Voices: Swift, Minaj VMAs feud about more than music

Britney and Madonna's kiss, Miley's twerking, "Im'ma let you finish" — the VMAs, for better or worse, have always been able to start a conversation.

But a conversation about race and gender in the music industry? Now that's actually something worth talking about.

Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift are two of music's highest-profile stars, and on Tuesday evening, the two singers engaged in a Twitter back-and-forth after Nicki criticized the VMAs for snubbing her record-breaking Anaconda video and ignoring non-white artists as a whole.

Taylor, whose Bad Blood video nabbed a Video of the Year nomination, jumped in to chide Nicki for being anti-women. "Maybe one of the men took your slot.." she asked.

The situation unfolded like a typical celebrity feud, as fans took sides and other stars (like Kim Kardashian) chimed in.

But unlike other silly star-on-star beefs, the exchange between Nicki and Taylor illuminated a painful-yet-important reality as old as modern music itself — the erasure of non-white voices in music — and asked who's responsible.

And by stepping into the conversation to put Nicki on blast, instead of standing by her valid complaints of the VMAs' lack of representation, Taylor Swift revealed herself to be not quite the perfect feminist icon she's presented herself as.

Here's why Nicki's VMAs tweetstorm was more than just a "rant" — and why Taylor owes her an apology:

1. Nicki wasn't subtweeting Taylor – she was criticizing the VMAs as an institution.

Taylor assumed that Nicki's criticism was specific to Bad Blood. And while some of her tweets did point to Bad Blood's record-breaking run (both Anaconda and Bad Blood made Vevo history with their respective debuts), her beef with the VMAs is much larger than one specific video.

With the exception of Kendrick Lamar's Alright — which itself makes a powerful statement about race in America — the vast majority of the women in these videos are skinny and white.

Let's look at the Video of the Year nominees:

Video of the year

Beyoncé, 7/11
Ed Sheeran, Thinking Out Loud
Taylor Swift ft. Kendrick Lamar, Bad Blood
Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars, Uptown Funk
Kendrick Lamar, Alright

And, for comparison, the nominees for best female video:

Female video

Beyoncé, 7/11
Taylor Swift, Blank Space
Nicki Minaj, Anaconda
Sia, Elastic Heart
Ellie Goulding, Love Me Like You Do

Who's Ed Sheeran dancing with in Thinking Out Loud? Most of the women surrounding Bey in 7/11 as they dance on the balcony and in the bathroom? The "Michelle Pfeiffer, that white gold" that Bruno Mars is serenading in Uptown Funk? Or the two other artists nominated in the Best Female Video category?

Why point out these examples? To prove, with the facts of the nominees, that Nicki isn't wrong to say that the vast majority of female bodies represented in the VMA nominees are white and "normal"-sized.

2. And Nicki's larger issue — about artists appropriating black culture while failing to recognize its original creators — was valid.

As long as we've had modern music, we've had black erasure in music — dating all the way back to Elvis Presley and his rock 'n' roll sound he adapted (and became the face of) from black soul musicians.

Just look back to Anaconda's rise last summer, when Nicki's song's rise up the charts was accompanied by a glut of other "butt" songs, many using phrases and tropes adapted from African-American culture. The difference? From All About That Bass to Iggy Azalea's Booty, they were largely made by white women.

And large posteriors? They were coded black and otherized, considered to be "ghetto," before white culture decided it was trendy and fashionable to have a big butt.

So when you consider Anaconda broke records by celebrating a piece of black culture that the rest of society has all but claimed for their own, Nicki's frustration about her record-breaking video's failure to secure a Video of the Year nom seems justified

3. Taylor could've agreed — but turned Nicki's words into a personal affront.

And in accusing Nicki of being anti-women, she's actually being the bad feminist here.

Taylor could've agreed that pop stars, both male and female, have a ways to go in representing women of different races and sizes in their videos. Instead, she claimed Nicki was "[pitting] women against each other," when the rapper was expressing an opinion that non-white women know as fact — that the erasure of non-white voices is a very real issue.

By taking Nicki's valid criticisms as a personal affront instead of a mandate for the music industry to change, she's failing to recognize that just because women are able to best their male counterparts in Billboard chart positions or Vevo view counts doesn't mean the music industry treats all women equally. That's Taylor's privilege — failing to realize the complex, nuanced system of inequity that leads to Anaconda breaking streaming records while failing to nab a Video of the Year nomination.

And as a result, Taylor broadcast to Nicki that her lifetime of lived experience as a black woman is invalid. When Taylor calls Nicki "anti-woman" for bringing up race, the opposite is actually happening. Because for all her extolling of feminism, Taylor's comments to Nicki reveal a fundamental ignorance of intersectional feminism, the concept that feminism should respond to the many different experiences of women, not shut their voices down.

And to underscore how much she just doesn't get it, Swift extended this feeble olive branch:

Maybe Taylor's first tweet could be chalked up ignorance. But Nicki wasn't just speaking out because she wanted to stand at the winner's podium. And inviting Nicki up as a consolation prize wouldn't do much to solve the systematic inequity that Nicki is speaking truth to.

So Taylor's suggestion that bringing Nicki on stage would solve anything? That's just plain offensive.