Bianca, before disrobing. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty)
Is Bianca Censori okay? On Sunday, the Australian consort of erratic music genius Kanye West arrived at the Grammys accompanied by West and wrapped in a full-length fur coat. Then, seemingly at a command from West, she dropped the coat — revealing a completely sheer dress and no underwear. Her gossamer-covered, full-frontal nudity is now all over the internet, tastefully censori’d for the gutter press.
Censori’s outfits have been growing increasingly in need of censorship for some time. In 2023 she was photographed in Florence, trailing after West, clad only in a sheer bodystocking and clutching a purple pillow like a child’s teddy. Then there was the claustrophobic Maison Margiela shroud, all sheer full-face covering and a tyre-like collar.
West, meanwhile, stalked next to her in shoulder pads and tights, like a Judge Dredd terrorist with a hooded hostage ready for necklacing. He seems to relish displaying Censori’s beauty, vulnerability, and pliancy, as a foil to his own vaguely paramilitary-tinged and always fully clothed aesthetic — often in dark glasses, and often masked, too, like a bodyguard or executioner. We’re to treat it as high fashion; but her huge eyes, blank face and awkward, near-naked discomfort cry out that something is off.
Creative passion or abuse? Opinion is divided. Early in their romance, West wrote a febrile song called “Censori Overload”, lamenting “no more sex till marriage, and no more drip till Paris”. She has been described by some as West’s “muse”: an inspiration and living artwork. Others find the outfits degrading, and worry that the relationship is abusive.
Perhaps the most liberal interpretation is that it’s just kinky, with West as the “dom” and Censori in the “sub” role and the whole dynamic subject to an unusual degree of public exposure. Certainly West has form for enjoying power and control in relationships: often dictating the wardrobe choices of women he dates, even clearing out ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s wardrobe on camera. He reportedly employs a whole “secret team” to create Censori’s outlandish outfits, as though she’s a living doll, and announced early last year that she would wear “no pants this year”. He gropes her publicly — and, it appears, sometimes demands still more intimate public sexual favours: a 2023 incident in a water taxi in Venice saw West photographed seemingly with his trousers at half-mast and Censori’s head in his lap — prompting local police investigations. At the Grammys over the weekend, West reportedly ordered her to drop the coat with the three words “Make a scene”.
This is all still, more or less, at least arguably within the scope of “lifestyle BDSM”, which is to say a form of long-term couple relationship that never breaks out of “dominant” and “submissive” roles. But advocates of BDSM emphasise that while participants in a “kinky” partnership may agree to a “power exchange” even 24/7, the dynamic itself should be consensual, pre-negotiated and based on mutual trust and communication — with “safe words” giving the submissive party an escape route if it all gets too much. That doesn’t sound like it’s happening here: West reportedly screens her social media, controls what she eats, and even tells her when to go to bed.
So are West and Censori just kinky, or kinky and playing without safe words? And if so, what’s the difference between that and coercive control? But when we set BDSM itself into context, it becomes clearer that its safe, sensible rules for rational perversion can’t be made to apply in this case. Rather, they serve to distract from what’s actually off about this scenario.
As a cultural phenomenon, BDSM only only emerged alongside liberalism itself. As the writer Andrew Klavan has noted, one of the great early innovators in the relativist philosophies that underpin modern liberalism was the Marquis de Sade: also a notorious sexual degenerate and origin of the “S” in BDSM. Downstream of (among other liberal thinkers) his trailblazing, amoral, often sadistic (they named it for him!) advocacy of radical sexual libertinism, a liberal worldview has steadily emerged in which sexual and social norms may be discarded in favour of individual freedom and will.
Especially since the Sixties, we have leaned into that Sadean social picture: one that decries moral absolutes and rejects baked-in asymmetries and social givens, asserting, instead, the freedom of every individual to do what he or she wishes. Among less amoral liberals than de Sade, this tends to come with a side-order of egalitarianism and strictures on harming others. In other words: we should be able to do what we want, provided everyone consents, and we’re all working meanwhile to abolish real-world asymmetries of power.
This is the context in which BDSM makes sense. For it’s a good rule of thumb that whatever is most forbidden will seem especially enticing. It’s thus those most committed to egalitarianism — broadly, liberals — who are also most likely to fantasise about domination and submission. The practice of “BDSM” within its usual “safe, sane, and consensual” boundaries, complete with safe-words, creates a space to enjoy the frisson of power asymmetry for liberals otherwise committed to the flattening and disavowal of all such differences.
