Regardless of your opinions on her or her music, rapper Nicki Minaj makes some straightforward and seriously valid points about sexism in this short clip. The video’s an oldie but a goodie–it’s from her 2010 MTV documentary, My Time Now, but has been making the rounds lately. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s well worth a watch.
She tackles double standards in the workplace, explaining, “When I am assertive, I’m a bitch. When a man is assertive, he’s a boss. He’s bossed up. No negative connotation behind ‘bossed up.’ But lots of negative connotation behind being a bitch.” Minaj continues, “When you’re a girl, you have to be everything. You have to be dope at what you do, but you have to be super sweet and you have to be sexy and you have to be this, you have to be that, and you have to be nice. It’s like, ‘I can’t be all those things at once. I’m a human being.'”
At the end of the clip, Minaj requests that her speech not be released, saying it’ll “just make [her] look stupid,” but to me, her comments are far from stupid or off-base. (And it makes me a little sad that she thinks her opinions on sexism will somehow make her seem less intelligent.) Check the full clip out for yourself, below.
