Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps in Welcome to Okay f Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet Your Girl Danielle Moody, recording live ish from our
Speaker 1: coaching studios and Times Square. You know, I am really
Speaker 1: excited about today's interview with the author of a new book,
Speaker 1: her very first memoir, Bad Fat Black Girl. Author Cecily
Speaker 1: Bowen and I met roughly teny years ago. Funny enough,
Speaker 1: it's it's so funny how you traverse different circles and
Speaker 1: different places and then get to be a part of
Speaker 1: seeing people's glow up right. And Cecily and I met
Speaker 1: because she was working with a feminist women's organization that
Speaker 1: was focused on abortion, that was particularly focused on abortions
Speaker 1: and abortion rights for black and brown women who have
Speaker 1: traditionally been left out of the conversations with regard to
Speaker 1: feminism or have been erased from the history of first
Speaker 1: second third wave feminism. And what she explores in her
Speaker 1: memoir is her own acceptance and understanding of what it
Speaker 1: means to be a trap feminist right, what it means
Speaker 1: to decide that you were no longer going to bow
Speaker 1: to the constraints that a white supremacists, misogynistic, patriarchal society
Speaker 1: places on the bodies and the experiences and the movements
Speaker 1: and the vocal tones of black women, And what this
Speaker 1: book lifts up is the lived experiences of black girls
Speaker 1: from the hood right whose stories are oftentimes told, if
Speaker 1: told at all, particularly by Hollywood, with how downtrodden, how troubled,
Speaker 1: how we should all feel empathy and sad as opposed
Speaker 1: to lifting up the fullness of these people and their
Speaker 1: joy and experiences and community and relationship building. So I'm
Speaker 1: excited for you all to be a part of this conversation,
Speaker 1: and I would love that when you have an opportunity
Speaker 1: after listening, that you share your thoughts on what your
Speaker 1: definition of feminism is. Are you a feminist? Coming up next,
Speaker 1: dear friends, is my conversation with the author of Bad
Speaker 1: Black Girl, Cecily Bowen. I hope that you enjoy this
Speaker 1: conversation as much as I did, Folks, I am so
Speaker 1: excited to welcome to ooka AffA Daily for the first time,
Speaker 1: Cecily Bowen, who is the author. I love this title.
Speaker 1: I love this title, Bad Fat Black Girl. Notes from
Speaker 1: a Trap Feminist. Cecily, you are also the host of Purse.
Speaker 1: The host of Purse, the first podcast about female and
Speaker 1: queer rappers, which you know, according to mainstream hip hop,
Speaker 1: you would think that we only have about one or
Speaker 1: two female rappers right now, let alone any queer one.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate that as well. And you were formerly
Speaker 1: the senior entertainment writer at Refinery twenty nine, creating different
Speaker 1: outlets and spaces in white pop culture for black female voices.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about what it means to be a
Speaker 1: trap feminist. Let's just start from the beginning so people
Speaker 1: understand the distinction, because I think that right now we
Speaker 1: are seeing a I don't even want to say a resurgence,
Speaker 1: but a birth of a different type of feminism, a
Speaker 1: different type of womanism. So talk to me about what
Speaker 1: it means to be a trap feminist. And I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that you brought that up, because while feminism was
Speaker 1: something that I had initially started to like say out
Speaker 1: loud and kind of ruminate on almost ten years ago.
Speaker 1: Now the impetus for writing this book is because we're
Speaker 1: having that that resurgence or you know, this kind of
Speaker 1: popularization of a very specific kind of feminism that is
Speaker 1: rooted in the experiences of essentially the hood, Black Girls
Speaker 1: and the soundtrack to that. I'm glad you mentioned the
Speaker 1: podcast perse first, because the soundtrack to this movement is
Speaker 1: all of this amazing female route that we have right now.
Speaker 1: So just for some contacts, I think that's super important.
Speaker 1: But what it means to be a trap feminist is
Speaker 1: to really look at and honor the experiences of Black women,
Speaker 1: and specifically Black women who are from the hood, So
Speaker 1: black women who come from that cultural space of blackness
Speaker 1: that is so often commodified, that is so often appropriated,
Speaker 1: and that it's so often vilified and talked about without
Speaker 1: actually ever hearing from the Black women who live those experiences.
