What’s the issue with Kylie?
Vinay Menon dives into video for ‘WAP.’
A march toward equality is always slowed down by detours of the absurd.
But let’s begin with a question: Must everything now be about race? And by everything, I am referring to “WAP,” the new music video from Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion that is so raunchy it makes Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” look like “Fraggle Rock.”
Put it this way: “WAP” is an acronym I can’t even spell out in a family newspaper.
Let’s just say it stands for, um, a physiological response in a sexually aroused female.
Fine. Good. Whatever. If Mses B and Stallion want to strut lasciviously around a mansion adorned with bronze booty wall fixtures and a fountain out front in which water squirts from the nipples of stone statues crafted in their busty likeness, more power to them.
If they want to gyrate in bikinis that deserve danger pay or lounge on a bed slithering with serpentine beasts, Godspeed.
If they want to wag their tongues and smack their lips and dry-hump imaginary suitors who presumably have a Class D licence that allows them to “park that big Mack truck right in this little garage,” this is me shrugging.
I’m old and married and boring. Let the youngsters have their crazy fun.
But what does race have to do with an over-the-top video crackling with porno vibes?
After “WAP” dropped on Friday, one scene instantly drew blowback from some fans: a cameo by Kylie Jenner. For about 20 seconds, during which the music stops, Kylie slinks through that booty hallway, garbed in leopardprint beachwear with a matching train. She says nothing, which is on brand. She just fluffs her hair as her body moves in jiggly slow motion toward a door with a big cat knocker.
In other words, she does what every other woman in this video is doing: flaunting her assets for the titillating sake of flaunting her assets. But this is a problem because, what, Kylie Jenner is white?
By Tuesday morning, a petition on Change.org — “Remove Kylie Jenner from WAP video” — had racked up more than 67,000 signatures. On social media, commentators bemoaned the apparent betrayal of witnessing a “white woman” do “nothing” except saunter through a symbolically unlocked door.
As one Twitter user wrote: “If that’s not a perfect visual indication of Black women having to do the most and white women do the bare minimum to get somewhere, I don’t know what is.”
Right. Kylie might as well change her name to Karen. Her inclusion in this choreographed celebration of female desire was tantamount to digitally inserting George Wallace into the front row of a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. And this, my friends of all backgrounds, is a detour of the absurd.
In the name of research, I have now watched “WAP” several times when my wife is out of the room. And you know what? This absolutely preposterous showcase of self-described “whore” vignettes and unsubtle come-hithers isn’t about skin colour — it’s about colour-blind flesh.
“WAP” isn’t about building a fairer society — it’s about tearing down inhibitions that prevent you from getting your freak on. This video is not a clarion call for egalitarianism. Cardi and Megan are merely encouraging men to remove their trousers. So can we agree that words and images too vulgar for an old Penthouse Letters is not a cultural touchpoint that lends itself to a conversation about racial equality?
I mean, if our music goddesses with cartoonish anatomies can’t mix and mingle in a desegregated vid about female lust, what hope is there for the real world? Why are we judging poor Kylie Jenner by the colour of her skin and not the content of her plunging swimwear?
WAP, as far as I can tell, is an equal opportunity phenomenon.
In response to the Kylie backlash, Cardi B rightfully tweeted, “Not everything is about race.”
Then she wrongfully deleted it. Her first instinct was checkmated by the fear of an outrage mob.
Now, if you believe North American society is systemically racist, then you should not listen to a word I say because identity politics renders me a useful idiot.
We live in a bizarre age of labelling. I used to just be Vinay. Now I’m a cisgender, brown, straight male, an unwitting cog in the evil patriarchy, who clearly has a vested interest in … I don’t even know what. I recently got an angry email from a reader who accused me of “abusing my privilege.”
Privilege? Woman, I read your email as I was eating a P&J sandwich.
So take it or leave it, here’s some free advice to the racebaiting scolds who have grabbed the cultural megaphone and are now looking for demons where none exist: Pick your spots. Be thoughtful and reasonable. Have some perspective. Please understand that a lot of what you now casually espouse in the name of equality is 100 per cent as racist as the racism you seek to vanquish.
“WAP” is not a meditation on making the world a better place.
It is a music video calibrated for maximum shock value. Trying to divine higher meaning in this is like trying to improve your grasp of quantum mechanics by reading the back of a cereal box.
The participants might as well be purple, green and red.
Kylie Jenner’s race is the least of it.
She’s a WAP ambassador and that’s all that counts.