Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift: The VMAs, Feminism, and Music Videos

Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift have been in the news recently. I’m sure if you’ve been on Twitter within the last four days, you’ve heard about Nicki Minaj taking the VMAs to task for not nominating “Anaconda” for Music Video of the Year. If not, here’s the quick rundown:

Nicki Minaj took to Twitter to address her annoyance at MTV for not nominating her music video for “Anaconda” for Music Video of the Year, while nominating other music videos, which contained slim white women, chief among them being Taylor Swift’s music video for “Bad Blood,” which is full of her supermodel and actress friends.

Sandra Bland and the Lack of Focus on Black Female Victims of Police Brutality

The Sandra Bland case is something that is really hard for me to write about, but it is very necessary for me to write about it. I am a black woman after all.

My being a black woman is the very reason why it’s hard for me to write about this case because I could very well be Sandra Bland. I know I’m not a threat to anyone (I don’t even like killing insects, even gnats), but someone, somewhere out there, would view me as a threat, either because of what I look like, what I might say, or what I write about. That’s not just terrible; that’s scary. 

“Fresh Off the Boat” S1 Post-Mortem Pt. 2: Will Eddie Huang’s Voiceovers Stick Around?

I’ve thought long and hard over the past few weeks (which were spent not rewatching the series, since I forgot I had to pack for my big move), and I’ve thought about all of my positives and critiques of this season of Fresh Off the Boat. I think most of my criticisms were said in the first part of this post, but at the time, Eddie Huang hadn’t used Twitter to dig an even deeper hole for himself.

A Black Woman’s Essay on The Billfold’s Problematic “Lean-In” Article

I wrote to Black Girl Nerds’Jamie Broadnax that I saw the drama with The Billfold article right before going to bed, leaving me with an angry frame of mind for sleep. “What are you so angry about?” you’re asking. Let me paint the scene.