Speaker 1: And it's very important to understand that trap feminism is
Speaker 1: not about pathologizing or intervening in the lives of like
Speaker 1: hood black women to like. What it actually does is
Speaker 1: celebrate all of the ways in which those specific kinds
Speaker 1: of black women have already been thriving and surviving and
Speaker 1: living and being the blueprint and literally creating cultural exports
Speaker 1: that people continuously exploit all the time and you know,
Speaker 1: been popping while we was doing it, you know. And
Speaker 1: so that that is what trap feminism does. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that is so dope about it is
Speaker 1: that it does look specifically at trap music and the
Speaker 1: sight of trap music as a way to start interrogating
Speaker 1: some of the themes regarding gender and sexuality and race
Speaker 1: and capitalism and money and all of those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: You know, I I love this because, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I think too often happens is
Speaker 1: in our request to be I don't even know. We
Speaker 1: don't really use the term politically correct, because nothing is
Speaker 1: politically correct anymore. But in our way to kind of
Speaker 1: distance black people and blackness from the hood, right, there
Speaker 1: has been this um, what can I say, sanitizing of
Speaker 1: the black sanitizing of the black experience, and sanitizing of
Speaker 1: the type of black women or black woman that is
Speaker 1: okay to discuss. Right. So I would argue that, you know,
Speaker 1: when we when we had Michelle Obama as our first lady, right,
Speaker 1: even though Michelle Obama was very clear that she came
Speaker 1: from the South Side of Chicago, even though she's very
Speaker 1: clear about like the distinctions and of her upbringing, she
Speaker 1: still came through Ivy. She still had to, um, I
Speaker 1: would say, wash off some of the hood nature itself
Speaker 1: in order for acceptance. So do you feel that in
Speaker 1: this kind of space that we are in now, and
Speaker 1: this cultural space that we are in, that we can
Speaker 1: have conversations with about what it means to be from
Speaker 1: the hood, about what it means to have this multifacetedness
Speaker 1: as black people, as black women without having to sanitize
Speaker 1: ourselves or make ourselves safe for mainstream consumption. Like we
Speaker 1: don't have to run from it anymore. I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, that's one of the revolutionary properties of social
Speaker 1: media is that that's where black women are having those
Speaker 1: conversations without watering down or sanitizing themselves. There's literally the
Speaker 1: first I don't know why this is the first person
Speaker 1: we came to online. There's this hairstylens I follow She
Speaker 1: like does wig installations and her name is queenly Or.
Speaker 1: She's based in Alabama, but like she does these voiceovers
Speaker 1: of her doing her installation, and she speaks in her accent,
Speaker 1: she cusses, she's very she's very clear just about who
Speaker 1: she is, and she's getting all of these followers and
Speaker 1: all of you know, these kinds of you know, now
Speaker 1: she's starting to do like brand deals and stuff, and
Speaker 1: she does that unapologetically for being who she is. And
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting because you know, I feel like
Speaker 1: for the first you know, for the twenty tens and
Speaker 1: maybe like the early as, the only people we were
Speaker 1: letting do that, actually men who were impersonating black women
Speaker 1: like those were the only people that we were letting
Speaker 1: show up in the hood like girls. And so now
Speaker 1: I feel like we're actually letting black women do it.
Speaker 1: But it's so interesting. I love that you brought that
Speaker 1: up because you know, you mentioned some of the places
Speaker 1: that I that I worked, and you know, essentially that
Speaker 1: is what a lot of people would call women's media,
Speaker 1: you know, main culture. And it was when I got
Speaker 1: to that space. You know, obviously I'm from Chicago, but
Speaker 1: then I've also lived in DC, I've lived in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: I'm from these very like black these places with like
Speaker 1: these you know, big black populations. But I think it
Speaker 1: was when I started to work in media that I
Speaker 1: started to see that the black people who were traditionally
Speaker 1: occupying space in that specific industry were absolutely not from
Speaker 1: the hood, and the ones that were were doing everything
Speaker 1: they could to you know, not be from the hood.
