Complex: Everyone has this image of you as a cartoon character with outlandish wigs, but at our shoot today you were much more low-key.
Nicki Minaj: [Laughs.] Every woman is a character—but people need to see I’m a regular human. It’s like you wear a pink wig and you’re no longer human all of sudden. You’re a thing. Like today [the photographer] was like, “Where is that Nicki Minaj smile?” But this shoot doesn’t call for the Nicki Minaj smile. You guys wanted me subdued, so I’m gonna give you a different side. I’m not gonna pull a string and be like, “It’s Barbie, bitch!”

There’s been a lot of speculation about your sexuality in the press. Your verse on Usher’s “Lil’ Freak” adds to the buzz that you’re bisexual.
Nicki Minaj: When I rap, it’s just an extension of how I speak, and that’s how I talk. If you don’t like it, don’t listen. I’m also not going to explain something just because I said it in a rap. Take what you want from it. [In the press] I didn’t say [I don't like women]. I said I don’t have sex with women. I don’t have sex with men right now either. If [bisexual is] what they wanna call me, then fine.

So right now Nicki Minaj is celibate?
NM: Yes, and I encourage all my young Barbies to do the same. I just don’t have time.

You’ve said in recent interviews that you want to tone down the sexual content in your music. What prompted that?
NM: On “My Chick Bad,” I had to show people that I can spit a verse without sex or talking about how good I look. I’m actually timid when it comes to being overtly sexy, which is weird because in the beginning people thought of me like some freakin’ porn star. Guys reference sex all the time in their raps—I can’t even think of a record where Wayne doesn’t talk about sex—but when a female does it, people start tuning out. Then this gay dude the other day told me, “I say to dudes, ‘Maybe it’s time to put this pussy on your sideburns.’” I was crying laughing and I was like, “I can’t take this shit out of my act.” People live for that shit. [Laughs.] I just have to balance it a little bit.

Where do all your different voices come from?
NM: I have no idea. I think Wayne kind of influenced that. He has always been really carefree when he raps and I was like, “I don’t have to stay in one cadence or stay in one tone when I rap—I can just do what I want.”

But you’ve been saying in recent interviews that you might tone down the voices.
NM: Sometimes the shit I say is over people’s heads and I feel like I need to dumb it down a bit so people can understand it. I think if I had said a lot of raps in a particular voice, people would go, “Yo, that shit was hard”—but when you change up your voice a little bit, they can’t see past that. And they’re lookin’ at me like, “This bitch is stupid”—and I’m lookin’ at them like, “No, bitch, you’re stupid.” [Laughs.]

So on your album and going forward, you’re going to mellow out on the voices?
NM: I definitely made a conscious effort to tone the voices down a little bit.

Did the label or management talk to you about it at all?
NM: Again, I run my empire. Does that answer your question? No one tells me anything unless I ask their opinion. No one can make a decision for you. Not if you’re the boss.

How hard has it been not to respond when people take shots?
NM: It’s not hard when you’re making a lot of money and everything you do is sold out, and people adore you and little kids are crying just to take a picture with you. I’m laughing all the way to the bank, just like Wayne said. Young Money is good.

Speaking of Young Money, did your labelmate Drake tell you he’d be mentioning wanting to marry you on his verse for “Miss Me” before you heard it?
NM: He told me he said something about me on a verse, but I didn’t think it would be anything like that. He let me hear it for the first time when we did Jay’s show at Madison Square Garden, the day before Wayne had to go to jail—that night he let me hear it on the headphones. But you know what else he told me he wrote for me? The Alicia Keys song “I’m Ready.” I happen to love the song. I never told anyone that, I hope he won’t get mad that I said that.

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What do you think of Nicki’s interview with Complex Magazine?

Diggy Simmons

Diggy was one of the top vote getters in the MTV.com poll for top-5 hottest breakthrough MCs of 2010.  The winner was to be revealed this Sunday at Noon on MTV’s Sucker Free Summit

…Check out this interview of Diggy where he talks about his music, the critics and what got him into the game.[ione_embed width="512" height="319" src="http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtv.com:540818" fv="configParams=id%3D1643905%26vid%3D540818%26uri%3Dmgid%3Auma%3Avideo%3Amtv.com%3A540818"]

VIA: THEYBF.COM

Our good friends over there at The Young, Black, and Fabulous have the scoop on what went down in the ATL  Saturday June 19th!:

Celebs hit the Magnum Live Large Project VIP Party at Ventanas in Atanta last night.  The project, tauted by Ludacris, had contestants enter a rap for the Magnum condom brand.  The winner cops some serious cash, and will perform on stage alngside Luda at today’s Birthday Bash 15 in ATL .Trina, Bryan Michael Cox, and others were on hand to award the winner. 

