A Woman Said Something?! Let's All Insult Her Body!

You guys...Nicki Minaj is not a Mitt Romney supporter. I know you were really concerned about this, but rest assured. This "controversy" started when Minaj said this on a Lil Wayne mixtape:

"I'm a Republican voting for Mitt Romney/ You lazy bitches are fucking up the economy"

A ringing endorsement, right? People got kinda riled up about the whole thing totally missing the point that Minaj was being satirical. I mean--my understanding of it is that Minaj was using satire/a character when she referred to "lazy bitches" as the problem with the economy. Often the welfare queen stereotype is utilized by people like Mitt Romney, and I think she's calling that out. Obama even came to her defense about it.

But what really caught my attention on this issue was this image, that I found under the Facebook tag on Tumblr.

[Image text after cut.]

I'm not surprised that when people totally didn't get the joke and thought Minaj was actually endorsing Romney they went ballistic. As a young, black woman Minaj is "supposed to" be an Obama supporter, and I'm sure a majority of her fans are too. So certainly people got mad. Fine. Whatever. You could even make a case that Minaj is not positive for "all females" like this commenter attempted to do. Again, that's just fine, but what I can't get over is how quickly this dissolved into body snark. How can you call someone out for being disrespectful to women and then call her "plastic" and make fun of her "fake ass?"

But people apparently LOVED this opinion. Not only have I seen this screen cap all over Tumblr in the past few days, but at the time that this screen cap was taken, it has almost 400,000 likes. Can you even begin to imagine a male celebrity having their body brought in as an insult just because they shared (what is perceived to be) an unpopular political opinion?

I think Ms. Minaj is doing just fine though.

[Tweets from Minaj: "Awesome! Now I can tell my grandchildren that the 1st black President of the United States took the time to address a Nicki Minaj question" (sic) and "Ha! Thank you for understanding my creative humor & sarcasm Mr. President, the smart ones always do...*sends love & support*"]

Yeah, she seems OK. But it'd sure be nice if we could get to a place where women's bodies are not up for constant public debate, regardless.

Comment text: Nobody likes you anymore because you are a plastic barbie (sic) who disrespects herself, her body, and all females and now you rap that you are voting for Mitt Romney because "you lazy bitches is fuckin' up the economy." (sic) You know who's really fucking up the economy? Rich and ignorant people like you. Now, I don't know if you were saying you are going to vote for Mitt Romany as a joke or a serious statement but my problem doesn't depend upon which presidential candidate you are going to vote for--it's a free country, you can vote however you please. My problem is that you were refer to everyday typical American citizens as "lazy bitches." How disrespectful. I attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison and I plan to attend law school to become an immigration lawyer and even though I'm doing these fantastic things with my life one thing I will NEVER do, as you have, is forget where I came from. I hope your fake ass deflates. Bye, you've lost a fan.