Taylor Swift vs Nicki Minaj

[MyChildDoesntNeedSleep]

Apologies if already discussed. I couldn't see a thread.

What are your thoughts on this debacle? I have always been a Taylor fan, but since reading limited newspaper articles went over to Minaj's side. But then I watched the bloody Anaconda video and I just thought ffs, wtaf?!

I think your analysis is about right Noble.

I do think NM was saying that if an artist panders to white norms, standards, and ideas of beauty, they will be rewarded. And, her Anaconda video was very aggressively sticking two fingers up to that. Good for her.

I disagree WhattodowithMum. I watched all three videos. Anaconda is just another manifestation of raunch culture, still packaged and sold to young girls as some kind of empowerment via sexual expression. Over the last few years, now that the emperors new clothes are getting a little transparent with that idea as a valid empowerment/ideal, what evolved was pseudo anti-raunch, aka lets mock raunch culture even as we express it, used more commonly like a get out of jail free card that allowed it to be expressed in even more voyeuristic manners. The fact that the guy in the video gets his hand slapped away at the end, pfssst, the ability to both cock-tease to the extreme and say dont touch me is not a form of empowerment, its the ultimate broken logic that the supply or denial of sex derives respect and empowerment for women from men. Agency that evaporates without a man being present is false/stolen agency.

The Swift video spins off Furiosa/Kill Bill empowerment via violence rather than sex. Better inasmuch as Furiosa is still Furiosa even when no men are around her. The Beyonce video spins off society embracing video bloging. All three, of course, project measures of female sexuality to greater or lesser extent, but Anaconda draws the low card.... very low.

Personally I found this video to be refreshing, over 3 and a half million hits on Youtube:

Nicki's tweets were clearly about racism and were directed at MTV and the media. If you look back at her timeline, the skinny white girls reference was obviously about Miley Cyrus, who won last year. She's been tweeting and favoriting a lot about that. Taylor doesn't follow Nicki, she just randomly jumped in because her fans started going nuts over the one tweet that talks about skinny white women. So from Nicki's perspective, she's having a conversation about racism, and Taylor comes in with 'why are you being mean to me? FEMINISM!' and an incredibly patronising offer to come up on stage if she wins. The whole discussion is derailed, and now Nicki has to deal with the media claiming she's attacking Taylor.

I'm shocked no one's discussed how this was initially reported. Unflattering photo's of Nicki bug eyed and mid-shout next to 5yr old pictures of Taylor looking sweet and innocent in white princess dresses. Lot's of mentions of Nicki being loud-mouthed, brash, wild...the angry black woman. Yet if you actually read all Nicki's tweets, she's not fighting, she's not yelling, she was polite to Taylor. She just sounded fed up and then resigned. The media pretty much proved Nicki's point in it's reaction.

BTW, Taylor 'homaged' Anaconda in her Shake It Off video, and I didn't see anyone calling her out for making a video featuring women twerking in booty shorts. Because her version was 'funny' and 'ironic' and Taylor's 'wholesome' and 'sweet'. But Nicki's 'vulgar' and a 'whore'...

If you look at what Taylor's wearing lately, it's basically a less colourful version of what Nicki, or Rihanna, Katy or Miley might wear. Push up bra's with booty shorts, skin tight leather cat suits, mini skirts that just barely cover her privates. Her new album is exclusively about a guy, except for that one song that lays into a female peer. But for some reason she get's a pass and remains 'wholesome' and 'kid-friendly'.

Yet if you actually read all Nicki's tweets...

I pass. A lot of famous/politicians/wealthy/powerful employ someone else, sometimes a team of people, to tweet under their name. I am not particularly interested in finding a new way to worship the pyramid of rich and famous and happily delude myself I know who they really are and what they really think or how much personal validation they had into a music video that comes out.

I feel like "we have a harder life than you" has become a game.
Swift is awesome.

Ringfor Taylor Swift was hauled across the coals for her twerking element within the Shake it Off Video.

www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/22/director-taylor-swift-shake-it-off-denies-perpetuating-racist-stereotypes

I think TS intervention was a bit cringey and embarrassed herself a bit but her video just is better! Yes shes slim and the appropriating black culture is a real issue to be dealt with but TS isn't famous for looking/acting like a porn star at every given opportunity.a lot of people would not let their kids watch NMs video I think that speaks volumes as to why maybe it wasn't nominated?.I grew up with Missy Elliot , and now we have ...NickiMinaj backwards step.

Womens bodies being sold first and their music second. As per usual.

I can see why Taylor Swift took the bait, but she should have risen about it.

2009 she gets an award for best female video and Kanye West crashes the stage to say it's not right that she won it and that the award should have gone to Beyonce instead (who happens to be curvy and black).

2015 Taylor Swift gets nominated for best video and Nicky Minaj takes to twitter to say that, effectively, her video has only been nominated because it features skinny white women (amongst other things).

Nicky Minaj should have taken up her point with the people who are in charge of the nominations - perhaps twitter was her only out let for doing that.

The whole thing is playground, though, two females bickering over which man-pleasing soft porn vid should have been nominated by the powerful men in suits while two of the male nominees sit back and take the piss out of the whole thing.