…

 Trina looks amazin (seriously, like, no pun intended!)…

VIA: THEYBF.COM

Our good friends over at The Young, Black ,and Fabulous has the scoop on the latest Barbie drama.

Summary:

-Kim says she went on her current promo tour to remind everybody where this Barbie movement started.  She just wants people to pay homage to the original black Barbie and not act like they created something new.

-Apparently Kim and Nicki were cool when Nicki first started out. Everything was all good until Kim got disrespected and felt Nicki took shots at her. (the reason behind Kim’s wigilicious diss last week)

-Kim says she is always ready and willing to welcome new females to the rap game. And she has no problem with any and all females calling themselves “Barbie” because any “girly girl” should. But the problem comes in when she gets disrespected. She says a lot of ish went down behind the scenes that no one knows about….yet. She says it will all come out in due time.

-Kim says she’s “going to teach all the girls in this game who don’t know how to be sophisticated ladies, how to be a sophisticated lady.” She says, “It’s all about respect and class.”

Listen to the interview with Kendra G. below:

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…And in additional Barbie beef, Kim performed Saturday night in Baltimore as she is on promo tour. You guessed right, she brought Keys on stage for back up. The audio is low quality, but you clearly get the point with the video footage.  SMDH.  Check it out:

[ione_embed width="640" height="385" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JywDsqvgzq4&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"]

…In case you haven’t heard Keys’ Nicki Minaj diss (PARENTAL DISCRETION IS ADVISED!):

[ione_embed width="480" height="385" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kALZjULJDDc&hl=en_US&fs=1&"]

…Meanwhile, Nicki was performing at Boston’s Summer Jam yesterday and getting interviewed by DJ Envy:

I’d like to start out by saying Marianne Kirby and Gabrielle Gregg,  the women interviewed in this clip, are awesome. I’ve been reading Gabrielle’s Blog, Young Fat and Fabulous, for awhile now (I even linked to it in a January post on body-positive sites), its actually how I found the clip in the first place. As for Marianne’s blog, The Rotund, my first visit occurred as a result of this article – but I’ll definitely be going back!

My complaint here is not with these two fabulous women in the least, no, my issue is with ABC’s handling of this story… can someone please explain to me how, in a story on body acceptance, the anchors and producers found it acceptable to engage in fat shaming?

Most offensive to me were the stock-footage “headless fatty” clips. The Headless Fatty Phenomena is a term coined by Charlotte Cooper on her blog over two years ago to describe instances where articles or news stories on obesity are disrespectfully accompanied by footage or images of obese individuals shot from the neck down – indviduals who often have not given permission for their image to be used. In her own words Charlotte explains the awful effect of these images:

As Headless Fatties, the body becomes symbolic: we are there but we have no voice, not even a mouth in a head, no brain, no thoughts or opinions. Instead we are reduced and dehumanised as symbols of cultural fear: the body, the belly, the arse, food. There’s a symbolism, too, in the way that the people in these photographs have been beheaded. It’s as though we have been punished for existing, our right to speak has been removed by a prurient gaze, our headless images accompany articles that assume a world without people like us would be a better world altogether.

These images, taken from the clip on the Good Morning America website, are just two examples of the many headless fatty shots included in the segment.

These clips are, naturally, accompanied by a discussion of the health risks of being overweight – interrupted by a much  briefer discussion of the risks that come with the yo-yo dieting necessary for many to be thin. GMA anchors are quick to point out that, “there are a number of common health concerns associated with obesity, including high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes and some cancers.*” Even worse, after stating that “both women say their recent physicals have shown that they are in fine health, and that their cholesterol and blood pressure levels are normal” Diane Sawyer couldn’t help but question if those would go up over time – as if their fat just hadn’t caught up to these ladies yet health wise.

Now, I can’t really blame them for this – these facts seem to come up in every conversation about weight acceptance and understandably so considering our culture has brainwashed us all into thinking that overweight always equals unhealthy.

However, that may not be the case.

As a budding psychologist I know that correlational studies (like the ones cited to link obesity to a myriad of health issues and diseases) cannot be used to derive causation. Since these studies simply observe patterns without isolating variables they cannot be used to determine cause and effect since we don’t know what other variables are at play here (for instance, what if a third variable – like stress from low self esteem – caused the health issues, or what if the health issues caused stress, which caused weight gain?) Unfortunatley media personalities often draw unreliable conclusions from studies, not realizing their limitations -which leads us to a vastly misconstrued perception of weight and health in this country.