Speaker 1: And but but the thing about it was that because
Speaker 1: I had a very non traditional path into journalism and
Speaker 1: into media, like I ever went to journalism school or
Speaker 1: any of that. My voice and my perspective as a
Speaker 1: black girl from Ahood is actually what got me in
Speaker 1: the door. It was, you know, we were in on
Speaker 1: the advent of this. It was the era of the
Speaker 1: personal narrative, and we were questioned. It was like where
Speaker 1: pop culture and feminism were really having another kind of
Speaker 1: merging together. Was when Scandal was on. Everybody wanted to
Speaker 1: know if everything was feminist. And so my voice really
Speaker 1: got me in the door. And I knew I could
Speaker 1: not start to sacrifice who I was, you know, for
Speaker 1: the work and for the space. And obviously, like you know,
Speaker 1: I had to try to figure out how to navigate that,
Speaker 1: you know, while also like maintaining like you know, the
Speaker 1: norms of like professionalism and things like that. But I
Speaker 1: was very adamant that I did not want to sacrifice
Speaker 1: who I was, and I was adamant that like as
Speaker 1: much as we talked about, like, you know, the origins
Speaker 1: of a certain hairstyle, I knew that that wasn't enough
Speaker 1: in terms of actually reflecting the voices of those women
Speaker 1: because I think on the very other side of that,
Speaker 1: we have all of these moments happening on the political
Speaker 1: side right where we have black trans women being killed
Speaker 1: at super high rates. Most of those black trans women
Speaker 1: who were being killed we're from the hood. You know.
Speaker 1: We have Brianna Taylor's death. You know, we have all
Speaker 1: of these All of a sudden, black women are like martyrs,
Speaker 1: and like we hear about them in death, and we
Speaker 1: hear about them after they've been you know, experienced intimate
Speaker 1: partner violence. We hear about them as statistics, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of you know, them contracting hid or what
Speaker 1: the income gap is between them. There were all of these.
Speaker 1: There are all these very material outcomes of what it
Speaker 1: means to be black and from the hood and to
Speaker 1: be female and black and from the hood that folks
Speaker 1: like to talk about, and in that way, hood black
Speaker 1: girls become ideas and they're not Actually we don't actually
Speaker 1: ever hear from them though, we don't talk to them,
Speaker 1: and it's not enough that we just say, oh, they
Speaker 1: influenced this cultural trend. That that's not make up for
Speaker 1: us not hearing those stories. And so you know that
Speaker 1: it was really wanting to just make space for the
Speaker 1: fact that we we can be spoken too, and we
Speaker 1: should be allowed to speak instead of always being spoken about.
Speaker 1: You know. What I also find interesting too is the
Speaker 1: pushback that we see in the comments sections on some
Speaker 1: black pages. Right so, you will have you know, various
Speaker 1: various folks, various black women, right so, whether it's city girls,
Speaker 1: whether it is you know, a lotto, whether it is
Speaker 1: Michelle Obama, what have you. And there's always a set
Speaker 1: of black people, black women in particular, who are embarrassed
Speaker 1: by those said women or saying you know, uh, so
Speaker 1: and so didn't die so that you could shake your
Speaker 1: ass like this or so and so didn't What do
Speaker 1: you say? You know, what? What? What? What? What? Is it?
Speaker 1: Just the internalized like whiteness of it all, or like
Speaker 1: don't let black don't let white folks, you know, don't
Speaker 1: air out our dirty laundry type of thing. What do
Speaker 1: you think is kind of this stem where? Where where
Speaker 1: that internalized oppression is coming from? So I think it
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with respectability and survival. I
Speaker 1: think that we are, you know, it's it's hammered into
Speaker 1: us from such, you know, from so many different angles
Speaker 1: and from so many different places that in order to
Speaker 1: make it in the world, that in order to be
Speaker 1: an upstanding citizen. You are to deny a lot of
Speaker 1: the things that really make you black and make ubliquity
Speaker 1: black black, you know, not not just you know, your
Speaker 1: ancestral roots or anything like that. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a conversation that was I remember the same
Speaker 1: conversation happening with black men around sagging their pants, the
Speaker 1: conversations that were had around black men wearing locks or
Speaker 1: having braids, and institutions and institutions from the NFL and
Speaker 1: the NBA to more House and so I think it's
Speaker 1: really just a reflection of that. But I think the
Speaker 1: issue with that is that, first of all, respectability politics
Speaker 1: have never saved us, and they never will. And the
Speaker 1: faster we accept that, the better off we will be.
