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[Dr Naomi Campbell]

Watching Jesy Nelson's new video, Boyz, feels like a flashback to an era in which mocking Black people's appearance was welcome in pop culture but Black people themselves largely were not.

The video is short on original ideas, each scene mimicking classic 2000s hip-hop videos, in particular TI's 2008 What Up, What's Haapnin' and P Diddy's Bad Boys for Life, which the song also heavily interpolates. Nelson, who identifies as white British, wears grills on her teeth and sings about liking men who are "so hood". In one scene she has her hair in braids; in another she wears a bandana – and her skin is darkened in a way that makes her appear nonwhite.

Nelson has been widely criticised for "Blackfishing", a term coined by Wanna Thompson to describe imagery in which Black culture and aesthetics are imitated but Black people themselves are erased.

Did Jesy Nelson intend to hark back to decades of oppressive media imagery? Probably not. It's likely that she (and others who do this, most famously the Kardashians) are simply scrambling to remain relevant as the beauty standard changes.

Tina Fey references this fear of being irrelevant in her book Bossypants: "All Beyoncé and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dancehall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits."

Nelson, perhaps aware that her choices might inspire this line of criticism, has leaned on the co-sign of Trinidadian-born Nicki Minaj, who is featured on the song. Curiously, in their shared scenes, Nelson (who has previously had a very peaches-and-cream complexion) is the same shade as Minaj (Nelson claims this is because she had just been on a tanning holiday in Antigua).

Minaj has gone on record defending Nelson as well as attacking Nelson's former Little Mix bandmate Leigh-Ann Pinnock, who is mixed-race, of Barbadian and Jamaican descent. Pinnock naturally has many of the features Nelson would like to co-opt. In apparent leaked private messages, Pinnock called Nelson "a horrible person" and referred to the Blackfishing controversy. Minaj retorted by attacking Pinnock on Instagram, saying: "Only jealous people do things like this. It makes you a big jealous bozo." Nelson laughed along.

Nelson exemplifies the exact attitude that makes this type of racist cosplay so desirable. She's able to make jabs at the person whose appearance she's seemingly jealous of and insist she's not racist, too. Best of all for her, when this is over, she can wash off the tan, take off the wigs and return to white privilege without ever having to face the impact of her actions on a community. Nelson will not deal with the impact of the hyper-sexualization of Black and multiracial girls, who are more likely to be sexually assaulted and less likely to be protected.

In many ways Nelson is relying on an age-old trick to make an otherwise unremarkable white artist relevant, or, in some cases, relevant again. Stars like Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, and Justin Timberlake have been criticised in the past for cultural appropriation. Each of them had an "urban" phase that saw them deviating from pop or country to embrace an "edgier" aesthetic – from Perry's padded-buttocked backup dancers to Miley Cyrus feigning what she described as a "dirty-south" persona for a few years as part of her rebranding from child star. In every case this conversion to Black culture lasts just long enough to get some hit songs under a star's belt before they move on to another cultural costume.

This isn't only a problem among white artists. In the Korean pop industry, groups like Mamamoo have had to apologize for wearing blackface, and other stars, like Big Bang's G-Dragon, have repeatedly crossed the line by appearing in everything from Afro wigs to what appears to be blackface (the latter incident, he claimed, was a tribute to Trayvon Martin).

At every turn, the global influence of hip-hop or R&B is cited as an excuse, as if Black identities are now somehow in the public domain. On Monday, Nelson said she didn't want to offend people of colour, but that she simply loved 2000s hip-hop and "just wanted to celebrate that era of music".

The problem with these excuses is that artists confuse Black American hyper-visibility with power, assuming that the cultural influence of Black music reflects a level of access and protection for Black people that does not actually exist in the US, the UK or anywhere else. Anyone who complains about harm can be framed as overreacting – which is what Nelson seems to be asserting now.

How is it possible to understand the joy but not the pain? To identify with every part of the culture except the struggles that members face in their day to day lives? And to see hip-hop as global, but not to notice current events in your own country, or even the struggles of your own bandmate with racism in the group, much less the culture that you are mimicking for a profit?

As the author Greg Tate's 2003 book Everything But the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black Culture addresses, everything about Black culture is appealing to whiteness except the hard parts of being Black. And apparently that attitude is global, even among people who also experience oppression from white supremacy. It's not the exaggerated red lip of yesteryear, but it still feels like blackface, albeit a version updated for the digital age.

