Ishawna: “Well-Behaved Women Don’t Make History”
Dancehall singer Ishawna singer has proven time and time again that she is the queen of controversy—case in point, her recent Reggae Sumfest 2022 performance involving life-size cardboard cutouts of some prominent Jamaican figures including Bounty Killer, whose face she imagined was a chair.
“I am controversy! Memba seh all a di star dem have controversy, from Kim Kardashian guh right down,” Ishawna told YouTuber Russhaine “Dutty Berry” Berry after her performance. “It just comes with the territory.”
“It is what it is, well-behaved women don’t make history, sweetheart,” she continued.
The famous quote is credited to Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard professor of Early American History, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who wrote in a 1976 scholarly article that “well-behaved women seldom make history.” However, according to the Harvard Gazette, Ulrich intended the phrase to mean well-behaved women should make history, not to encourage women to rebel or be less well-behaved.
Ishawna, who replaced Jada Kingdom on this year’s staging of the Joe Bogdanovich-led event, only had 7 days to prepare. The Dancehall diva got right to work, producing a “Cinderella” themed introduction video, and designing her outfit; a nude skin-tight body suit with diamond-encrusted nipple covers and bikini thong with a 50” diamond-set wig.
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The production came complete with props for her performance’s grand finale – three life-size cardboard cutouts of Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Health Minister Christopher Tufton to execute her song Single & Quarantine, along with another figure of the Warlord, Bounty Killer which she used while performing Equal Rights.
“Bounty you think you would a get weh tonight? You think you ah get weh bwoy?” she said, before putting Killer’s cutout on the floor to position her, “Bumper to some bwoy nice clean forehead!”
“Overall, you know we have to leave something memorable. Yeah you ah go do yuh song dem, and you ah go perform it, and people ah go love yuh song dem enuh but leave them with something,” she told Dutty Berry.
“Make dem say ‘mi memba da Sumfest deh when Ishawna siddung in a di cardboard face’, you haffi do dem likkle someting deh,” she emphasized.
However, one user commented, “If you have to leave something memorable, then u need to leave good songs not gimmicks. Do songs and not gimmicks.”
Others came buzzing in with concerns about how Killer, (who has outright condemned Ishawna’s Equal Rights single) will react to her utter disrespect.
“Thor soon fwd with the hammer Ishawna cuz i wouldn’t want you as real man,” one person said, referring to Bounty as the fictional Marvel character.
According to the Observer, Bounty apparently witnessed Ishawna’s Friday night performance and immediately left the venue. The Warlord has yet to respond but he did re-share a funny clip, over the weekend, by popular comic Negus Imara, who imagined Killer’s response to Ishawna.
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