Lana Del Rey has taken to Instagram to share a video message responding to criticism over a post she uploaded last week, where she claimed she had been depicted as anti-feminist, despite singing about similar themes to other female artists. In it, she listed Nicki Minaj, Doja Cat, Ariana Grande and Beyoncé as examples, stating that they had all sung about "being sexy, wearing no clothes... cheating, etc," without facing the same backlash.
In a new six-minute video, Del Rey discusses "the need for fragility in the feminist movement", and once again refutes claims that she's racist.
"Hey, so I don’t wanna beat a dead horse, and I don’t wanna go on and on about this post thing," she asserts in the new message. "But I just wanna remind you that in that post, my one and only personal declaration that I’ve ever made – thanks for being so warm and welcoming – was about the need for fragility in the feminist movement. It’s gonna be important."
“When I mentioned women that look like me, I didn’t mean white like me. I mean the kind of women who other people might not believe, because they think, ‘Oh, well look at her, she fucking deserves it’ or whatever. There are a lot of people like that.
I think it’s sad that the women I mentioned, and that they’d sing about dancing for money or whatever… the same stuff by the way that I’ve been singing about and chronicling for 13 years. That’s why I’m in that echelon. Yes, they are my friends and peers and contemporaries.
The difference is, when I get on the pole, people call me a whore, but when [FKA] twigs gets on the pole, it’s art. I’m reminded constantly by my friends that, lyrically, there are complicated psychological factors that play into some of my songwriting, but I just wanna say that the culture is super sick right now, and the fact they want to turn my post, my advocacy for fragility into a race war, it’s really bad."
Watch the video below:"I’m super strong… you can call me whatever. I’m sorry that I didn’t add one 100% caucasian person into the mix of the women that I admire. It really says more about you than it does about me," she continued.
“What’s interesting is that the very first time I decide to tell you anything about my life, or that I’m writing books that chronicle that fragility, that 200,000 hateful, spiteful comments come in, and my phone number leaked, and comments like, ‘You fucking white bitch’. It’s the opposite of the spirit of an advocate. It’s what causes fragility, but it’s not gonna stop me. Period.”
"I’m not the enemy, and I’m definitely not racist, so don’t get it twisted. Nobody gets to tell your story except for you, and that’s what I’m gonna do in the next couple of books. So god bless, and, yeah, fuck off if you don’t like the post," Del Rey concluded.
"Think Lana's post would have been fine if she hadn't compared herself to a group of mostly black women with the clear tone that she thinks she's been treated worse by the media when that's observably untrue," wrote one Twitter user in response to Del Rey's initial Instagram post.
Another corroborated: "Lana blatantly ignoring the criticism Beyoncé, Nicki, and other black women have received (and continue to) for being confident in their sexuality doesn't sit right with me."
Responding on Instagram to the criticism (prior to publishing her video message), Del Rey stated: "Don't ever ever ever call me racist."
"The singers I mentioned are my favourite singers so if you want to try and make a bone to pick out of that, like you always do be my guest. It doesn't change the fact that I haven't had the same opportunity to express what I wanted to express without being completely decimated. If you want to say that that has something to do with race that's your opinion but that's not what I was saying."
The 34-year-old originally took to the photo-sharing platform to address longstanding accusations that her music romanticises abusive relationships.
"I’m fed up with female writers and alt singers saying that I glamorise abuse when I’m just a glamorous person singing about the realities of what we are all seeing are now very prevalent emotionally abusive relationships all over the world," she wrote.
The post can be read in its entirety here.
