The VMAs Ditched Beyoncé’s Feminism for Girl Fights
Women were the stars of Sunday night’s MTV Video Music Awards, but it wasn’t their music that took center stage.
“This year you had the feuds—creating feuds that weren’t even there—and creating them out of a still legitimate critique that Nicki [Minaj] started with the music industry,” Kevin Allred, a Brooklyn-based adjunct lecturer at Rutgers University, told TakePart.
Allred, a self-described feminist who teaches a college course called Politicizing Beyoncé, was referring to Minaj’s series of tweets last month about the VMAs—and more broadly, about what she called a “white media” that undervalues the contributions of black women artists. Taylor Swift, who responded defensively to the tweets, has since apologized for assuming they were directed at her.
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The media largely characterized the Twitter exchange as a feud—or even more reductive, a “cat fight”—between two of the world’s most influential recording artists. The two performers appeared to have made up after Swift, famous for introducing her own gaggle of surprise guests at her concerts, made a surprise cameo during Minaj’s opening performance at the VMAs.
A voiceover by an MTV announcer amped up the faux drama: “Stay tuned to see what other girl beefs are resolved on our stage.”
Allred was so enraged by what he saw and heard that he could barely stand to watch the rest of the program. “Hey VMAs,” he tweeted Sunday night. “Nicki & Taylor wasn’t ‘girl beef.’ It was Taylor inserting herself into a critique [of] racism & sexism in music where she didn't belong.”
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“For me, it just all continues to downplay what Nicki was originally saying in that there’s racism and sexism going on in the music industry,” said Allred, who recorded a nearly hour-long podcast about his problems with the awards show on Sunday night. Rather than listening to Minaj’s critique, “MTV restages it as this kiss-and-make-up moment during Nicki’s performance, so she’s having to concede time now to Taylor Swift, the one who felt offended,” he added.
Just days before the VMAs aired, the Twitter controversy was rehashed when Miley Cyrus, this year’s VMAs host, weighed in, telling The New York Times that Minaj had been too angry in her critique of the VMAs. “What I read sounded very Nicki Minaj, which, if you know Nicki Minaj, is not too kind. It’s not very polite,” Cyrus told the Times.
While accepting an award for best hip hop video, Minaj put Cyrus on the spot for her comments to the press. The confrontation kicked off another media cycle of headlines that pitted the two women against each other. “Watch Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus’ Beef Explode All Over the VMA Stage,” read a headline from MTV News.
The show was a departure from last year’s broadcast, when Beyoncé thrust gender politics into mainstream pop culture with a performance during which the word “feminist” was emblazoned on a screen behind her. “You have this almost 180 [degree] reversal of last year, Beyoncé having that moment, standing behind the word ‘feminist,’ ” said Allred. “It feels like a huge step backwards.”
Related stories on TakePart:
• Meet the New Faces of Miley Cyrus’ Movement for LGBT Youth
• Indian Rapper Turns Nicki Minaj Hit Into a Powerful Corporate Slam
Original article from TakePart
