woman proxy; the best example of the type of (presumably) virtuous and (presumably) virginal woman that 1) every woman should aspire to be and 2) exists as a perfect counterpoint or contrast to any woman deemed unvirtuous and thotnificent.
And of course, while University of Phoenix Twitter professed their love and appreciation for Ayesha and "women like Ayesha" (not that there's anything wrong with being like Ayesha Curry) the part about men being like a man who was wealthy, popular, tall, and attractive at 25 and chose to get married — you know, like how Steph did — is conveniently left out.
Why is she trending today?
Because transubstantiated cash register Kim Kardashian recently tweeted a nude selfie. Which, at this point, is like Tyler Perry writing a script about a career-minded woman with dating issues and a homicidal grandmother. We've seen this movie already, man.
Unfortunately, the selfie became an impetus for another internet battle royale, as a meme juxtapositioning her picture with a picture of Ayesha Curry went viral.
The message, of course, being that one of these women is fit to be a wife and mother, and one is not, and women are either one or the other. Which is a terrible fucking message for myriad reasons, including the fact that it FORCES PEOPLE TO SPEND VALUABLE TIME AND EFFORT AND MINDSPACE DEFENDING KIM KARDASHIAN! Of course, nothing is wrong with being Kim Kardashian. (Really, there isn't.) Still, no one outside of Yeezus Island wakes up in the morning thinking "I'm going to write a defense of Kim Kardashian today" but these social promotion motherfuckers are so analog that they force you to.
So what happens now?
Sane people will continue to believe that there's absolutely nothing wrong with being Ayesha Curry or someone like Ayesha Curry. And that the only thing wrong is when a certain type of woman is considered "better" than another type of woman just because she shops at Banana Republic and tweets smoothie recipes.
And Ayesha Curry will continue to be the perfect woman proxy for people — men and women — with (at best) regressive and (at worst) completely fucking idiotic and dangerous views about how women should be.
Basically, nothing will change.