The Nicki Minaj/Taylor Swift Twitter drama was a missed opportunity for a conversation about intersectional feminism

This week, people briefly cared about an apparent “Twitter feud” between Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj. It was one of those stories that, thanks to the major players and the issues as stake, inspired both crafted think pieces and tabloid trash. The Daily Mail churned out one story after another describing how a dispute between the superstars had bloomed into a larger debate about race in the entertainment industry.

Only it was the opposite. What should have been a debate about the music industry’s obvious race problem was reduced to a trumped up catfight. It started when Minaj tweeted her frustration that her video for “Anaconda” wasn’t nominated for the video of the year VMA despite its massive cultural impact. She argued that the lack of nomination was evidence of the industry’s continual failure to recognize achievements from black women and curvy women.  

“If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year.”

“I was a different “kind” of artist, Anaconda would be nominated for best choreo and vid of the year as well”

“When the “other girls drop a video that breaks records and impacts culture they get that nomination.”

She didn’t mention anyone by name. But Taylor Swift – being the whitest, skinniest and most successful female artist in the game right now, whose video “Bad Blood”, which WAS nominated, featured a battalion of mostly white, mostly skinny women – decided she was under attack. She shot back with this:

“@NICKIMINAJ I’ve done nothing but love & support you. It’s unlike you to pit women against each other. Maybe one of the men took your slot.”

The waters of celebrity drama thus chummed, people descended on the story with their TeamTaylor/TeamNicki hashtags, and no shortage of opinions.

A lot of Minaj supporters criticized Swift for egotistically making something that wasn’t really about her about her. And yes, that’s part of it. I’m sure Taylor Swift does have a huge ego. She wouldn’t have been able to become Taylor Swift if she didn’t and if you were the biggest pop star on the planet you’d have a huge ego too. The issue is not the ego. It’s the diamond-encrusted invisible knapsack that Swift has carried with her throughout her entire career. That dangerous ego/knapsack combo made her naively, sincerely misunderstand Minaj’s point about intersectional feminism.

Intersectional feminism is the idea that feminism (the concept that men and women should be equal) should not and for many people cannot be seen as a gender issue alone. Because sexism affects women differently based on their race, class, size, age and sexuality. Because the sexism experience by slim white able-bodied rich straight women is different from the sexism experienced by black women, big women, disabled women, poor women, queer women and so on. Women like Taylor Swift, should they choose to, have the luxury of pretending that feminism is just a matter of “women helping women” and nothing more. But that’s not reality. Pop music is a prime example of that.

“Anaconda” and “Bad Blood” both give us plenty of eye candy. They both take place in a batshit insane hyper-reality filled with scantily clad female bodies. The bodies in Bad Blood are mostly white and skinny. The bodies in "Anaconda" are mostly brown and curvy. When we see two willowy blondes in their skivvies boxing in "Bad Blood", it’s sexy. When we see Minaj playfully spanking another woman in "Anaconda", it’s sexy. Both videos were massive hits. Both broke records. But when it came to acknowledging the most culturally important videos of the year, only one was nominated. Suddenly one was an actual artistic achievement and the other a trashy guilty pleasure.*

As Minaj said “I’m not always confident. Just tired. Black women influence pop culture so much but are rarely rewarded for it.”

I’m not accusing Swift of doing anything intentionally malicious, only of reading Minaj’s tweets with privilege goggles on, seeing feminism only in its simplest and most universal form. Swift’s response got a lot of support, I assume for the same reason “All Lives Matter” caught on. White people want to show their non-racism without having to actually talk about race. So we pull away from the issue, taking all the scary particulars out of focus, and then throw a blanket of general acceptance over it so that we can walk away and not deal with it anymore. Basically we miss the point. Unfortunately as soon as Swift missed the point we lost all hope of a productive conversation and pulled up our chairs and waited for a chance to watch two powerful women tear each other to shreds. Katy Perry helped us along, by needlessly tweeting:

“Finding it ironic to parade the pit women against other women argument about as one unmeasurably capitalizes on the take down of a woman…”

Sure, she has a point, but it’s still dragging the conversation further away from the real issue. Further mangling Minaj’s statements about the industry disproportionately recognizing skinny white women into yet another dispute between two skinny white women. Swift put an end to it by admitting fault:

“I thought I was being called out. I missed the point, I misunderstood, then misspoke. I’m sorry, Nicki.”  

We all love a good celebrity mea culpa. But I feel like an opportunity was missed. In response to Swift’s initial retort, Minaj wrote: 

“Huh? U must not be reading my tweets. Didn’t say a word about u. I love u just as much. But you should speak on this @taylorswift13”

I think this was a way of imploring Swift to use her superpowers to address the problem of race in music. Letting a generation of twelve year old white girls know that intersectional feminism exists. Thus helping build a new generation of women who are more understanding, more open-minded, less afraid to talk about race and less inclined to throw a big blanket of “I’m not racist” over the issue and walk away.

That didn’t happen. Maybe next feud.  

*And I know some people are crying “BEYONCE” at this, but to say that Beyonce’s success proves that the music industry no longer has a race problem is right up there with “Obama is president therefor racism no longer exists”. In my opinion. And not to get all Kanye about it, but with the benefit of hindsight I think we can all agree that “Single Ladies” was a greater cultural achievement than whatever the hell video Taylor Swift won for in 2009. So even Beyonce is not immune to these problems.