Speaker 1: Honestly and truly, that will not stop us from experiencing
Speaker 1: the trickle down of systemic racism, gender based violence, sexism,
Speaker 1: or any of that. However, I do think that some
Speaker 1: of the tools of respectability they help lighten the load.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can say, even for myself, the fact
Speaker 1: that I am college educated, the fact that I the
Speaker 1: fact that I have the gift of literacy itself, the
Speaker 1: fact that I can read and write period. You know,
Speaker 1: has it helps me to have the platform to even
Speaker 1: be able to talk about to be able to talk
Speaker 1: about tripe feminism. But I think where we mess up
Speaker 1: is that we cannot participate in that while also promoting
Speaker 1: the eradication of the things that just make us black,
Speaker 1: you know. And I learned that from a lot of
Speaker 1: different people. You know, one of my mentors, friends, one
Speaker 1: of my professors and college was doctor who was Nicole Brown,
Speaker 1: who started this program called Soul High, Saving our Lives,
Speaker 1: Hearing our Truths. And the basic principle of this program
Speaker 1: was that you know, us as college students and college professors,
Speaker 1: we would go to work with black girls and like
Speaker 1: local schools off campus, you know, people who were just
Speaker 1: from that neighborhood, and you know, we were not going
Speaker 1: into those schools. Were like an interventionist approach. A lot
Speaker 1: of the programs that have been catered to working with
Speaker 1: black girls were about like you know, polishing them up,
Speaker 1: teaching them about we have to teach them about hygiene,
Speaker 1: we have to teach them to be ladies, we have
Speaker 1: to teach them to thrive. Because like the idea was
Speaker 1: that there was something inherent about black girlhood or about
Speaker 1: being black girls from the hood that they just didn't
Speaker 1: know about like how to be like women of the world.
Speaker 1: And we were like, no, actually, we want to go
Speaker 1: in there and like do art and like let them
Speaker 1: tell their own stories, and we want them to roll
Speaker 1: their necks and pop their lips, and we want them
Speaker 1: to just ruvel in the beauty that is black girlhood.
Speaker 1: And then we can make them that we can make
Speaker 1: the meaning of that, and they can make the meaning
Speaker 1: of their own lives. But like, let's have them tell us, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, what the what their lives are, like, what
Speaker 1: they need and what they need to experience. And so
Speaker 1: that is a practice that is very much so embedded
Speaker 1: in the heart of tripe feminism and in terms of
Speaker 1: how I work. But I think that's also my response
Speaker 1: to a lot of the fear, going back to your question,
Speaker 1: to a lot of the fear and a lot of
Speaker 1: the respective respectability pushback that we see online, especially from
Speaker 1: other black folks, that like, if we you know, no
Speaker 1: one died from to be able to for me to
Speaker 1: shake my ass on the internet, But they also didn't
Speaker 1: die for me to be ashamed of shaking my ass
Speaker 1: on the internet. Even that wasn't that wasn't the end all,
Speaker 1: be y'all, Like, let's beat Like when we talk about
Speaker 1: why you know, if we you know, Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: is usually who late who they use as the example.
Speaker 1: But like if we want to talk about what Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King died for, like Martin Luther King died as
Speaker 1: at the hands of white supremacy, and then an attempt
Speaker 1: at end white supremacy, like it ain't had nothing to
Speaker 1: do it. Who was shaking the ass or who was not?
Speaker 1: You know, because in an ideal world, you know, if
Speaker 1: we really eradicated white supremacy, me shaking my ass would
Speaker 1: not be a sign of inferiority or unproductivity or failure
Speaker 1: in a way that you think it is, because oh god,
Speaker 1: I love it, Like yes, yes, I'm not. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna turn into no white woman for y'all. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm just not gonna do it, Okay, like y'all we are,
Speaker 1: we are not of elitism is not gonna save us respectability.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna save it us. And and honestly, like
Speaker 1: we've been doing fun, I think that's also the issue
Speaker 1: that like the damn is that you think is being
Speaker 1: caused by black girl shaking her ass on the internet
Speaker 1: just doesn't exist in the way as you think it does.
