Actress and political activist Lena Dunham posted a video of herself on Friday wearing a white “sex suit” while provocatively dancing to raunchy rap song “WAP” (apparently an acronym for “wet a** p****”).
The caption of the post offered praise to the female artists, rappers Cardi B (real name Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar) and Megan Thee Stallion (real name Megan Pete), for allegedly celebrating “the normalization of female desire.”
The video features Dunham shaking her breasts and bottom while the song repeatedly belts out the lyrics “there’s some w****s in this house” and details the WAP acronym as suggestive emojis float across the screen.
Dunham captioned the video, “You cannot listen to #WAP and not just want to shake it/celebrate the normalization of female desire!! Go off [Cardi B] and [Megan Thee Stallion]!!”
“#QuarantineBop in my Sex suit by my beloved #ChristopherKane,” she added.
WAP has been breathlessly praised in the mainstream media for its allegedly empowering message for women. The lyrics, too explicit to be posted here, blatantly objectify women and glowingly refer to the female rappers themselves as “whores.”
Discussing the song and women in rap during a recent Apple Music roundtable event, former reality TV show star and rapper known as Sukihana (real name Destiny Henderson), who is featured in the explicit WAP music video, offered a glance into what female empowerment and self-respect supposedly look like to her.
Sukihana bragged about being a “h**” and “s***ing and f***ing” and bashed women for having “self-respect,” which, according to the rapper, is actually “taxing” men, suggesting that women essentially prostitute themselves.
“I feel like being, like, sexual and s***, like, I don’t see nothing wrong with that,” said Sukihana. “‘Cause, baby, I got three kids. And, I mean, I got these kids from s***ing and f***ing.”
“At the end of the day, me being a h**, like these people say, like, honestly, I liberate a lot of h***s, you feel me?” she said.
“When I hear Cardi talk about poppin’ some p****, me and my b****es is with it, that liberate us,” the rapper continued. ‘Cause it’s like f*** you self-respecting h**s. ‘Cause how you got self-respect, like, I don’t think y’all got self-respect like that. ‘Cause first of all, you supposed to tax these n****s. That’s self-respect. You feel me?”
“Like, it makes me feel liberated. I love crossing boundaries. ‘Cause, guess what? Scare money don’t make no money. If you gonna be scared to get that money, you gonna be scared to be yourself and say that’s who I am, then you ain’t gonna get that coin like that,” Sukihana concluded.
Some of the fellow women on the panel, including Cardi B, agreed, offering a “facts” response.
Back in 2016, Dunham was accused of misandry for her comments about football player Odell Beckham Jr. Speaking to feminist comedian Amy Schumer, Dunham said Beckham looked at her and immediately objectified her; once he apparently realized he didn’t want to “f***” her, he ignored her and went back to scrolling his Instagram, she insisted:
I was sitting next to Odell Beckham Jr., and it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, “That’s a marshmallow. That’s a child. That’s a dog.” It wasn’t mean — he just seemed confused.
The vibe was very much like, “Do I want to fuck it? Is it wearing a … yep, it’s wearing a tuxedo. I’m going to go back to my cell phone.” It was like we were forced to be together, and he literally was scrolling Instagram rather than have to look at a woman in a bow tie. I was like, “This should be called the Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes.”
WATCH:
You cannot listen to #WAP and not just want to shake it/celebrate the normalization of female desire!! Go off @iamcardib and @theestallion!! #QuarantineBop in my Sex suit by my beloved #ChristopherKane pic.twitter.com/CRYEH4pakx
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) August 14, 2020