Minstrel shows were among America's first cultural exports and may well be the last import.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/music/jesy-nelson-will-dispose-of-her-black-costume-when-it-no-longer-serves-her/ar-AAPr88J?ocid=msedgntp



Interesting read

[Freemala Harris]

Ackkkkkkkk

Hit the nail right on the head

And that's what's infuriating

They can fetishize their idea of what a nigger is and have the privlege of runnning back to whiteness when they get bored of it

[Plastic.]

a miley tea

[Barbie Dangerous]

She sucks

[FRANCE]

Nicki girl



https://mobile.twitter.com/gIowcess/status/1447771763664998400

[Barbie Dangerous]

Nicki girl



https://mobile.twitter.com/gIowcess/status/1447771763664998400

She is so beautiful and strategic

[Cartierline]

Idk why people keep giving this girl attention

This is exactly what she wants

[The Only BLACK Kalmyks]

Idk why people keep giving this girl attention

This is exactly what she wants

I don't think she wants this type of attention tbh

Especially considering this whole exotical thing she's been doing has been going on for years

It's just that her video and song have actually put more spotlight on it and now the girls are really dragging

She seems to be genuinely caught off guard by it all. I don't think she saw it coming .

I think her plan was to be exotical and have a hit song and video behind it .  But The gorls are saying not so fast .

She's a wannabe , but not so much a troll

[Annie]

For me it's the combination of so many elements. Not just a tan or a grill. There are so many choices in this video that were tone deaf. I understand in some instances creative concepts are intended in a different way and people can be unaware (for this video I feel like there are too many decisions tho, you have to be blind). The whole team (Jesy, glamsquad, director, Nicki) are responsible. Jesy, in particular, was warned about blackfishing before, so I feel like she should know better

..but let's forget about that for a second and say they were all completely oblivious and just wanted to 'appreciate': This defensive reaction is just confirming the problem. To deny there isn't anything wrong or not even acknowledge the video could be interpreted the wrong way is what is extra disappointing. Jesy couldn't even articulate it herself, she needed Nicki (maybe even Diddy in the future?) to fight her battles. And to tear a black woman down to protect Jesy is ridiculous, but what do we expect from Nicki? The woman who said new artists can't take criticism (and end up with wack projects), can't take criticism.

[Annie]

Teen Vogue:

On Jesy Nelson, "Blackfishing," and Discourse Deja Vu

In this op-ed, writer Natasha Mulenga reflects on former Little Mix member Jesy Nelson's new music video, "Boyz."
[...]

There is no problem in appreciating Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop culture is a global force, and it has influenced everything: the way people dress, the way people talk, the dances that become popular on TikTok. But appropriation vs. appreciation isn't a new discourse — it's one that has been happening for years, one that by now, artists globally should be aware of. In the case of Jesy's music video, it's more than just her personal aesthetic appropriation, it's that she's using her very big platform to perpetuate the worst stereotypes of a race of people that she doesn't belong to.

I have no desire to see Jesy Nelson and her ragtag band of "hoodlums" disrupting an affluent suburban area. Not when Black people face real discrimination around housing. Not when Black homeownership rates have disproportionately declined in the U.S. over the past few decades, per NPR. Not when racist policies like redlining have long shaped the way home loans work in the U.S., perpetuating racial wealth inequality. When rapper and executive Master P moved his No Limit headquarters to an upscale neighborhood in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, buying houses for his artists, they were not welcomed. Instead, they were repeatedly harassed and followed by police; at one point, they saw a burning cross (a symbol of the KKK) in the neighborhood, according to accounts in BET Networks' "No Limit Chronicles" series.

All of this larger context is flattened in Jesy's music video, which references P Diddy, Black Rob, and Mark Curry's track "Bad Boys 4 Life" but adds nothing imaginative or expansive. Diddy pops up near the end of "Boyz" as one of Jesy's neighbors who asks her to tone it down — while also wishing her the best for her career. The co-sign feels messy, and it shouldn't be seen as some kind of universal approval marker. But with Nicki Minaj on Instagram Live defending Jesy, can we really expect those receiving a check for these antics to be a voice of reason? (She didn't have a problem explaining the harm in appropriation, and not listening to Black women, back in 2015 in regards to Miley Cyrus.)

[...]

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/jesy-nelson-blackfishing-discourse-deja-vu-op-ed

[Lucid Salvatore]

fck you Annie
and I stand with Nicki & Jesy!

[CHOKE]

I stand with Nicki & Jesy!

Period.

[Annie]

I stand with Nicki & Jesy!

Period.

Awesome! 

[Buy The Stars✨]

Idk why people keep giving this girl attention

This is exactly what she wants

i dont think its getting that much attention.. most ppl dont know who she is to even know whats going on

[oph.]

she swore she was about to breakout


never listened to a little mix song in m life, but i'm about to get into their new mess only lolz