Lana Del Rey’s “Question to the Culture” Post

About

Lana Del Rey’s “Question to the Culture” Post refers to an Instagram post made by singer Lana Del Rey in May 2020 addressing her resentment toward the music industry’s standards for women’s hit song subject matter. In the long post, she mentions that there is no place for women like her in the industry and that she has been criticized for glamorizing abuse while artists like Beyonce, Doja Cat, Ariana Grande, Camila Cabello, Cardi B, Kehlani and Nick Minaj have hits with questionable subject matter. The post was widely criticized by Twitter and Instagram users who called her racist and privileged.

Origin

On May 21st, 2020, Lana Del Rey took to Instagram^[1] to pose a “question to the culture” in a long text post that gained over 1.6 million likes in a day (shown below). In the post she complains about being criticized for she songs subject matter and calls out a number of female artists who “have had number ones with a song about being sexy, wearing no clothes, fucking, cheating, etc.”

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On May, 21st, 2020, Lana Del Rey updated the caption of her post in response to initial comments and said

"Bro. This is sad to make it about a WOC issue when I’m talking about my favorite singers. I could’ve literally said anyone but I picked my favorite fuckin people. And this is the problem with society today, not everything is about whatever you want it to be. It’s exactly the point of my post- there are certain women that culture doesn’t want to have a voice it may not have to do with race I don’t know what it has to do with. I don’t care anymore but don’t ever ever ever ever bro- call me racist because that is bullshit”

That same day, Twitter user @NEEDYINLOVE^[2] posted a photoshopped image of four of the artists Del Ray mentioned with the caption “come outside, lana. ain’t nobody finna jump you!” (shown below, left). The tweet garnered over 120,300 likes and 22,400 retweets in a day. Twitter user @J_Hussain05^[3] posted a reaction image of a woman seasoning her food with the caption, “Lana adding Ariana into her essay so she doesnt come across as racially insensitive” (shown below, right). The tweet received over 101,700 likes and 15,300 retweets in a day.

That same day, Twitter user @nwalks^[4] tweeted, “Question for the culture: Its actually more of a comment --" and accumulated over 2,300 likes and 137 retweets in a day (shown below, left). Twitter user @jeremyoharris^[5] tweeted about “lana del rey takes ONE university of phoneix poetry seminar” (shown below, right). The tweet gained over 1,300 likes in a day. Vulture^[6] and The Daily Dot^[7] published articles on Twitter users’ reactions.

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