Nobody's Talking About The Water!
Cancel the ocean.
Dearest Darlingest Tater Thots,
Once again, it’s been a WEEK! Sometimes we get a little too cute and need a lil break. Joe is fully spooning on the bed, ready to die! And if you can support Simone Biles, you can support us! In this week’s episode, we take a backseat and reveal the truth: Food 4 Thot always has been, and always will be, a Bowen Yang stan account. And in the year of 2021, our Lord and Savior Bowen Yang, we’re no longer fucking with homophobic hip-hop artists.
Full disclosure: Until this week, the word “DaBaby” was entirely unfamiliar to me. I would’ve thought you were referring to that cartoon bougie-ass baby in that TV show with the talking dog.
Family Guy! I would’ve thought you were referring to Family Guy.
Anyway, there’s a rapper named DaBaby and he performed at an event called Rolling Loud. During that performance, he randomly started shouting out his fans for “not sucking dick in the parking lot” and not testing positive for HIV. Remember: we are alive and well in the year 2021, the year of Lord and Savior MJ Rodriguez.
Cameras are everywhere, and naturally this hot mess express was caught on film and quickly went viral.
I was distraught at DaBaby’s comments and their larger implications, but I was also confused. I have questions: has he never sucked dick, or engaged in sexual activity in a parking lot? (I have!). Has he never been at risk for contracting an STI? (I have!). Was he preoccupied with a dick he wanted to suck, but for whatever reason, could not, in fact, suck said dick? (Who hasn’t?). Why was he randomly obsessing over the LGBTQIA+ community? Why is our name so steady on his lips?
And then I remembered:
Industry Baby. In 2021, the year of our other Lord and Savior, Lil Nas X, this video was released. It includes a white dude named Jack Harlow rapping as a straight guy (which he is), and Lil Nas X, gayer than Winnie The Pooh devouring my pot o’honey, dancing nude with a bunch of other naked Black men. There are various gender performances, and the video turns the narrative of masculinity as the only legitimate manifestation of Black male life on its head. It’s spectacular… even if, much like me, you’ve seen it a few thousand times. (I know we sent it last week, but I thought we’d gift you with the link again.)
One of my earliest queer memories is the moment when I thought I couldn’t possibly be queer because I was Black, and queerness was a “white people thing.” So this larger cultural conversation (in which T.I. and Lil Boosie defended DaBaby’s right to say what he said in the name of equality) had an effect on me. I grew up thinking that Black people were more homophobic than other people. I come from a long line of HBCU grads, and I didn’t even consider attending one because I thought, as a visibly queer (read: effeminate) person, I’d be safer at a primarily white institution. My family heartily agreed. I didn’t even begin to shake this notion until I finished graduate school and began working in Harlem. Now that I am out as a Black woman of the trans experience, the nuances of this larger cultural conversation — the intersection of Blackness and woman-ness and trans-ness and effeminacy — is a thing I live with daily, and publicly. There are times when certain versions of Blackness feel, to me, like a threat. This week, DaBaby, T.I., and Lil Boosie (whomst?) enacted that threat.
Meanwhile, Chris Brown:
This is a feeling, and notion, that I hate — this insidious idea that we (Black people, and other POC) are more homophobic than white people. This is a feeling, and notion, that is not accurate, nor is it simple. This is a feeling, and notion, that has everything to do with hyper-visibility, rather than any legitimate empirical analysis.
When you’re under a microscope, people are quick to tell you who and what you are.
But I’m not sure this is a fight I can fight right now. At least not this week. I’m tired y’all. I need a nap! Remember this, especially my fellow Black Queers: Simone Biles has shown us the way. When necessary, it is more than okay to withdraw from the competition, or conversation, and preserve our mental health.
Be well. I love you. Find some A/C — it’s hot in these streets.
XOXO, Denne Michele
*extra* delectable content
A favorite novel of the entire podcast, if you haven’t read The Scarlet Letter, read it now, and then name your next Italian Greyhound Scarlett. Because why not? And just out of curiosity, what would your scarlet letter look like?
2. It’s always a good time to revisit Bowen Yang’s infamous sketch, in which he answered the question on everybody’s minds: what was the iceberg that sank the Titanic thinking? An album, as it turns out. Loverboy is a BOP!
3. Let’s say hello to one of our favorite queens, Crystal Methyd, single-handedly bringing back the vintage El Debarge hair. Actually, that’s not true, it’s not single-handed… because Fran.
4. If you weren’t aware, we are currently right in the middle of the 2020 (2021!) Tokyo Olympics. We expected Simone Biles to dominate women’s artistic gymnastics. After the first night of competition, she qualified to every gold medal final, the first in many years to do so. But the next day, she came down with what gymnasts (and figure skaters) call “the twisties”: a freakish and scary sensation in which, for a time, your mind and body no longer connect, and the complexity of flipping and twisting simultaneously becomes too much. You lose your air sense, can no longer tell up from down or right from left, and are in serious danger if you’re flipping on hard (read: competition) surfaces. Simone, appropriately withdrew from the Team Final, citing mental health concerns (the twisties are often triggered by stress. In her absence, Jordan Chiles, Suni Lee, and Grace McCallum delivered some great gymnastics for Team USA, dedicating their silver medal to Biles. Denne cried all night long.
5. In one five minute segment, Adam Rippon did the best thing he’s ever done, and explained to the Charlie Kirks of the world exactly why, in fact, it was the right choice for Simone to withdraw, and why she is even more of national treasure. Meanwhile Simone was left asking why he’s so obsessed with her.
6. Meanwhile, Denne was all “You betta let that girl take a nap!” She’s here to prosthelytize The Nap Ministry, in which we consider rest to be resistance in a racist, transphobic, hetero-patriarchal capitalist society. Denne has already mastered this very important form of self care. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!
also
In Denne’s Olympic Moment of the week, Suni Lee won the women’s artistic gymnastics all-around gold medal, becoming the fifth consecutive American, and first Hmong gymnast, to do so. She beat Rebecca Andrade (check out her 2016 Beyonce medley floor routine) who won Brazil’s first women’s Olympic gymnastics medal with silver, and Russia’s exquisite Angelina Melnikova who won bronze. The gymnastics was exquisite, all of it — but if there’s anything Suni Lee is going to do, it’s bring back acrylics. Denne is here for it, 100%.
