just consumed half a pound of chocolate. why? i missed the fucking drop deadline by 20 minutes. cry.cry.cry.cry.
i don’t know who reads this shit, but i have a new tumblr. and i made a lot of my personal posts private.
this one feels too public after i got careless (maybe naive?) and shared this tumblr with folks who are kind of toxic to my well being.
feel free to ask me for my new tumblr even if you don’t know me well. i’m going to send out a message within the next few days with my tumblr acct info.
come on up to the house: show me a critique of nicki minaj that's not rooted in slut shaming and misogyny and racism
zami:
and i will engage in a heartbeat. there are hella problematic things about her music and presentation, no doubt. not denying that.
but….
exactly. you want to critique her as a lyricist. im game. you want to critique her choices in producers, her music, etc. cool. but i am srsly tired of having a conversation about nicki minaj, where i say her name, and the other person literally turns up their nose like someone just shat in their breakfast.
and the first thing that comes out of their mouths (and this is especially with white folks) is oh, i dont like her image.
fuck. you.
black female sexuality is always always always a problem.
but whatever, black girl cool wins. always.
Wait, are you kidding me? My only critique on her is that she SPREADS misogyny, slut shaming, internalized racism, and general ignorance.
Puhlease.
I’ve NEVER liked her, and never has my reason been “she dresses to slutty” or any of that bullshit, but there are MANY MANY reasons to critique her. She has puppet strings over so many of the womyn in our community’s minds, and the sad part is, I’m pretty sure she KNOWS she’s a gimmick, that most of her bullshit is image (although, she probably doesn’t see much wrong with that image), but the vast majority believe her shit and imitate and duplicate it. She wants that, she calls for it, creating her little “barbie army.” And then the vast majority of people who DO know that she’s an image and that’s the cull of it, say its A-okay because “she goes where the money is.” Fuck that capitalist greedy ass bullshit.
Calling womyn bitches, using nappy as a bad word, spreading womyn-to-womyn hostility, no, I can’t fucking get behind that.
I try to wake up womyn, especially black womyn, in the midst of their oppression, she, by large, keeps them sleeping. Fuck that.
i completely agree. Black female sexuality is something we need to see more of coming FROM other Black women, but Nicki Minaj? nah. she is a good lyricist, but like the above said, she is not spreading any type of empowerment through her lyrics. just being a Black woman who can rap is not enough. and this is aside from the fact that her entire current image was non-existent til she got a record deal and her clip-on ass. moreover, i’m tired of this image of Black women. that is, i’m tired of the only image of “Black female sexuality” in the media being the one that almost always adheres to the rules set by men; it is still always “packaged for male consumption”.
i really dont understand this.
—being a black girl who can rap should be enough. why not? its hip hop. she’s an mc. do i find some of her content problematic? obviously. but, why would i hold her to a standard i dont hold other artists too. i find common’s slut shaming problematic as well, but i still respect him as an artist.
—she actually does have content that speaks toward ‘empowerment’. check the second verse of ‘im the best’. or fly.
—name another woman mc making waves in the mainstream…i’ll wait…and while you are thinking of one, i want to know why (once again) her plastic surgery is brought up as if that is some how proof of her inauthenticity or illegitmacy as a respected artist. omg a woman in the music industry got plastic surgery! why is this even news, except for the fact that unlike most women who get bigger boobs, or liposuction, she got a bigger ass. name another celeb that has done that…
—a gimmick? as opposed to a real artist? what makes her work inauthentic (other than her image/her packaging/etc…). her work is obviously well crafted, her craft is consistent, nuanced, diverse.
on some level, you are right in the sense that society and a number of people do criticize nicki because she cannot be placed into simplistic categories steeped in racist, slut-shaming thinking. however, that is not the entire scope of criticisms of her. the question was “show me a critique thats not rooted in slut-shaming, misogyny, and racism?” and we pointed them out. there’s plenty of them. no one’s saying you can’t like her, but understand that some of the criticisms against her are valid and they aren’t all “rooted in slut-shaming, misogyny and racism”.
being a black rapper is never enough. that’s for any gender or racial group. i hold her to the standard i hold any musical artist to. but what relevance does her “making waves” in the industry have to do with anything? so is Soulja Boy and Kreayshawn. what does that really mean besides that white kids love it?
her plastic surgery is brought up because it (once again) speaks to the “packaging” Black female mcs, especially, have to form to. i cannot respect an artist that goes to such links in order to be respected/liked/making money. it speaks even more to her insecurity as an artist if she felt she needed to change her body in order to be successful. once again the black female body and black female sexuality is “packaged for male consumption”. as if she can’t be hot (which she was…) without a fat ass. and according to too many Black males, you can’t be sexy without a fat ass. and she buys into this extremely myopic view. she is one of the best mcs out there, really, and she would have been with or without her ass. this is something i cannot respect. is her body image not a part of her “work”?