Speaker 1: But what does is like misogyny. I was going to
Speaker 1: say her, yeah, because because what the product that the
Speaker 1: issue is not about whether or not or how or
Speaker 1: when to shake your ass, right like, that is actually
Speaker 1: not the thing. It's about being free or being or
Speaker 1: living in a perceived free society that there is not
Speaker 1: going to be repercussions for doing so. Repercussion being like, oh,
Speaker 1: well that's why she got raped or that's why she
Speaker 1: got beat or that's why this happened. And it's just like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, Wait a minute, wait a minute, that
Speaker 1: didn't come from that action. That came from what we
Speaker 1: have decided in our society is normal and acceptable. Right,
Speaker 1: that misogyny is okay, that patriarchy is okay, that abuse
Speaker 1: of women is okay. You know, it was earlier. It
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the seventeen seventeenth birthday of Michaia,
Speaker 1: who was gunned down last year in front of her
Speaker 1: foster care home by police who rolled up in the
Speaker 1: midst of a fight. And and you know, and Makaiah
Speaker 1: did not receive the type of wall to wall coverage
Speaker 1: campaign and all of these things, and a part of
Speaker 1: me believes, and I want to ask you, this, is
Speaker 1: it because she was not the perfect martyr? Is it
Speaker 1: because she wasn't thin? Is it because her background wasn't
Speaker 1: polished right that we couldn't say that, oh, she was
Speaker 1: asleep in her bed or oh she was doing X
Speaker 1: like that she was in the action of defending herself
Speaker 1: and her body, and we don't like to see black
Speaker 1: women doing that, Like what do you why do you
Speaker 1: think you know? And because I want to honor that,
Speaker 1: like honor the truth about why her name will most
Speaker 1: likely be lost as years go on and not a
Speaker 1: part of the broader array of hashtags that we know
Speaker 1: and stories that we can conjure because of the contact
Speaker 1: of it. That is so and you literally hit the
Speaker 1: nail on the head. People are not rallying around the
Speaker 1: death of that fifteen year old girl because let's be like,
Speaker 1: she was a fifteen year old child who had already
Speaker 1: been disserviced and not receiving things that she deserved as
Speaker 1: an innocent child just by way of being in a
Speaker 1: problematic foster care system in the birthplace. But it literally
Speaker 1: is because she was in the active mode of fighting
Speaker 1: back and defending herself from she saw as a threat
Speaker 1: that people have not run to like defend her name
Speaker 1: in the same way that they did a black woman
Speaker 1: who literally wasn't doing anything except sleeping. And I think
Speaker 1: that that and also so much comes with that, the
Speaker 1: fact that she was a bigger black girl. People did
Speaker 1: not see her as a victim who even needed to
Speaker 1: defend herself in the first place. Yeah, they thought that
Speaker 1: she should just have been in a situation. She must
Speaker 1: have been the aggressive, she must have been the person
Speaker 1: who calls all of this chaos. And even the fact
Speaker 1: that the police's response to seeing her with a knife
Speaker 1: was to shoot has everything to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that she was a big black woman, Because then, yell,
Speaker 1: how many videos have you seen a white people wielding
Speaker 1: swords hitting the girl come on, hitting the police using
Speaker 1: their martial arts, spitting in their faces, slapping the person
Speaker 1: them out, And those officers don't even think to reach
Speaker 1: for a weapon, not a taste or not a baton,
Speaker 1: not a handcuff. And so we have to be honest
Speaker 1: about how black girl bodies are literally read as more
Speaker 1: dangerous and also less valuable. Yes, because the decision that's
Speaker 1: being made is whose life am I here to save
Speaker 1: and who can and who can go in my efforts
Speaker 1: to save those lives. And Makaya's life ended up at
Speaker 1: the bottom, and that has everything to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that she was a fat black girl, and people
Speaker 1: who refuse to acknowledge that are being intentionally obtuse. At
Speaker 1: this point, do you think that because you know, even
Speaker 1: in the title of your book, right, you use the
Speaker 1: word fat? Yeah? Right? And if do you use it,
Speaker 1: I'll just ask why do you use the term why
Speaker 1: do you use the term fat? Yeah? So I think
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because I think that, first of all,
Speaker 1: I use the term because I am fat. That's that's
Speaker 1: what I am. That is a descriptor of my body,
Speaker 1: that is that is how I look. And I do
Speaker 1: understand that the word fat is very loaded, and I
Speaker 1: think for a lot of people, right, it comes with
Speaker 1: a negative connotation. And we've developed all of these other
Speaker 1: words like plus size or thick or voluptuous or what
Speaker 1: you know whatever, all these quote unquote likes you from
Speaker 1: those amisms to describe fat that are supposed to that
Speaker 1: are supposed to imply that we don't mean harm when
Speaker 1: we say them, and so I actually think that I
Speaker 1: intentionally use the word fat because I want people to
Speaker 1: actually come back to that place of discomfort, Like I
Speaker 1: want you to come back to that place where you
Speaker 1: are thinking of fat as an inherently negative word, so
Speaker 1: that then you can like hear everything else that I
Speaker 1: have to say and then hopefully question that, like why
Speaker 1: why the word fat was bad in the first place,
Speaker 1: And so that is that is why I use that word.
