Hard Out There (For Intersectionality)

When I first heard Lily Allen was doing a song that would take shots at Miley Cyrus, cultural misappropriation and misogyny, I was all on board. I was thinking finally a song that I wouldn’t feel bad about listening to, a song that I knew Lily Allen would be perfect at because of her witty personality. Then the music video came out…..

And I was like hold on wait a minute; this still has misappropriation in it. Lily, girl, you can’t write a song with lyrics like “there’s a glass ceiling to break, uh-huh, there’s money to make and now it’s time to speed it up ’cause I can’t move at this pace,” but then use black women as props in your video. Have them doing the same exact thing that you claim ticks you off. There is the glass ceiling that needs to be broken, but it seems like maybe you’re only thinking about your own agenda.

You say in your song that you will not spend time in the kitchen but your feminist recipe needs a little dose of intersectionality within this video. It disturbed me to see the up close shots of black women shaking their asses and it didn’t  help your case when you were putting money in their cleavage. I know you’re probably thinking satire right? No, some parts I got the irony and I thought it was very funny, like when the older white male was trying to direct the video. Or the whole beginning when the doctors were poking and prodding at your body, which was a good social commentary moment. As soon as you joined in with the black women dancing that’s when my approval starting going south. You’re doing the same thing that Miley Cyrus did at the VMA’s and frankly when is this stupidity going to stop. You’re trying to advance women saying “I don’t need to shake my ass because I have a brain,” but then have black girls in the back ground performing your satire, which isn’t satire, it’s just demeaning. You’re lashing out at society, but you have become another culprit, and I know you had good intentions, but they were not executed well.

I also can’t help but feel bad about the press she has been getting, a lot of people have been saying that she is racist and that the video is racist, I do not think that is the case at all. Lily Allen has been fighting the press’s words by saying that she did not specifically request minorities and that if she could twerk it would have been her actually ass up there, but even with this, I’m still not 100% on her side.  I feel like it was just plain unnecessary to have these women as her back up dancers to prove a point, and her excuse for unwillingness to be like the dancers is a pretty lame one if you ask me. I remember when Pink did that music video about Stupid Girls which was on the same lines of what Lily is doing, but Pink fully engrossed herself in that video.

Pink is the one dancing in the video.

Pink is the one pretending to be in a sex tape.

Pink is the one  washing the car. Where’s that same kind of dedication?

All I’m saying is that Lily Allen doesn’t need this image.

What she needs is this thought!