And what’s so icky about West’s decision to sculpt his personal life into a de Sadean tableau is that he’s taking full advantage of the now-widespread culture of liberal sexual permissiveness that views BDSM as so perfectly fine it has a UK Ministry of Justice advocacy group. In this culture, Bianca Censori’s treatment can be read as merely “kinky” — and yet West’s treatment of her exploits the fact that social hierarchies never really flattened. Or, rather, that flattening has gone into reverse. Kanye West stands among an emergent post-liberal phenomenon of lords and princes: billionaire titans of a new Gilded Age, who live out, very literally, the internet assertion that you really can “just do things”.
In this context, what’s off about West and Censori isn’t the sexually explicit outfits, or even waterborne BJs. It’s not even West’s evident relish for exposing and exhibiting his obedient consort. It’s the fact that he has selected someone to serve as his counterpart who is unable to play at his power level.
The bestselling soft-porn fantasy Fifty Shades of Grey thrilled countless normie housewives with its romantic-yet-kinky account of the love-affair between dominant billionaire Christian Grey, and loving, submissive, middle-class Ana. In that book it all ends happily, and Christian Grey falls deeply in love with Ana and doesn’t make her wear a see-through bodystocking in public. But the reality of real wealth disparity in the postmodern age is that, like the aristocrats of the pre-liberal age, the super-rich are “equals” only with others of their own kind. Relative to normies, the idea of “equality”, or even “consent”, is largely an abstraction. They really can just do things, and we can’t. In terms of what this looks like in practice, for socially asymmetric romance, a better mythic model than Christian Grey is the (from a modern perspective, rather rapey) Greek mythology of Olympian gods seducing mortal women: a grab ‘em by the pussy world of simply taking what you want, all horny swans and abduction by bull.
West appears to have come upon Censori somewhat like an Olympian seducing a nymph. Not long after they met, he “married” her, in a private, possibly-not-legally-binding ceremony — a scant few months after finalising his divorce from fellow-Olympian Kim Kardashian. And the contrast between the two women says it all. Conservatives may curl a lip at the flashy, new-money excess of the celebrity super-rich class, preferring the understated grandeur of old European money; but in the weird world of “high net worth individuals”, Kardashian — who is also a billionaire — is indisputably in the same league of aristocracy as West: postmodern influencer royalty.
By contrast, Censori has neither obviously abundant family money, nor particularly extensive business interests of her own beyond serving as architect-turned-model-turned-living-doll. She is, figuratively as well as literally, all fur coat and no knickers. Combined with the ambivalently binding “marriage”, this relative poverty makes her acutely vulnerable: a situation in which domination and submission is less a fun game to play at weekends, than an all-enveloping reality. In theory, she could surely walk away any time; but as the journalist Tina Brown observed recently, there is nothing more corrupting than private jets. So unlike for Queen Kim, it’s easy to see how the costs to Censori of walking away from her controlling prince and his creepy fashion thing could lead her to tolerate more, or indeed wear less, than she would really prefer.
In this new age of yawning wealth disparities, West’s remodelling of Censori from employee to chattel-wife takes objectification to new levels — all while presenting Censori as wife, controlling her as if she were still an employee, and smuggling the whole queasy cocktail under the cover of possibly-“kinky” sexual liberalism.
In old-money aristocratic terms, then, we might compare West’s choice of Bianca Censori as his project to a duke seducing a maid, then parading her half-naked in public — simply because he can. The new-money volume of objectification and media spectacle makes it something still worse. If we lack the language today to express our disgust at the obvious misuse of power this all entails, it’s because the liberal world has forgotten how to think about real, substantive class hierarchy. With a post-liberal one now fully upon us, in the Second Trumpian Epoch, it might be time to remember.
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SubscribeIf he were white and she were black, there is no way this would be tolerated. However, the media and the public are encouraging this and the solution is very simple. Ban them from public spaces where they are clearly violating the dress code and decency standards, and don’t cover (or uncover) them in the press. They obviously need an audience, and that should be withheld.
I wish you had stopped your comment after the first sentence, because it is the most telling observation about this episode.
Django unchained. And dominant.
All the talk about “new nobility” and “kinky curiosity” is just the avoidance behavior of people still yoked to color-blindness in their politics, which is the one-sided ideological submissiveness of the late 20th century European.
But as we are seeing in the more and more frequent demonstrations and atrocities by the non-Europeans in our homelands, we don’t have a “safe word.”
Good point.
Set me thinking which permutations of race and sex would actually be acceptable. It’s quite an odd hierarchy.
Invite them to Edmonton right now.
