Lily Allen makes maddening use of stereotypes in newest video

Lily Allen is back, and she’s not happy about a lot of things. 

According to her new single, “Hard out Here,” “It’s hard out here for a b*tch.” 

I’m a man so I can’t personally speak to those difficulties, but I imagine they’re valid. Grimes’ extended Tumblr post back in April about being berated by male fans and Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry’sstatements in regard to the downright disgusting Facebook comments she’s seen about her make it clear that a different microscope is afforded to women in the public eye. 

Allen’s satirizing of this treatment is entirely justified    — except for one glaring oversight. 

In the music video for her new song, Allen — who is white — is surrounded by black female dancers twerking (I’m as tired of the word as you are), and the fact of the matter is that this is immensely offensive.

In addition to being a man, I’m also black. I still need help from the blog Jezebel to decide whether or not male privilege applies to me. So while I won’t attempt to give any insight on feminism, I can attest to my experience as a black person in America and say categorically that Lily Allen’s video made me uncomfortable.  

In one of the scenes, Allen pours what I assume is Rosé wine on a robust black woman’s butt. The whole thing felt sort of like when Macklemore — also white — tells the rap community — mostly black — how to act.

That’s not really why I’m offended, though. I mean, the other day while I was walking home a kid yelled the N-word at me out of his truck and my first reaction was to laugh because he added the Dave Chappelle twang to it. My problem with Lily Allen is how much applause she’s getting for being “brave” or “badass” for using woefully outdated hip-hop tropes to essentially lambast black men. 

In the video, Allen doesn’t satirize the lower wages women are paid or the expectation for them to be witless eye-candy. She goes straight to the ’90s rap video stereotypes of oversexualized, “bling” obsessed black men — the same stereotypes that parents use to warn their white daughters about the perils of dating a black man (I’m speaking from experience). 

I doubt Grimes’ accosters expected her to twerk on stage, nor do I think any of the suits at Allen’s label are asking her to, either. Her mistreatment as a woman in pop music has nothing to do with rap archetypes — now painfully associated with a particular demographic. Her problem, as with all disadvantaged groups in America, is structural.

While Miley Cyrus received flak for appropriating black culture, at least she seemed genuine when she did it. In Allen’s case, she’s using black stereotypes to make a point.

That point (black men are awful?) isn’t entirely clear, but whatever it is, I’m getting kind of sick of it.

In our current media landscape, a Netflix series like “Orange is the New Black” can be lauded as groundbreaking while perpetuating the oldest and most hurtful stereotypes about black people. This might explain why Allen is so unapologetic for this awful song’s even more awful video. 

Just because you’re making a statement against privilege doesn’t mean you get to drag other marginalized people down in the process. 

It’s hard out here for a lot of people, not just Lily Allen.