It was unexpected, and definitely a break from the banal images of nightly fence fires, but what was it?

PUSSY POWER pic.twitter.com/qMlmWxrX2Z

— Donovan “It was the blurst of times” Farley ?? (@DonovanFarley) July 18, 2020

She was dubbed “Naked Athena,” her identity unknown, but her image was striking. It naturally went viral and then came the confusion, the doubts, the internal failing of an ideology due to one derriere. Is she a heroine or not? Should we adore her or hate her.

People wanted to love her, for here she was, a naked challenge to the police, stripped of her own accord of all defenses and yet ready to face the rubber bullets and pepper balls of outrageous fortune. And better yet, she won.

She won pic.twitter.com/XxHyI5JJoX

— Donovan “It was the blurst of times” Farley ?? (@DonovanFarley) July 18, 2020

Or at least the cops left, giving the appearance she won, that the sight of her naked body made so bold a statement that the cops backed down and left in the face of her challenge. The image went viral and how could it not, because she was a …

Images of “Naked Athena,” as the protester has been labeled, have gone viral, her unclothed confrontation with police earning her accolades as a brave ally of the cause. But I see something else: a beneficiary of white privilege dancing vainly on a stage that was originally created to raise up the voices of my oppressed brothers and sisters. In this, she is not alone. As the demonstrations continue every night in Portland, many people with their own agendas are co-opting, and distracting attention from, what should be our central concern: the Black Lives Matter movement.

Shortly after the image of Naked Athena hit the screen, there were doubts. In the world of critical theory, identity politics, progressive dogma, nothing is what it appears to be. Nothing is anything until parsed within an inch of its life by the pokers and prodders of orthodoxy for the myriad intersections of the hierarchies of race, gender, plus?

E.D. Mondainé, president of the Portland branch of the NAACP, asked the question and gave his answer.

Unfortunately, “spectacle” is now the best way to describe Portland’s protests. Vandalizing government buildings and hurling projectiles at law enforcement draw attention — but how do these actions stop police from killing black people? What are antifa and other leftist agitators achieving for the cause of black equality? The “Wall of Moms,” while perhaps well-intentioned, ends up redirecting attention away from the urgent issue of murdered black bodies. This might ease the consciences of white, affluent women who have previously been silent in the face of black oppression, but it’s fair to ask: Are they really furthering the cause of justice, or is this another example of white co-optation?

It’s an excellent question, and one that many of us ask. But Mondainé misses an important point, that while the impetus for the protests might have been the killing of George Floyd, it’s left Floyd, and Black Lives Matter, far behind in its wake. His complaint is that this does nothing to help the disturbing characterizations of “murdered black bodies,” as if black people aren’t human beings but just bodies, vessels lacking in sentience or a soul, Sure, that was the start, but it “evolved,” as the woke like to say. They may hold BLM signs aloft, or paint it on public streets, but that was just the excuse.

Naked Athena — whose friend describes her as a light-skinned person of color and outspoken feminist — said nada during her demonstration and hasn’t been interviewed, so I can’t know her intentions. What I can say with confidence is that what she did was aligned with the “weird” that Portland espouses in its beloved slogan: “Keep Portland Weird.” What I can say with reasonable assurance is that, were she a Black woman, she would’ve reaped a different public reaction than the ample awe and admiration I’ve seen on social media. And what I must say is that no matter her intentions, for a moment at least, she might’ve upstaged the movement, and not in a way I could discern as connected to its stated objectives.

How the editors of the New York Times allowed this shockingly baseless assertion, “whose friend describes her as a light-skinned person of color and outspoken feminist,” is amusingly shocking and unsurprising at the same time. If her identity is unknown, how could one verify that this “friend” is a friend or knows anything? But it was far more important to slip in that she was a “light-skinned person of color” than to publish facts, since this imbued some small level of legitimacy on her act of defiance.

But she was Portlandia Weird, which apparently is a new privilege of its own. And she “upstaged’ the movement, whatever movement that might be in the mind of the writer.

But I’ve also been musing on the subject of weirdness — how that quality requires freedom, or at least the belief that one possesses it. How the ability to express passion and courage and weirdness is a product of that privilege; how a sense of utopianism of the sort that exists for white people in Portland, my hometown, leads to a certain audacity when it comes to both self-expression and political radicalism; how that audacity can make a city into a tempting target for a federal government that’s determined to look tough against a purported paragon of eccentric liberalism.

What if, hear me out, instead of this callipygian icon, it was Lizzo out there, twerking at the police? Would that have “centered,” another cool word reflecting who is permitted to be the focus of attention, the moment on black women of girth rather than this Yoga appropriating white-ish devil who stole the show from murdered black bodies?

And if this isn’t confusing enough, what if this Naked Athena wasn’t Athena at all, but a transgender person flashing their junk in the cops’ direction?

And what bothers me is that, amid the naked woman, the brave white veterans, the heroic wall of lullabying white moms, the tear-gassed mayor, and the unidentified federal agents, we’ve once again stopped discussing the fight against institutional racism and state-sponsored violence against Black people in this country.

In its last version, Black Lives Matter faded as it lost its focus, morphed from murdered black bodies into every grievance, no matter how petty, black folks and their tentative allies could dig up with great effort and imagination. I wonder how long it would take for the point to be lost in this resurrected attempt to stop cops from killing black guys and devolve into anarchy. Don’t blame Naked Athena for stealing the show. It was always doomed to go up in smoke.