Lemonade Tears

i'd be a homophobe if frankie was my brother...

But the truth of it is that Beyonce doesn't face nearly as much criticism rooted in misogyny. At least not over the past decade. Race is another issue (and I remember all of the unfair shit Bey took online for speaking up about police brutality, or how people try to discredit Cardi as being both black and Latina) but you'd be hard-pressed to find articles about Beyonce that come CLOSE to the level of sexism present in pieces about Lana from 2011-2015. Lana will never be persecuted for her race— and that's a huge privilege— but she takes way more sexist shit for her self-expression than Beyonce or Camila or Doja. jmo.
 
Again, it all stems back to how critics deem some female artist's work as "empowering" and others' as "regressive"

ariana's under fire now? what happened

You have zero clue why she changed her views at all and yet here you are with another book about how you wish Lana would take the red pill so she would be your 34 year old Lolita beauty queen again. BTD is still there, go and listen to that if you miss it so much.

It's almost as if people just like having drama and something to argue about.

O come on! Wouldnt you rather be allowed to hear someone’s true opinion (even if it’s provocative or stupid or makes no sense) than something designed to not offend? If she had people help her with her letter, it should be signed with their names too right? Nothing wrong with that, why should she take the credit if everyone loves it? If you’re more interested in her pr-teams opinions, why not go to them directly?  
I see what you’re saying and I’m not *actually* that against PR-people, but I think not having PR-people is way cooler
 
Edit: in a way it’s unnecessary drama, in another way I’ve actually seen pretty interesting discussions (like in this thread) and very different perspectives and maybe learned a thing or two....not saying it was worth it but you know...avoiding drama isn’t everything

Can you share? I didnt get to see what she said

i'm sure she's definitely been called a whore. what woman hasn't. there's probably something she's aware of that spawned that comment, whether it was a review or a statement or a comment or something someone said to her. i'm sure she wouldn't pull that out of nowhere.
 
also i just looked this up, and this is kind of an awful takeaway from the ride music video:
 
https://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/lana-del-rey-ride/
 
and a very good point to "she's a whore as part of her persona" as a literal headline.
 
https://www.afarinmajidi.com/blog/2019/4/4/why-is-everyone-pretending-that-lana-del-rey-and-harvey-weinstein-didnt-fuck
 
"he’s not so much a femme fatale as she is a self-conscious corporate whore who makes a killing with her slutty image in a slut-shaming world. She’s a gorgeous paradox!"
 
what the fuck is that comment? jesus.
 
there's probably more. every woman gets called a whore at some point.

i think that her bringing up twigs for for an entirely separate point lana was trying to make. twigs is not an example of what lana was saying in the first rant, but she's an example of the point that she made of lana being labelled a "whore".
 
again as lana brings up more people, people think it's immediately an attack. it wasn't an attack. when twigs gets on a pole people call it art, because it's art. when lana gets on the pole, people call her a whore, because she's a whore? that's not correct. if nicki gets on the pole is she a whore? beyonce? sia? dua lipa? marina? rihanna? gaga?
 
it goes back to lana's point she's describing extremely poorly - she is a "whore" because she is lana del rey. she is "depressed" because she is lana del rey. she is "dumb" because she is lana del rey. she is "anti-feminist" because she is lana del rey. she is this and that and the other.
 
this never happens in the commentary for these other women. critics don't make stories about twigs to build a fake presumed persona and then use that as a weapon. critics don't make stories about beyonce to build a fake persumed person and then use that as a weapon. critics don't make stories about ariana to build a fake presumed person and then use that as a weapon in reviews to drag her down.
 
"lana del rey" is a label to describe her as much as "beyonce" is a label to describe beyonce. i think that's the best comparison i can make. when something is compared to beyonce's name, its a compliment, but in reviews about lana's work when they use her own name to describe her work it's an insult because of these pre-conceived notions of her.
 
the point is less about twigs not being art and more about lana being a "whore".

But Lana didn't name Twigs as her opposite. She named the media's reactions to their art as opposite.

Yes! I became a fan barely post SNL. I had heard Video Games but was not as familiar as maybe some of you were back then. I didn't see that performance but read about it and the backlash. I listened to other songs got the album and became a fan. Obsessed almost. On a daily basis I would Google her name and it was astonishing the amount of articles that were written about her. Not just reviewers from music publications but scholarly types putting Lana in as the target of some cultural crossroads that needed to be examined in depth. I am not exaggerating when I say it was truly unbelievable the amount af attention she got for a person that released "1" album. I will never understand it and some day sociologists or someone will look back and unwind all the minutiae to make sense of it. BUT that was then!!! Lana to her credit, God Bless Her, didn't fold and become a one hit wonder or one hit blunder. With her own determination and our support she came through and has created an amazing and solid body of work. So, why now this whole outburst in the past few days. Easy for me to say let it go but she has lived it. Maybe the scars she got early on just won't heal. 
 
