![]() It’s an argument she’s made before, when she compared ‘acceptable’ white girls in bikinis to her ‘unacceptable’ Anaconda cover art.” Her argument was specifically about the difference in the way white bodies and black bodies are portrayed. If you rundown Nicki’s tweets and retweets, she was drawing parallels, not suggesting any of this year’s nominees had taken her spot. Anaconda is up for best hip-hop and best female video.Īs blogger oneofthosefaces put it: “Miley spent the whole of 2013 building an adult career on the back of strapping on a fake booty and twerking her way to stratospheric success. On its debut in May, the video broke Minaj’s record and picked up more than 20m views in 24 hours MTV has shortlisted it seven times in the VMAs, including for best video, art direction and director of the year. Swift’s video for Bad Blood was pitched to have the same effect: in it, she gathers a clique of her bezzies, including Lena Dunham, Cara Delevingne and Ellie Goulding, and stomps about in PVC, sexily pouting and kickboxing the girl (widely assumed to represent Katy Perry) who wronged her. As Minaj pointed out: ‘U couldn’t go on social media w/o seeing ppl doing the cover art, choreo, outfits for Halloween. The fact that it was watched 19.6m times in 24 hours and smashed records to become the most watched video ever on Vevo was a bonus. Watch Taylor Swift’s video for Bad Blood.Īnaconda was a video brilliantly calculated to be parodied and memed, blogged and talked about endlessly on its release last year. To no credit, Glamour later retweeted the story as: and embroiled in Twitter row.” Consider the bias on show when Glamour tweeted its take: shut down on Twitter and it was WONDERFUL.” A sentence that embodies everything wrong with white feminism’s refusal to acknowledge, let alone understand, that unless “the struggle” in 2015 is intersectional (you know, taking in priorities that aren’t just about white women in the west serving white women in the west), it is irrelevant. Ones of Swift, by comparison, show her looking soft, delicate and “unthreatening” – the victim under attack. The underlying message is that she’s wacky, unhinged and clearly the hyper-sensitive loser here. Pictures – deliberately selected, remember – to illustrate the story online by Glamour magazine, the Daily Mail, and Entertainment Weekly (some of them since deleted) show Minaj pulling faces or looking daft, or simply focus on her bum. In this retelling, Minaj is archetyped as the angry black woman, while Swift is bizarrely cast as the feminist hero. The coverage has reduced the debate to a catfight between two massive female stars, where Swift is the winner, taking down another woman who needs to know her place. The wider reporting of the story has since twisted what is a valid conversation – about what makes a white artist outstanding, and why a black artist isn’t allowed to compete on the same terms. Yet without Swift making the story about her, Minaj’s tweets would likely have been talked about by sections of Twitter, music journalists and fans, before everyone shrugged and moved on. ![]() Black women influence pop culture so much but are rarely rewarded for it.” As Minaj tweeted: “If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year … I’m not always confident. The broader point Minaj is making is clear: throughout music history, black women aren’t recognised in the popular music canon in the same way their white counterparts are. ![]()
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