Jesy Nelson and ‘Blackfishing’ - Callum Breese
Former Little Mix star, Jesy Nelson, has recently received backlash last month with her debut single, Boyz featuring Nicki Minaj, where the singer was accused of cultural appropriation and ‘blackfishing’ in her latest video.
The term “Blackfishing” is defined when a non-black person has purposefully made themselves to appear to have black or darker skin complexion, particularly in photographs and social media, or manipulating a body part to resemble a black person (e.g. hairstyles and jewellery). The idea is like ‘catfishing’, where one constructs an appearance to delude and mislead recipients into thinking differently about who you really are.
Critics from social media have pointed out Jesy Nelson is profiting of black culture by singing in a “blaccent” and trying to appear as a black woman in the video. Other criticisms have pointed out that the video culturally appropriates stylistic tropes common in the hip hop and R&B genre of the 2000s, featuring lowrider, bikes, stylish hair, lollipops.
The nature of this backlash suggests that it is culturally insensitive and damaging to the music industry that a white female has engaged in blackfishing her way to promote her latest successful single.
This is not the first time Nelson has come under fire for such accusations, though. In 2018, Nelson posted a picture of herself wearing dreads and was accused of cultural appropriation by fans. While many of her supporters defended her right to wear what she wanted, some demanded she take down the post and issue an apology for appropriating a hairstyle that culturally symbolises Jamaican culture. Although Nelson has defended her video, saying she did not mean to offend anyone and merely cited her tastes in 90s and 2000 hip hop and R&B as reasons for her musical approach and fashion.
The term ‘blackfishing’ was alleged to have been coined by a freelance writer, Wanna Thompson, who in 2018 opened a Twitter thread inviting users to share and retweet women ‘cosplaying’ as black women on Instagram from what she claimed has become a beauty trend gravitating towards women on social media. Writer Stephine Yeboah has gone as far to say blackfishing is a type of blackface whereby “white women are co-opting, profiting and benefiting from appropriating another race” and argues brands are encouraging the trend to go further.
Since the thread exploded, before and after shots have been circulating online of mainly young female social media influencers being accused of darkening their skin tones to appear black, thus, blackfishing their followers. Influencer, Ago Brzostowska, who is of Polish descent, was one of those accused of blackfishing and received abuse as a result. Although admitting she makes her skin darker with tanning spray for personal enjoyment, the idea she was ‘faking her race’ never crossed her mind. When asked about the braids in the photograph, her friend’s younger sister opened a hair company and Brzostowska wanted to try out the braids, citing: “I really appreciate the culture and I really just love the look- that is literally it.”
While I do sympathise with many of these influencers who receive a barrage of abuse for appearing darker-skinned, it is difficult to avoid the fact that much of what is highlighted as ‘blackfishing’ has proliferated at large in the fashion and music industry. One only needs to look at the many times Kim Kardashian has been accused of wearing braids in photographs or British Albanian singer Rita Ora has been criticised for wearing an afro. This also shows how massively lucrative and popular certain cultural stylistic tropes are.
Furthermore, there is no doubt a younger audience looking up to social media influencers will try to mimic what has been enveloped into a beauty trend with no deeper understanding of the cultural roots of where they originate from.
While it may be true that young people are presenting themselves as darker-skinned and appropriating cultural symbols, lynching individuals by way of “blackfishing” on social media is not only wrong but further emboldens the racialist imagination of society through seeing only colour as a primary factor of someone’s individuality. One writer argues, in Vogue magazine, that blackfishing “diminishes the black experience” to a “one-dimensional visual” spectacle in which white performers get away with “co-opting an agreeable blackness without the trickier lived experience”. While these claims are understandable, critiquing young social media influencers alone means that we will never know for certain what the main intentions are if we dismiss them as blackfishing, and we cannot build wider conversations as to why this has become popular on social media.
It appears that if you do not authentically belong to a group in a cultural or racial sense, you are forbidden to engage or even discuss certain issues which do not affect you due to your biological and cultural characteristics. As I remember writing about the Paradox of Mixed-Race identity, there seems to be this idea that if you are not authentically black or are mixed-race, your position to express yourself is limited in capacity to others who may be perceived ‘blacker’.
A similar case can be seen with blackfishing. Whether it be Republicans demanding to see Barack Obama’s birth certificate to prove his biological heritage or famous stars appropriating a darker complexion to boost their career, allowing the charge of blackfishing to flourish on social media does not help any democratic discussion regarding values and as to why this is happening. Rather, the charge of blackfishing infuses the racialised lens of society widen, simultaneously, while humanity is regressed to symbolic gestures and skin pigmentation.
In the era where racialised thinking is growing, the cultural charge of blackfishing aimed at individuals who are ill-judged at choosing certain stylistic choices will not solve anything but worsen divisions and keep them alive. This will not be solved through the charge of blackfishing and racialised thinking.
Callum Breese is a columnist for The Equiano Project.
Follow Callum on Twitter: @BreeseCallum