Maybe they are Doukhobors?
https://digitalcollections.ucalgary.ca/archive/Doukhobors-nude-protest-parade-near-Langham–Saskatchewan–2R3BF1F0L9WT.html
I’m not sure there’s anything that deep going on, I think it’s just two deeply idiotic people craving public attention.
And succeeding.
There’s some beautifully written prose attached to this story, but the bottom line for me is it feels like she’s being coerced into these displays. Everyone I’ve spoken to from female cleaners to humanities graduates via male engineers feels the same, the second hand embarrassment of seeing someone having to perform to satisfy someone else’s power trip.
It’s all about power. As is rape.
Yes. Maybe it’s her fetish too, but I’m inclined to doubt.
Indeed, what more can be said? The whole thing is quite sad and Cesori never looks like she’s having fun.
And yet–there she is, over and over. The long face is probably part of the show.
There is footage of them at an after-event party where she’s wearing slightly more opaque clothing and is singing. It strikes me that they are just performance artists like Gilbert and George. But weirder.
Exactly!
I just wish we could refrain from giving warped or infantile “Celebrities” the oxygen of publicity which they so clearly crave. Publicity which will surely encourage other warped or infantile minds to consider imitation or to believe maybe that this type of behaviour is not harmful or even civilised in some curious way. And here I go posting on the story and so assisting in its propagation.
West is about as revolting as a human can get. His wife is awful too.
Mary, it’s very pleasing to see articles, from ‘the aunts’ so to speak, calling out what was once a visceral cringe. Due to our saturation market and media drowning in sexual mores, ever more explicit, have we reached the bottom yet? I fear not. To ‘normalise” and desensitise the public to the Marquis de Sades’ fanciful sadistic pleasures, l fear the rise of more vacant eyed does in the field. Have we not seen this already? Curious to the trajectory of such pursuits, one could potentially start with the attitude of some peoples in the UK Grooming scandal for one.
I’m not sure why I read this. I think I saw the name “Mary Harrington” and clicked because you know what she says will be interesting. And it was but I’m still feeling vaguely violated.
I started but quickly gave up because I did not like where it was going. It is not relevant to my life and I felt I would be worse off by continuing to read.
You echo my thoughts.
Same motive as you – but I thought the piece was trying to draw way to big conclusions from such a trivial incident.
If Kanye West is emblematic of today’s aristocracy, then Vive la Revolution!
With “no church in the wild” as the soundtrack.
When I first read about West and Bianca, I assumed that she actually showed up stark naked–which would have made it appalling that the Academy took no action over such a display at one of its affairs. And raised issues about dominance and submission. But in fact Bianca was actually wearing a dress–a highly immodest one to be sure, but differing only in degree, not kind, from several other super-skimpy outfits worn at the affair by entertainers eager to show off everything they had. So I don’t understand why the sudden wringing of hands. If Sabrina Carpenter can bare half her buttocks and Jennifer Lopez show up in a down-to-the-pudenda contraption of a skirt, why can’t Bianca take it to the next level? After all, unlike those two displayers of the naked flesh of their intimate parts, Bianca actually covered herself up, albeit with a transparent covering. This is like the joke about the respectable woman who won’t prostitute herself for $10 but will gladly prostitute herself for $10 million. We have already agreed that it is perfectly fine for female celebrities to wear clothing at galas that violates all standards of modesty, decorum, and good taste. So what exactly is so shocking about Bianca’s “outfit”?
You seem to imply that Bianca is in control of the situation rather than being the hapless victim of a narcissist bully.
Bianca is an adult. There is no indication that she’s been kidnapped or coerced in any way.
Really? Just look at her expression
You seem to imply you have direct access to the truth, rather than just an opinion.
Yes, it could just be competing for attention and status compared to other celebs – by both of them to be honest.
She looked so damned unhappy. We suspect that Mary’s assumptions about the dynamic between these two are pretty much correct.
She puts on that vacant stare as part of the act. Because she was photographed at a Grammy after-party that same evening, clothed in a one-piece bathing-suit thing, dancing and laughing, and seemingly enjoying herself. Who knows?
Some kind of humiliation fetish is going on, with the world’s public made part of their sex thing. Yeah, one can look away, but Kanye’s sheer brutal contempt for the public and its norms seems to be part of the point.
What happens when she ages, the looks droop? Does she get dressed? Does Ye move on to a younger tighter consort?
Misogyny and control at its worst. Why do women go out of their way to undermine the feminist cause. Or is this what they strive??
Not what comes to the average readers mind when reading de Sade. If anything, by pushing freedom to its absolute limit in fiction de Sade demonstrates the need for restraint in real life. Frankly it’s just a hellscape.