One or two “empowering” verses does not at all, under any circumstances, waive/negate the many many times she’s spread misogyny. Please! Apologism, apologism.
So next thing you know, Tyler the Creator is going to make a song about abortion rights, or, excuse me, for proper parallel, a motherfucking verse, and I’m gonna forget he ever said he’d rape a pregnant “bitch” and tell his friends he had a threesome. Cause you know, if you say something “empowering”, by golly why can’t we just ignore all the actual damaging things you said?!
You mad?
as i said before, there are plenty of things you can critique nicki minaj for, in my opinion, and be on solid ground. what i find illegitimate is to criticize her expression of her sexuality (including her body modifications) and to speak to her ‘intent’ when you cant read her mind (as in she did this in order to be more acceptable to the male gaze).
i do find it ironic that black women are claiming that nicki minaj spreads misogyny, and at the same time find no problem referring to her ‘clip on ass’ and referring to her career as a ‘gimmick’ and comparing her to kreayshawn. who is hating on black women in this thread?
and i mentioned two songs because i thought they were the most popular and thus recognizable even to someone who doesnt know nicki’s oeuvre. (my experience has been that people who slut shame nicki the most, are the ones who have listened the least to her music…) there are plenty of other verses out there in which she is calling attention to sexism and women supporting women…maybe someday i will go through and list them all…but that is a bigger project than i want to take on right now.
but then this is probably a difference in how we listen to music, especially hip hop. i love tupac — i dont love his misogyny or homophobia or classism — there is plenty to critique him for. same with lauryn (who gives some good doses of slut shaming and racialized essentialism). jean grae (can also be problematic in the above mentioned areas), etc. in other words most artists’ work (if they are good) is complex, at times problematic, and at times sublime. (and ive written before about how it is an incomplete analysis to read tyler the creator’s lyrics, vs. listening to them, his vocalization twists and shapes the effect of his lyrics…)
like i have said, repeatedly, you want to critique nicki minaj. awesome. lets go. but this thread is really just one more example of how quickly that critique becomes slut shaming and the desire to police one more black woman’s sexual expression (oh but what about the kids!!! ugh…) and that’s not me engaging in apologism, that’s me really believing in self determination for black women and their sexual expression.
^^ thank you Ma’ia for responding to this because every time i tried i got too pissed.
still waiting for a criticism that’s not rooting in racial slut shaming and misogyny…….
“I use labels because we haven’t gotten beyond race or class or other differences yet. When I don’t assert certain aspects of my identity like the spiritual part or my queerness, they get overlooked and I’m diminished. When we come to a time when I don’t have to say, ‘Look, I’m a dyke,’ or ‘I’m spiritual,’ or ‘I’m intellectual,’ I’ll stop using labels. That’s what I want to work towards. But until we come to that time, if you lay your body down and don’t declare certain facets of yourself, they get stepped on.”
— Gloria Anzaldúa (via xx-rapunzel-xx)
(via aliveforalittlewhile)
come on up to the house: A history of violence...
I dunno… I grew up in the 80s, when urban crime was at an all time high, the War On Drugs was just ramping up, and White folks everywhere where scared shitless of the Black and Brown boogeymen coming to rape their women, steal their cars, and kidnap their kids. So everyone elected politicians who were “tough on crime” and approved bond measures that gave us the battering ram and tazers, and eventually lead to rubber bullets, zip ties, and pepper spray. We approved the Three Strikes Law and tougher drug laws that disproportionately punished (Black and Brown) crack users compared to (White) cocaine users.
I look at OWS and I get where the movement stems from. But looking beyond the racism and sexism for a quick minute, I can’t help but wonder if anyone else is making this connection. Does anyone else realize that those police forces have been empowered and sanctioned by US (society) for DECADES, not just because we’ve ignored the complaints of Black and Brown folks for the better part of three centuries, but also because we voted for all of this “serving and protecting” when it suited our needs? And now since they are using it against us it’s suddenly a war crime? Really?
You know what? Sometimes, consent is NOT sexy. Sometimes it’s awkward, sometimes it’s annoying, sometimes the person says no when you were really hoping ze’d say yes, and it’s not sexy, at least not right then. And that’s okay. You need to get consent anyway, because it’s the right thing to do, sexy or not.
this kind of needs a million notes.
(Source: lesshumansmorecats, via aliveforalittlewhile)
