Miley Cyrus performs at the MTV Video Music Awards at the Microsoft Theater on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP)
I have been waiting on Miley Cyrus to be interesting her whole career.
But with an acting résumé based entirely off of her ability to remove her wig and a musical one characterized by an ability to remove her clothing, Hannah Montana, like Iggy Azalea, a few Kardashians and the youngest Jenner, is just another boring appropriator, using black music and black slang and cherry-picked black features in order to look cooler than other white girls — and to make her coins.
The media has a long track record of trying to make us care when white female celebrities realize that blackness is profitable.
Whiteness has long stood in Western culture as the litmus paper for what’s considered normal or beautiful, especially as it regards the physical expression of femininity, and especially in opposition to blackness, which is taught as ugly: light skin, straight hair, thin noses, and thin frames are the practically unattainable beauty standard for the darker skinned, the kinky-haired, the broad-nosed and broad-lipped, the large-bottomed.
It is the fuel of the vitriol spewed against Serena Williams when the same lips might praise Maria Sharipova, the catalyst behind colorism, the reason that Almay calls itself “simply American” and only sells foundation in approximately four shades of alabaster.
It is the reason people “don’t like rap except for Eminem,” the reason Zendaya’s dreadlocks can be criticized but Kylie Jenner’s cornrows can be considered fashion-forward, the reason that Amber Rose is called a former stripper but Dita von Teese is called a former dancer.
This is the reason that Nicki Minaj felt that the Anaconda video was snubbed in favor of Taylor Swift’s when the VMA nominations were revealed.
Mediocrity, like all aspects of society, privileges whiteness.
So does celebrity.
And when you’re a thin and pretty but otherwise completely unremarkable white girl swooping in and out of blackness at your aesthetic leisure, you, too, can use it to make people think you’re special — and maybe trick yourself into thinking that your participation in these things gives them validity.
And this tragically uninformed arrogance is the reason why Miley Cyrus felt like she had the right to tone police Nicki Minaj’s comments about Taylor Swift in an interview with the New York Times after she appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel Show — and why Nicki Minaj rightfully dragged her at the VMAs for it.
In the years that we’ve struggled through witnessing the media call her meteoric rise to social media relevancy shocking, or edgy, or somehow noteworthy, Miley Cyrus has yet to perform in any way that legitimately substantiates these claims that her public behavior reveals some type of innovation.
Bleaching her pixie cut isn’t wild.
Grinding her tailbone on Robin Thicke and calling it twerking isn’t crazy.
Trailing her labia down my Twitter timeline or showing her nipples on television could be shocking, but it isn’t a grand act of subversion, a physical manifestation of a daring feminist manifesto.
Cyrus isn’t “different,” a trend-setter, or edgy.
She’s a boring hypocrite.
Accusing Nicki Minaj of calling out misogynoir in the entertainment industry by pointing out the double standard for public sexuality between white and black women as “making it a race thing” is not only lazy, but textbook white supremacist feminism — which is not feminism at all, but a refusal to engage in the fact that white women possess numerous privileges that black women don’t.
To say that Nicki Minaj, who is speaking about her own oppression — which is a reality for black women, whether or not Anaconda deserved that award — should have just sounded less “angry” when talking about Taylor Swift is tone-policing, an oft-utilized tool to silence black women and mark them as sassy or having an attitude when they are rightfully angry.
And to stand onstage at the VMAs in a “dreadlocked” drawstring ponytail and act as if the elusive media is the cause of Nicki’s ire instead of her own hypocrisy is just more refusal to take responsibility for her actions and to recognize her own privilege.
And I, like Nicki Minaj, am tired of seeing white mediocrity rewarded and instances of black excellence snubbed.
I’m tired of having to punch and flail and shout in order to show that my black life matters, and I’m tired of the pulsing indignation of having it dismissed by women who pay to have black features but are somehow unable to spare sympathy for whole black bodies in general.
I’m tired of Miley Cyrus and her bad vocals and her worse feminism.
I’m tired of White Feminism™.
I’m tired of white women who use blackness to make themselves look better than other white women, but refuse to be responsible for their part in our continued oppression.
I’m tired of white women who dip themselves into rap music and the company of black men in order to feel desired, to feel different, and then turn up their noses at black women — and still have the audacity to call themselves feminists, and interested in justice for all. They are not as progressive as they think they are. And they can’t stop. And they won’t stop. It’s a party in the USA for mediocre white women.
And black women, as usual, as always, will have to fend for ourselves.
Sierra Mannie is a Classics student from Canton, Mississippi. You can follow her on Twitter @SKEEerra.