I agree with the idea that we need to reawaken our awareness of class distinction. But the real distinction is between West and Censori as an item, and the genuinely poor.
And while West’s money and fame might give her a big incentive to put up with a bit more than she would otherwise do, she has a lot more choice than an “Edwardian maid”.
Well they got everyone talking. I suppose that was the point of it all. I still don’t know who they are though. And I’m quite happy about that.
Black man with power over a white woman.
Only thing worse is a Muslim man with power over a non Muslim woman.
Your implication is white men “own” white women! You prove Kanye point about intention of men. Are you ok?
So now it’s ok to be openly racist in this forum? Grotesque this got so many upvotes.
I can only assume this is sarcasm and directed at the author, in which case if that was your takeaway you should probably return to the Guardian.
If it was serious, it’s also unbelievably stupid.
I took it as sarcasm.
A whiff of 120 days of sodom off it alright. Segue: though the piece is resonant with Mary H’s speaking voice, it also reads with the cadence of an Adam Cutis voiceover. Try it for fun.
But this, was a fantasy.
He’s a despicable wanker just like Andrew Tate – and both are the end point of feminism without God. The break with natural law, antipathy to family, corrosive individualism, the oblivious ignorance of motherhood – and the worldly materialism. ‘This is all there is’. And so this is all they hsve. Go back to church
Any actual evidence for this? If true it’s probably because they have set up a taboo, and are excited by the idea of breaking it. Women in particular do seem to have fantasies which are remarkably at odds with their public persona or avowed politics – and I guess that is precisely the reason they have them.
This is what happens when you import the excesses of the Dark Continent. The consequence in Britain, for instance, is a widespread culture of knife violence amongst teenagers- the murder of young kids appearing on almost a weekly basis.
I’m sure if the need arises she can cash out and tearfully ‘reveal the years of abuse’ in a tell-all memoir or high profile court case. Meantime, she’s certainly got her 15 minutes of fame with this stunt, and is flying around on private planes. Women have willingly taken their clothes off for a lot less.
It’s always guesswork trying to divine the dynamics of a couple’s relationship, and she may very well be giving him what he wants to get what she does.
Whatever the reality, she looks like one very unhappy and pretty-vacant looking female. Nor does that look like it could be part of the act.
Perhaps it’s the look of someone who will do pretty much anything for money and fame.
Thing is, the actors and actresses at those shindigs that look happy pretty much look like they’re faking it.
For all we know, she may be wondering whether it’s really worth it, some celebrity red carpet version of lie-back-and-think-of-England.
In the photo atop the article, not knowing what the context was, I’d say he looks like some dude talking b-s at a party, and she looks like a woman who’s waiting for the taxi, knowing there’s no point trying to get him to shut up.
I always think of that song “Use Me” by Bill Withers.
“Ah-huh and I wanna spread the news
That it feels this good gettin’ used
Oh, you just keep on usin’ me
Until you use me up
Ah, until you use me up
Talkin’ ’bout you usin’ people
It all depends on what you do
It ain’t too bad the way you’re usin’ me
‘Cause I sure am usin’ you to do the things that you do
Ah-huh, to do the things that you do”
They are grown adults. I know rich men can use their money to persuade women to do things, but unless there is obvious abuse here, it’s up to her to do what she needs to do.
What I can’t understand about this is why anyone is remotely interested….
Although in the story of the minotaur, I believe it was King Minos missus who was the one keen on getting kinky with a bull. Minos was just an early simp.
Why has that gone into limbo? Or has someone reported me elsewhere?
Stop noticing anything and it will wither away.
Why would anyone want to publish an article about this mentally handicapped piece of human garbage at all? Please give me some sound reasons? Nobody should be reading about these trashy people at all, why give them an audience?
I’ve seen out takes of Censori online laughing and definitely conspiratorial with Ye. I don’t get it but she is no fool. I was worried too until I realised the ‘blank’ wide eyed look was part of the gag.
Kanye seems to be critical of celebrity culture, suggesting this was perhaps a deliberate send up of it.
The annoying thing is that she is actually rather beautiful. So moralising about this has a hypocritical quality.
I love it when journalists pontificate about things they know absolutely nothing about. You know nothing about West and Censori’s relationship, but you think you can speculate wildly about it. This is nothing but gossip and I don’t give a fig about these two people and if I did, I would subscribe to the National Enquirer not UnHerd.
She seems to have form appearing nearly nude in public – both with and without Kanye. Perhaps it’s her thing rather than his.