#commodification of apperance

they are young, pretty and their cause of human rights is tangled in that of rock n’ roll... [..] For a group so aware of media-image, appropriation and misrepresentation, it's all the more bizarre why they’ve continued to participate in media spectacle. Perhaps they might still think these media acts are akin, at some level, to what they were engaged in Russian public space. The difference is that now they are in the "free world", allegedly without censorship or harassment, where you can speak the truth and say anything you want. If they are using their status as media darlings to make the plight of political prisoners visible, the method of delivery and the message attached to it are becoming increasing difficult to decipher. [...] Perhaps, it's the spectacle that directs them now, not otherwise. Like so many Russian exiles before them, Pussy Riot have become token dissidents, that western people will like to look at, and like to think their concern had a part in releasing them. Perhaps it is also about the endured suffering that makes for their revolutionary aura in the West [..] leaves no doubts on why they were easy pegs for western media, who have a thing for young, pretty and suffering women.[...]