Like I said, Taylor Swift should have resisted the bait.

She should have risen above it, but shes young and has been targeted in this way before. Nobody takes NM particularly seriously though maybe if she convered up a little bit more then maybe she some changes, (dons hard hat) and also! She's used white tactics to get ahead changing her name from anika to Nikki , her hair is black but very 'white' in texture I think her assertion that she represents all things black is misleading.

Katy Perry has now waded in with a dig towards TS as apparently the song was about the bad blood between them both (TS did an interview with Rolling Stone pretty much confirming the fact) and KP said it's a bit rich to accuse NM of putting women against women when the story behind the song is exactly that.

*pitting

I agree with you, Fujimoto.

I feel sorry for TS as she gets a kicking in the press, and she's always seemed a likeable person to me. I just think on this particular occasion it would have been better to ignore it. Or, if she needed to comment she could have killed with kindness. A message like "totally agree, it's a travesty that Anaconda was overlooked."

Though I'm not sure I could have done that myself, I think the Anaconda video is vile! Also think NM spectacularly missed the point when she talked about it's cultural impact and being 'imitated'. It made a similar kind of impact to Kim Kardashian's attempt to 'break the internet' in a kind of "eeeww, put it away, I can't look" fashion.

Just because you've got someone's attention doesn't mean you've made a significant cultural impact.

Of course TS should have ignored it.

Of course NM has suffered racism. I don't like her video or her style, I am not into rap. I'd rather everyone was more genteel. But I can understand that on the terms of rap memes and mores, she was saying something worthwhile about race and sexism in regards to black women and their bodies. I respect that.

Also worth mentioning that TS was apparently bullied as a child/teenager and so I'd probably uber sensitive to girls being cruel. I suspect this is why she tries to surround herself by best friends now, as it's a security blanket to all the haters.

Mind you, everything I've said about the Anaconda video I'd say about Wrecking Ball. So, in that sense, Nicky Minaj certainly has a point.

I cannot see how the nm video would merit a nomination but ts should have ignored the tweets although I can see how you would think they were pointed to her.
NM could have made this point in a completely different way without looking like a sore loser and getting all this attention for the wrong reasons (gossip fodder for DM etc). I don't think anyone comes out of this well and Katy perry jumping on the issue is calculated.

MistressChalk you thought NM was a feminist at heart? I'm really surprised at that, but must admit I don't know much about her. Could you please give some examples?

Mychild NM did an interview with Cosmo where she detailed her sex life and how she wanted to stage an intervention on her friend's sex lives and ensured they climaxed every time.

I think this was purported to be 'feminist thinking' at the time. Personally I thought it was too much info but each to their own.

skimming posts as I should be working!

DadWasHere - your post has said so much so eloquently.

to the person who said about Taylor referencing Minaj with the twerking in Shake it Off - I didn't know that's what it was referencing but I did think "woah, incredibly low moment for T there" but also I hated Lily Allen using so much of that in "hard out here" - she even had full on twerking dancers when she performed that one, it wasn't just in the video.

Someone also mentioned the "message" in the Bad Blood video. I don't take that message as "I'm going to go and beat up the person who pissed me off" any more than I take Rihanna's video message to be "I'm going to torture the wife of anyone who doesn't pay what they owe". Of course their experience will inform their creative endeavours, but I don't think they are "sending a message".

Nicki Minaj is tiny as well, she just has a big - apparently not natural, according to this thread? - butt, but other than that is tiny.

I do hate all of the pop culture that sees waving women's flesh around as part of some kind of norm. I don't think Bad Blood goes down that road. I can see what is sexual and stylised about it but there's a massive difference between that and the "get your bits out for the lads" mentality that informs the Nicki Minaj video.

If I were TS, I'd start being a bit less interactive on Twitter and Instagram. I think she can pull back a bit and still make a ton of cash. She's already evolving to Kylie status so she can afford to do that. That's just my bit of PR theory for the day

Also,wrt to Anaconda being a 'cultural reference point' surely NM can only claim that if/when it stands the test of time. Years and years reference KateBush in this song THIRTY YEARS after running up that hill was released. THAT's A reference point Imo not flopping your arse cheeks about on video

Lot of talk about how disgusting black female sexuality is on this thread, huh.

Personally, I struggle with the way all Taylor Swift's 'best friends' are slim, rich white women, with the half exception of Lena Dunham. If you check the pics of Lena on stage with Taylor recently, I suspect Lena has a couple of reservations of her own about this.

Were I Taylor Swift, I would probably be a bit more wary of telling other women they're doing feminism wrong, particularly if those women had a valid point about having made a hugely successful video. The VMAs don't care if a video is morally sound, and I do think it's weird Anaconda wasn't nominated, no matter how I might personally feel about its content. Minaj has every right to speculate on why that might be, and she presumably is aware it's not the skinny white girls who pick the noms - so I don't think it could be classed as a personal attack at all. Just an observation she made, that were I in her position I might be tempted to make too.

But let's focus on her fake butt, or how gross/stupid/eeeewww her version of sexuality is instead, right?