Speaker 1: I've always gone by you know, bad Fat Black Girl
Speaker 1: on the internet. That's that was my social media handle. Honestly,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to title the book just notes
Speaker 1: from a trip Feminist period, Like I wanted that to
Speaker 1: be the title. Um as we were kind of workshopping
Speaker 1: some other titles that just because they thought folks would
Speaker 1: know My publisher UM and my editor and my agent.
Speaker 1: They were like, Okay, we're not sure that people are
Speaker 1: immediately gonna know what trap feminist trip feminism is, so
Speaker 1: we might need another title that's like that kind of
Speaker 1: brings people into by the book. And so I get
Speaker 1: why we got there, But I mean that title bad
Speaker 1: Fat Black Girl, obviously it's super important to me. It's
Speaker 1: right there, um, you know, and that is how I
Speaker 1: identify myself online. But I'm glad you brought this up too,
Speaker 1: because I think in the context of black folks and
Speaker 1: like black folks from the hood, you know, the body
Speaker 1: po sitivity space traditionally has been represented by a lot
Speaker 1: of white people and a lot of white Yes, it's
Speaker 1: been very you know, like body positivity has been like
Speaker 1: overrepresented by whiteness. And I think one of the misconceptions
Speaker 1: that came out of that was that black people are
Speaker 1: somehow not fatphobic or less fatphobic, and that also wasn't true.
Speaker 1: So it was really important that I was able to
Speaker 1: talk about my fatness and the context of my blackness,
Speaker 1: to talk about the desirability and body politics and the
Speaker 1: kind of the economies of desirability within black culture specifically,
Speaker 1: and again trip music trip culture was one of those
Speaker 1: sites where it was right there, really saw how black
Speaker 1: women's bodies were being talked about in that context. So
Speaker 1: I think another reason why it was important for me
Speaker 1: to really identify myself as fat in the context of
Speaker 1: this conversation was because it was important that folks didn't
Speaker 1: know that I was approaching like hip hop or hip
Speaker 1: hop criticism or commentary from the perspective of a video
Speaker 1: bits in like, if we look at a lot of
Speaker 1: the women who have been allowed to take up spaces,
Speaker 1: it's like hip hop journalists or hip hop you know artists,
Speaker 1: the artists, they all look at certain way. You know,
Speaker 1: even somebody particularly right now exactly, they all look the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And even somebody like Angeli Yee, you know who hosts
Speaker 1: like you know, I'm reviewably one of the hugest you know,
Speaker 1: hip hop talk shows. Um, And I've met Angelie. She's
Speaker 1: such a dope person. But you know, Angeli ye is
Speaker 1: light skin, she's she's um, She's what a lot of
Speaker 1: people would consider desirable and attractive. She's saying she's not sad,
Speaker 1: you know, like your aren't like that. Women don't appear
Speaker 1: in hip hop. The closest thing we've got is Lizzo
Speaker 1: and and the bigger Rizzo and the bigger the more
Speaker 1: famous Lizzo has gotten, the more pop her music has
Speaker 1: started to sound like it like we we we hardly
Speaker 1: even have room for people who are plus sizes and
Speaker 1: hip hop. So it was just really important for me
Speaker 1: to like insert myself in that way and to say no,
Speaker 1: like it's a fat bitch talking right now? Can I
Speaker 1: curse on me? I'm sorry the show is called Okay Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I needed people to know, like it's it's a
Speaker 1: big bitch talking to y'all are gonna hear what I
Speaker 1: have to say? You know? Um? You know the one
Speaker 1: I want to ask you this too, like just with
Speaker 1: regard to your podcast purse first and wanting to showcase
Speaker 1: black female rappers as well as like black female queer rappers.