If you’re interested in reading something a zillion times better than I could ever write about obesity and health check out Junkfood Science’s “Obesity Paradox” Series. Here’s a little taste to get you hooked:

While many may be incredulous, the largest body of evidence has found that fatness is not a risk factor for heart disease or premature death, even controlling for the effects of smoking. Ancel Keys and colleagues confirmed this nearly half a century ago upon examining 16 prospective studies in seven countries, as well as actual angiographic and autopsy examinations of 23,000 sets of coronary arteries which found no relationship between body fatness and the degree or progression of atherosclerotic build-up. And the most careful studies ever since have continued to support these findings.

Dr. Paul Ernsberger, of Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, led a review of nearly 400 studies that was published in the Journal of Obesity and Weight Regulation in 1987 which corroborated these results. “The idea that fat strains the heart has no scientific basis,” he said. “As far as I can tell, the idea comes from diet books, not scientific books. Unfortunately, some doctors read diet books.”

At the end of the day its the constant up and down dieting that causes health problems, not being “overweight.” You’ll never hear this on the mainstream media, however. Why? It call comes down to the common sense of dollars and cents – telling people they need to lose weight sells diet books and diet pills;  it gets people to tune into your “news” program to hear tips and tricks for losing weight; it entices them to buy magazines with workout plans and diet”secrets”; it sells gym memberships; it sells clothing as people being to shrink out of what they already own – basically, dieting is a goldmine and body acceptance… well, not so much.

This information is discouraging, but not a call to give in. Although the media may never fully back the quest of the Fat/Body Acceptance Movement, because it is not a movement that attracts advertisers, that does not mean the movement cannot make an impact on the social climate – that’s the beauty of this movement, we all have the power to change social perceptions of fat and health, simply by loving our bodies, taking care of them, and not forcing ourselves to meet cultural thinness ideals.

So, with that said, here a few messages that I wish Good Morning America would have included/focused on more in their segment:

1. Weight is determined by a myriad of factors including diet, exercise,  metabolism, and genetics; while overall physical fitness is determined primarily by diet and exercise. Fitness can come at many sizes, because it is something that we have large amounts of control over, whereas weight is not something that is always in our control. Thus, a thin person is not necessarily any healthier than a fat one – in fact, for many people being thin is an unhealthy choice because of the stress their body must go through to reach and maintain that weight.
2. You can be confident, beautiful, sexy, and happy at any weight - even if you’re not at your physical peak. While fitness is important, honestly, happiness with yourself is just as important, if not more important. If you love yourself – no matter what your weight and health status is, you’re bound to have a better life than you would have as someone who hates their body… that’s just common sense! So remember – you can be awesome at any weight!
3. Every body is different – every body is supposed to be different. However, a lot of people end up feeling awful about themselves, and engaging in risky behavior to lose weight, all because the media and out culture pushes one – very thin – idea of beauty upon women, an ideal that is unattainable for most. This ideal exists because it makes money for many companies, not because it is good for us.

In the end, Marianne Kirby puts it best: “We’re fat. And there’s nothing wrong with that word. Being fat doesn’t mean we’re lazy or smelly. We’re fat.”

Remember my sporadic challenges? Here’s a fun one: I resolve from this day forward to maintain a positive attitude about my body, every last pound of it. While I will always be making an effort to be active and healthy, I will not engage in any actions with the sole motivation of losing weight or looking a certain way – I will trust my healthy body to weight and appear the way it should regardless of what outside influences may tell me about my appearance.

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Side Note: The NY Times also put out an article recently about plus-sized fashion that engaged in this weird fat-shaming-while-defending practice. Although the article as a whole was fairly positive they used bizarre phrases to describe fat women (round-figured women?) that gave the whole piece an uncomfortable feeling and, although the models in the photographs WERE allowed heads they were barely plus sized and photographed in some very stereotype confirming poses that all had to do with food… I mean, really, a fashion shoot in the frozen food aisle of a grocery store; WTF NY Times?  BITCH Online has an awesome analysis of this one. I also like the analysis here!

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* Interestingly enough Junkfood Science manages to refute all of these claims  with real scientific data in their Obesity Paradox series. See high blood pressure here, heart disease here, diabetes here, and cancer here.

 I’ve never lifted a post from a gossip site, but I came across something on Young, Black, and Fabulous (my fave) that I have to share with you. It’s about an All-Pro NFL Player and his multiple baby mamas. This is another example of some of the foolishness in our communities.