By Emma Burke
I have the exact same physical proportions as Taylor Swift.
A body that is too long and gangly to ever be appealing, a small head, pale skin and dance moves that rival Elaine Benes’ (the lady from Seinfeld for all those with sitcom deprivation) in both lack of self-awareness and just sheer badness.
Like Taylor, I’ve also been a scorned ex-girlfriend, a girl pining for a boy that likes someone else, and labeled “quirky” in lieu of an actual compliment—so why, with all of the material Taylor Swift has to relate to me, am I completely uninterested and not compelled by her new single while I’m obsessed and inspired by Nicki Minaj’s (with whom I have nothing in common with except for a dream to be “bossed up”)?
Recently, the world has been exposed to a pop culture dichotomy of epic proportions (pardon the pun): A white female pop star releasing a video intended to address her “haters” that have criticized her dance moves, and a black female pop star releasing a video that shuts down “haters” whose abhorrence carries much more weight.
Both Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift are inspiring examples of hard working female celebrities, but the differences between their new music videos highlight what it means to be a hard working black pop star versus a hard working white pop star.
Taylor put herself up against it (“it” being anyone with any awareness whatsoever) this week by choosing to release an elaborate music video during the horrific and monumental events occurring in Ferguson, Missouri. Her grievances listed in “Shake It Off” (people thinking she stays out too late, dates too many guys and is a bad dancer), were made to seem even more trivial once Nicki Minaj released “Anaconda” -— which plays upon some major themes that black women in pop culture are pigeon holed into (some of those themes are featured in Taylor’s video).
Over the past few years twerking, being a person of color and having a giant ass have been mocked and exploited left and right by white people, especially in the music industry. Twerkers and black women with curves have become a frequent backdrop for white musicians to either gain street cred or highlight how silly they are. Either way, it’s perpetuating old fashioned, minstrel-esque racism where “exotic” black women are used to draw attention to all the positive and “pure” things about being a white woman.
In the “Anaconda” music video, Nicki is center stage doing all the things back up dancers have been doing on stage next to Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Iggy Azaela and now Taylor Swift. Nicki twerks (really, really, really well), wears jungle garb, humps chairs and the ground and in a final act of reclaiming her sexuality gives notorious nice guy Drake an impressive lap dance that not only made me nervous for Drake’s penis and dignity (he made a bold choice of wearing sweat pants), but made me want to use my non-existent but hypothetical sex appeal to take down some misogynists disguised as “nice guys,” preferably with a knife like the way Nicki does in her video.
Initially, I was a little bit taken back by Nicki’s “skinny girl” rant because, well, I’m a skinny girl and I want to be taken seriously. But with skinny girls like Taylor Swift giving us such a bad rap, I get it Nicki, I really do. While I believe it’s possible to have confidence without explicitly putting down another type of person when your body type has been used as a prop for literally HUNDREDS OF YEARS, I think you should be allowed a little leeway and anger. I have faced approximately zero institutionalized hardships because of my race (a few more because of my gender, but again, being white really helps) and neither has Taylor Swift.
This lack of knowledge and perspective is what makes “Anaconda” a million times more inspiring and confidence building than “Shake It Off” to me. I know I’m never going to look like Nicki, instead I’ll look more like a pre-pubescent boy than a hot woman, but I want the self-worth and aggressive mentality that Nicki has in this video, not the “come on guys, liiiiike me, I’m fuuuun” whine that Taylor is emitting in hers.