Speaker 1: You know, do you think, like I hate when people
Speaker 1: say like, oh, we're in the golden age of like
Speaker 1: X right, um, but what do you feel about the
Speaker 1: prevalence or the way in which black female rappers are
Speaker 1: being marketed are being presented right now? You know? As
Speaker 1: a as a commisseur of female rapper right um, I
Speaker 1: have always loved the rap girl. Ever since Traina, Ever
Speaker 1: since Traina's nan verse, I have been a rap girl girl. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think at first, I think I would say, like
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nineteen, I was just I was
Speaker 1: so excited because it instill I'm just to be clear.
Speaker 1: But in twenty nineteen, I was so excited because it
Speaker 1: was like we had not only did we have you know,
Speaker 1: I think the goal poster everybody was that we had
Speaker 1: more than one female rapper at the time. So not
Speaker 1: only did we have more than one female reppert the time,
Speaker 1: like we had girls make the stallion, We had you know,
Speaker 1: Rico Nasty, we have it mother. It was also like
Speaker 1: the diversity of the sounds, like we were getting um,
Speaker 1: you know, we had Doja Cat coming out who was like,
Speaker 1: who's really like giving like kind of tyler of a creator,
Speaker 1: all encompassing creative vibes. And then we had Megan who
Speaker 1: had this really deep voice with like this like UGK
Speaker 1: type of inspired floating. We had a city girls from
Speaker 1: Miami who would like direct us and thee Trina. We
Speaker 1: had young and May who was a stud from New York.
Speaker 1: You know, like we had this diversity a female right,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, this is licked. This this
Speaker 1: is where it's at for me. How I'm starting to
Speaker 1: feel these days, I think coming into twenty twenty and
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one is that obviously all female rappers have
Speaker 1: to thank the career trajectory of Nicki Minaj for the
Speaker 1: doors that have been able to being open to them
Speaker 1: in terms of the types of commercial success that they
Speaker 1: have been able to attain. And I think what a
Speaker 1: lot of people learn from that was that Nicki Minaj
Speaker 1: had to go through her awkward and in my opinion,
Speaker 1: terrible super based phase right where she was, you know,
Speaker 1: wearing pink chicken wing necklaces and making and looking yeah like,
Speaker 1: you know, wearing the big wigs, you know, doing the
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga aesthetic and kind of making the top hits
Speaker 1: in order to in order to cross that threshold and
Speaker 1: become mainstream. And so now what I'm seeing is that
Speaker 1: that is also kind of the formula that a lot
Speaker 1: of the rap girls are being forced to kind of
Speaker 1: also fit into. It's like, the moment they hit a
Speaker 1: certain amount of followers on Instagram, it's like, let's put
Speaker 1: them into lea. It's hard and some types. Let's teach
Speaker 1: them how to do a five, six, seven, eight. Let's
Speaker 1: teach them how to do this when they hold the mic,
Speaker 1: give us a give us some hand tests, some moves,
Speaker 1: and let's find a cute and let's find a cute
Speaker 1: pop inspired beat to have them wrap over. And I
Speaker 1: hate it. I hate it because one is compromising their artistry.
Speaker 1: I think you mentioned a Lottle earlier in this conversation.
Speaker 1: She's the most recent one that we've seen this. Her
Speaker 1: recent single is various, like a remake of a of
Speaker 1: a Mariah Carey made, and it is very much so
Speaker 1: not her. The video she seems very unnatural. She seems
Speaker 1: like she's concentrating so hard on those moves, and also
Speaker 1: it has taken her out of a lane that she
Speaker 1: was actually occupying. We never asked little Dirk to do Coreo.