I have to let go actually! Sorry for my outburst. (I will be releasing a poem shortly)

idc if lana never thinks about ar*ana again. they come from different universes. 
 
her whole career and aesthetic is founded upon looking and acting like a little girl. she's a recording artist - her abilities begin and end there. with the help of heavy vocal editing

Yes but idgaf. 

yeah she clearly misunderstood what lana was trying to say. megan's been vilified in the media and i think she identified with that aspect of her statement. but obviously didn't read it closely or critically. i doubt she's too familiar with lana's art and career anyways.

i found it kinda ironic tbh...if she truly believes "we're all in this together" she shouldn't have said anything. Also I think she missed Lana's point entirely...

I can see where the anger is coming from. The hate she received in the beginning was truly bizarre. People investigating her past, hating her for her appearance, calling her stupid, fake blablabla. And writing thinkpieces about how morally superior they are to this weird bimbo. And this didn’t come from conservative middle age folk but from
cool indie kids. They really hated her and wanted her destroyed before she even got started
 
Maybe this is common with new artists and I don’t notice because I only stan Lana, but i can’t think of a similar case
 
The comparison to the other women made little sense, but her not being able to take “constructive criticism” (dislike that phrase, she is not our naughty student) might be because she gets frustrated when people think she’s had it easy

So does a persons technical ability determine whether they should be slut shamed for pole dancing? The hypocrisy is real. You’re now trying to say Lana’s comments about Twigs weren’t justified because Twigs is a trained dancer - thus implying that the fact Lana was deemed a whore for doing it is somewhat justifiable? These are the same people that will say sex work and pole dancing shouldn’t be slut shamed and it should be seen as an empowering thing - but obviously only when the person that does it is someone you support right? The point Lana has been making is extremely clear and it’s about the way people perceive her music/art compared to how her contemporaries art is viewed by FEMINIST WRITERS/FEMALE ALT SINGERS. Obviously each of these artists face their own criticisms but what Lana is talking about is how their songs about feeling sexually empowered are received differently to how Lana’s are by female writers. It’s really not that hard to understand. I really don’t understand how you can make this about race when Lana has not criticised any of the music of the artists she mentioned and rather how it is perceived by the media. Lana has been making songs about the same topics (sex, taking off clothes and cheating) for longer than most of the artists she mentioned in that list. The only issue I can understand people taking issue with is the fact Lana seemed to not have an appreciation for the plight they go through as WOC, and maybe that is a sidenote she should have mentioned, but she was talking about one specific aspect of how their music is perceived compared to hers, not about the criticism they face as a whole.

Yes, Lana is playing the victim because she's tired after being criticized for ten long years. Is it brain damage? It must be brain damage.
 

Just because Lana is not a professional pole dancer that doesn't mean people have the right to call her a whore. That's what she's talking about: they were both making art, but one was extremely criticized while the other was praised. I get that Lana and Twigs were using pole dancing in very different contexts of imagery, but they were both doing it as a prop to further their art. The same goes to her rant about music: when she sings "he hit me and it felt like a kiss" people go wild and call her problematic, but when Rihanna sings "it beats me black and blue but it fucks me so good" she gets acclaim and a top 10 hit. Why?
 
 
 
 

I cannot agree with you comparing Lana and Fka „dancing skills” or whatever. Tropico is a from of an art and she was trying to tell us something through is. I don’t think that its fair to underestimate Lana’s work just because she wasn’t professionally dancing.

She never said they were exempt??? Lana just gets attacked for a different thing entirely. All she's saying is that so-called sex-positive/feminist writers criticize her for sharing her experience just because it's not necessarily deemed "empowering."  

fucking right! there's so many good posts like this ^ on this thread and i almost want to compile them and give them to the go and Lana so they can understand. you said it so well, you're awesome

I don't believe that she was ever friends with Ari and twigs to begin with, just that they had a good relationship but it does saddens me that she cuts ties with people that simply don't agree with her opinion

To me, her point is pretty clear: when female artists sing about their sexuality in a way that's deemed positive or empowering, critics love it. But the moment Lana tries to weave a narrative where she makes mistakes sexually/romantically, and surrenders power to a man (who perhaps doesn't treat her well), she's crucified for it.
 
She wants everyone to be able to sing about their experiences without being told they're "glamorizing abuse." That's all she's saying. It's not an artist's job to be an example.