by
Black Girl With Long Hair
Lil’ Kim is undoubtedly an icon of black womanhood. Her talent, beauty, career longevity and success in a male-dominated industry have led many to revere her as the epitome of black girl magic.
But the Queen Bee has never made secret that she struggles with embracing her blackness, and a lot of it goes back to her youth, as revealed in a 2000 Newsweek interview.
“All my life men have told me I wasn’t pretty enough–even the men I was dating. And I’d be like, ‘Well, why are you with me, then?’ ” She winces. “It’s always been men putting me down just like my dad. To this day when someone says I’m cute, I can’t see it. I don’t see it no matter what anybody says… I have low self-esteem, and I always have. Guys always cheated on me with women who were European-looking. You know, the long-hair type. Really beautiful women that left me thinking, ‘How I can I compete with that?’ Being a regular black girl wasn’t good enough.”
The words are painful to read but all too familiar for many of us.
It is sad and disgusting that a woman this beautiful was consistently told, primarily by black men, that she wasn’t.
As hip hop aficionados celebrate the 20th anniversary of Kim’s iconic debut album Hard Core, released November 12, 1996, they also faced more disappointing evidence that Kim has perhaps never recovered from the destructive messages of her youth.
In a short video posted by a Lil’ Kim fan Twitter account @lilkimroyal, Kim is seen joking that she is “a Spanish girl trapped in a black girl’s body”, and “all mixed up”. It’s unclear whether she means “mixed up” in terms of race, or her sense of identity. She goes on to speak in Spanish.
https://twitter.com/LilKimRoyal/status/797189106254090240
Kim’s fans are pushing back and saying the video is just a joke and being taken too seriously and/or out of context.
Ladies, what are your thoughts on it all?
10 Responses
So she’s basically the reverse version of Cardi B?
Cardi B is half Trinidadian and does not denounce her Latina heritage.
anti-blackness really done destroyed her life like…….. wow. and the fact that she doesn’t seem to know the difference between Spanish, Hispanic, and Latinx, and seems to not realize that Black Latinxs even exist……………. all she knows is that she hates being Black enough that she’d be anything else without knowing anything about it. sigh
Sounds like she needs mental health help. Wish she had gotten it before she started cutting her face up.
This is sad. I always thought she was cute. I hate that her spirit was broken like that. Now she’s addicted to plastic surgery and looks cray.
Stuff must have gone down in her childhood to affect her this way. A grown woman who knows herself isn’t going to believe she’s ugly because a few men said so. The truth is right there in the mirror.
This is sad whether she was or not joking.
I think she meant Asian woman, not Spanish #noshade
You know that was PURE shade!
Sometimes, we joke when we are actually super serious. She’s has held her own in a male-dominate Rap insrdustry. She’s pretty enough. I hope she realizes one day soon. Learn to valid yourself.