Lana Del Rey is Dead Wrong: The Erasure of Black Womens’ Realities in the Music Industry
An answer, for the culture.
Written by: Ashley-Ann Morris
Early morning on Thursday, May 21st, pop singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey took to Instagram to pen a letter that not only announced a new album and two new poetry books in the works, but to also pose what she called a “question for the culture.”
This “question” came in the form of a rather tone-deaf critique of the popular music industry, in which she stated that she had been previously targeted and harassed for “glamorizing abuse” within her music, while others within the industry have been able to achieve number ones about “being sexy, wearing no clothes, fucking, cheating etc.” Del Rey opened her appraisal by explicitly listing some of these aforementioned “others”, a lineup largely consisting of popular Black women performers, such as Beyoncé, Doja Cat, Cardi B, Kehlani and Nicki Minaj.
The letter, which was met with widespread criticism, continued on to assert the Grammy-nominated songstress’ views on her positionality in modern feminism.
“I’m not a feminist,” she wrote, “but there has to be a place in feminism for women who look and act like me - the kind of woman who says no but men hear yes - the kind of women who are slated mercilessly for being their authentic, delicate selves, the kind of women who get their own stories and voices taken away from them by stronger women or by men who hate women.”
The ability of Lana Del Rey to make these sorts of statements is a striking example of the willful ignorance that surrounds the experiences of Black women in the music industry.
Black women have been historically targeted as victims of stereotypes, including both hypersexuality and infallible strength. The music industry has proven to be no different in this judgment. This past January, Forbes’ digital platform published an article that posed the question of why the music industry is still harmful to Black women. “It seems to be common that Black artists have more pressure placed upon them compared to their white counterparts,” writes author Brittany Nanton,“especially if they’re women.” Though this statement rings true for many, one would not get that impression from Del Rey’s Instagram post.
Her claim that Black woman artists — excluding pop singers Ariana Grande and Camilla Cabello — have achieved hit records as a result of their sexual public images glosses over the hardships and criticisms experienced by these women, and many other Black women in entertainment, throughout the span of their careers. What is especially troubling, however, is that her choice of entertainers included those that have been the targets of high-level, widespread criticism for actions that have brought about massive shifts in pop culture, which she conveniently fails to mention.
In 2014, Beyonce came under heavy scrutiny from conservative media outlets for “harming” young Black women with the sexuality displayed in her music videos; some even went as far as to blame her for their questionable statistics concerning the prevalence of pregnancies among Black teens. Fast forward to 2016, where critics vilified the star for her politically charged performance of ‘Formation’ at the 50th Super Bowl (a performance which marked a new era of Black power in her musical direction). Nicki Minaj, another one of the artists named, has come under constant fire for everything from her body to her candid, dominant sexual energy in her rap lyrics. Cardi B is no different, having been critiqued on her sexy outfits, the release of her nude photos, frank sex-talk, and her past as a stripper.
All of these Black women named in Del Rey’s “question for the culture” have endured countless criticisms and public media lynchings not only for their music and clothing choices, but for their very existence as sexually liberated Black women. For Del Rey to utilize them in a post lamenting her own issues with the industry while fully ignoring theirs is revisionist history; it paints a picture of ease and comfort in their musical journeys and erases all traces of their truths.
This erasure is also an element in Del Rey’s views on her space in feminism.
While she has been critiqued in previous years for her sound and image, Del Rey’s commentary on this subject reads as obtuse, given the white roots of the feminist paradigm. At its conception, it was a movement that centered the advancement of white women whilst using Black women as nothing more than a resource to propel itself forward, and giving nothing in return. It wasn’t until the introduction of intersectionality in 1989 that Black women found a place in feminism, a theory that Del Rey's narrow definition of feminism fails to take into account. Intersectionality essentially emphasizes the notion that all women do not have the same experiences; our societal disadvantages are shaped by the various factors of our identity (race, religion, socioeconomic status, etc.). By including this in her understanding of feminism, Lana Del Rey could have possibly come to understand her error in equating her experiences in the music industry to that of the artists that she mentioned in her post, thereby using these Black women as a crutch upon which she props up her points (much like the women of the early feminist movement).
Despite the backlash, since the original incident the singer has doubled down on her letter, later commenting that she was speaking “for the more delicate and often dismissed, softer female personality”.
Pre-Order The Storytellers Issue with Issa Rae
Our founders sit down with the actress, writer and producer extraordinaire to discuss the latest season of Insecure, the importance of telling our own stories, entrepreneurship and more. Shipping in June.
These comments play directly into the exhausting trope of Black women being rougher, tougher, and inherently more resilient than our counterparts. They justify our disenfranchisement by giving others the idea that since we can handle it, we can be treated any kind of way. We have never been allowed the opportunity to be delicate, soft, or demure; despite the way in which we’re consistently oppressed, the world has always pitted us as the aggressors. Our strength has been necessary for our survival, however it does not erase the difficulties surrounding our existence.
By sharing these assertions, Del Rey utilizes her privilege of ignorance as a white woman as a means to an end; she diminishes the importance and validity of the experiences held by Black women artists in order to bring her own experiences to the forefront. Rather than name her white pop counterparts and their music, such as Katy Perry, Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey specifically chose to name Black stars in her letter. She could have used anybody else, and by choosing to compare her experience to that of Black women, she has confirmed our everlasting position as the blueprint for pop culture as we know it today. In the words of Beyonce, “you know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation.”
Image Source: triple j