Speaker 1: We never asked a little baby to come do Chorea
Speaker 1: and to come make pop songs, and we do. We'll
Speaker 1: let them do the pop songs, but not in that
Speaker 1: way where we need to need them to have a
Speaker 1: pop image. Like we let black men be hood niggas
Speaker 1: from start to finish and then everyone else figures out
Speaker 1: a way to let them in. But I feel like
Speaker 1: with the rap girl, they don't get to just stay
Speaker 1: street bitches. They have to at some point become glam
Speaker 1: girls or pop girls or pop stars or content creators
Speaker 1: or influences or whatever whatever the case may be that is.
Speaker 1: That is frustrating. So I'm actually season two a Purse
Speaker 1: Verse is going to be returning. We're just like figuring
Speaker 1: out our funding situation. And I cannot wait because me
Speaker 1: and my co host Pierre, who was a queer rapper,
Speaker 1: which is also another subset of folks that we have,
Speaker 1: you know, on the show, Like, we have so much
Speaker 1: to talk about around that and and around how they're
Speaker 1: kind of trying to follow this certain like, um, make
Speaker 1: a female rapper template. That is really watering down. Um,
Speaker 1: it's watering down the options and you know, and it
Speaker 1: goes back to like kind of what I talked about
Speaker 1: and trap feminism, like when we talked about the sanitation
Speaker 1: of like black Yeah, And part of the reason why
Speaker 1: that was necessary is because there were a lot of
Speaker 1: like one dimensional representations of black people from the hood
Speaker 1: to the point where it was actually stereotypical. And I
Speaker 1: feel like, what what entertainment and music in Hollywood? And
Speaker 1: everyone thought the solution to that was, well, let's lean
Speaker 1: into like black exceptionalism. Let's lean into you know, black
Speaker 1: girls who go to coo the other side of the
Speaker 1: perspect all the way to the other side of the spectrum. Well, like,
Speaker 1: really that wasn't necessarily the solution. Like the actual answer
Speaker 1: was that what y'all don't realize is that there are
Speaker 1: thousands of different stories from the hood that you could
Speaker 1: be telling. How about you just stopped telling the same one.
Speaker 1: How about you stop only looking for the trauma and
Speaker 1: the tragedy in the hood and actually start looking at
Speaker 1: the joy in the in the in the creativity and
Speaker 1: the resilience and the fun and you know, all of
Speaker 1: those things about it. And so you know, like, we
Speaker 1: don't need another show about the drug game fifty cent,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Like, I think I think
Speaker 1: that's why so many people like pe Valley, because like
Speaker 1: it was a different perspective on like strippers then we
Speaker 1: them of black strippers in particular that we've seen in
Speaker 1: a while. And so I think it's the same thing
Speaker 1: with I feel like I see people making that mistake
Speaker 1: with the rap girls. Um, people are like, oh, we
Speaker 1: didn't have enough women in raps, so now we you know,
Speaker 1: Nicki Minaj was the only rap girl that we let
Speaker 1: be successful, so we need to have more than one
Speaker 1: rap girl who can be successful. Whereas actually it's like
Speaker 1: Nicki Minaj is the only rap girl we let be successful,
Speaker 1: and we made Nicki Minaj compromise a lot of her
Speaker 1: artistry in order to do that right, how about we
Speaker 1: actually let more black girls be successful in rap without
Speaker 1: having I compromise themselves, Like, let's just let's just let
Speaker 1: them say who they want to be from start to finish.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that is you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of premise in the theme of your book is just like,
Speaker 1: how about we just let black girls just be right,
Speaker 1: so be like the period like that's that's just like,
Speaker 1: how about we just let them be um successfully. I
Speaker 1: just thank you so much. Then, this has been such
Speaker 1: a delightful conversation. Um, I am so excited for you.
Speaker 1: I wish you nothing but like boodles and oodles of
Speaker 1: success with bad fat black girl notes from a trap feminist.
Speaker 1: Everyone go and pick it up and buy it today.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm I'm so excited for you and I
Speaker 1: hope that you will come back and join us again. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. This has been such a grateful
Speaker 1: moment of us reconnecting and I'm just so happy to
Speaker 1: be ten years it's been a decade, Like, wow, thank
Speaker 1: you so much to day. Yeah, I appreciate it so much.
Speaker 1: That is it for today's Woke Up Daily podcast. To
Speaker 1: hear more from today's show, Support me on Patreon at
Speaker 1: patreon dot com, slash woke AF Power to the people
Speaker 1: and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay
Speaker 1: woke as fuck.