Having recently taken to the Metro Times blog to vent frustrations over the media's preoccupations with rising star DeJ Loaf's private life, we have to admit we were pleased to hear those same sentiments echoed in
a new feature from The New Yorker —
which expertly points out the double standards the Detroit rapper faces.
In a cultural moment dominated with a widespread awareness and support for feminism and gay rights, hip-hop blogs seem to be content to endlessly speculate on DeJ's sexuality and the fact that she
"looks like a little boy," with
The New Yorker pointing to the social media response following the 24-year-old rapper's performance at the BET Hip-Hop Awards last month.
"In this context, after Dej’s performance, it would be easy to imagine that a galvanized swell of supporters, invested in maintaining this momentum of conversations about image, gender, and music, might come to the defense of a young female artist enduring a torrent of shaming and cyber-bullying for little more than her tomboyish appearance," the author writes. "But this did not happen."
Shots fired. So can this please be the end of this stupid commentary? As the story also points out, DeJ's stoic upending of "traditional notions of masculinity and femininity, rap and pop, hard and soft" are mostly likely the very reasons for her growing fanbase.
