Mitski and Women of Colour
“As a woman of colour, I always have to be at 150 percent and better than everybody in the room to be considered competent.” — Mitski
Mitski certainly isn’t an unfamiliar name in the music industry, or even pop culture in general.
She is a Japanese American musician who first rose to fame as a part of the Tumblr indie era, and later gained international recognition on TikTok. Her most recent lead single, ‘My Love Mine All Mine’, has taken TikTok by storm since its release in September of last year, garnering hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify. As an openly queer woman of colour, she finds herself at the intersection of three groups that have been – and often still are – shunned by society at large. Fans of her music often joke about the emotional content of Mitski’s discography, but her lyrics that depict her experience as a marginalised individual particularly resonate with listeners. From the effects of the patriarchy (Real Men) to addiction (Crack Baby), from unrequited love (Eric) to issues with race (Your Best American Girl), her music often stands as a means of catharsis for people who often feel isolated in their own bodies.
The Land Is Inhospitable
Mitski’s most recent album is said to be an exploration of love and the impact it has on our lives in both its presence and absence. She says that it is ‘truly hers’, and that it cannot be repossessed or demolished, and this theme is explored most explicitly in the title track. According to Will Arbery, who wrote the biography for this album, the album feels ‘like a love that’s haunting the land’.
Furthermore, Mitski emphasises the importance of compassion and connection throughout this body of work. She subsequently encourages her extensive audience to reflect on their own love as well, providing an oasis of music through which one may reach their own epiphanies.
Young Asian Women
Mitski has often been dubbed the poster woman for ‘sad white girl music’. But she isn’t white, and it is this whitewashing of both her image and her music that frustrates the many people of colour that are fans of hers. This article from the University of Chicago discusses how people typically emphasise the sapphic and feminist messages of her work, often grouping her with other white contemporary artists such as Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Faye Webster. While Mitski’s identity as a queer woman is still important, it is her race that is the most valuable facet of her music and of her message.
Intersectional feminism, which is the branch of feminism that takes into account different factors under which women can face discrimination, is easily overlooked by many white fans of hers. Womanhood cannot be separated from race, and by doing so, many of Mitski’s (and other women of colour) struggles are ultimately ignored.
In order to give voice to the women of colour who love Mitski’s music, I approached several Asian teenage girls to ask what it means to them.
“I relate to her music as a mixed person because I feel like a lot of it is about sexualisation and the struggle to fit in, which are both things I experience. When I make male friends they constantly sexualise me for being Asian or mixed and mistake those for actual romantic feelings, and they say the most disgusting things. I feel like I can empathise with a lot of Mitski’s struggles, and she sings about things that hit where it hurts a little.” – Zoe, 19, Malaysian New Zealander
“She makes music that young women of colour can relate to, unlike Taylor Swift’s white feminist stuff. It’s a lot more inclusive as it includes the struggles of not being accepted or being treated differently because you’re a woman of colour. I resonate with a lot of her songs because of my own personal struggles, such as heartbreak, yearning, loving too much, and losing too much.” – Neir, 17, Burmese Chinese
“It sounds like how I feel. It doesn’t matter what the story she’s telling, I can feel everything she sings and relate to the emotions conveyed.” – Malee, 17, Maldivian
“While other artists are very enjoyable to listen to, none of them have ever come close to seeing me the way Mitski has. I doubt any ever will, and I believe I am blessed to be able to experience her discography in my lifetime. I have only listened to Class of 2013 once, and I refuse to listen to it ever again. I have never cried because of a song, but Class of 2013 shattered that for me. As a person who suffers from a condition known as ‘eldest Asian daughter’, Goodbye My Danish Sweetheart also haunts me as I battle my instilled need for validation and fear of being a disappointment or a burden. These feelings have bled into my friendships and romantic life, though I hope they never notice it. Crack Baby is downright horrific. It makes me think about both my childhood and personhood in ways I do not want to think about. “You don’t know what you want / But you know that you had it once / And you know that you want it back” had me at a complete standstill the first time I listened to it.” – Belle, 18, Malaysian Chinese (unfortunately exiled to Ireland)
“Her music is so emotional. It’s kinda like poetry, and you always want to insert yourself into her songs since you can relate to them. And she doesn’t sing about shallow topics, you know what I mean? It makes me feel really seen. Her experiences are universal to a lot of women of colour, like struggling to accept your cultural identity, or hating the way your parents raised you because the little you wished that you had been born white instead.” – Jewwel, 15, Singaporean
Whitewashing
Perhaps the most frustrating incident in the eyes of Mitski’s fans of colour is the ‘Strawberry Cow’ trend on TikTok in 2020/2021. The original song, Strawberry Blonde, is very clearly about a woman of colour struggling with love and relationships, as shown in the lyrics “Oh all I ever wanted was a life in your shape / So I follow the white lines”. To have natural strawberry blonde hair is a trait exclusive to white people, and is something that Asian women, like Mitski, will never be able to attain, as how women of colour will never attain true understanding from their white counterparts.
The meaning of this song is entirely bastardised by the Strawberry Cow cover, which goes hand-in-hand with the ‘Cottagecore’ trend of 2020, a predominantly white cultural movement that romanticises a traditional white and European rural life. TikTok is notorious for stripping songs of their context for the sake of a fun trend, which is why many of her fans were incredibly annoyed when thousands of white people on TikTok made videos to this cover while completely ignoring the meaning behind the incredibly emotional song. While this isn’t exactly racist, most people found it incredibly insensitive.
A more recent incident of TikTok taking away from Mitski as an artist is the Lana Del Rey AI cover of ‘My Love Mine All Mine’. Fans are irritated by this because it really is annoying to see a song that means so much to Mitski, a woman of colour, overridden by a more popular artist, especially one who has a history of ignoring and appropriating people of colour as a part of her ‘Americana’ aesthetic (please don’t cancel me, I still enjoy Lana’s music). On top of that, many comments have said that they prefer the AI cover with Lana’s voice over the original, and while Mitski has said that she doesn’t mind people listening to AI covers of her songs, it is again a debasement of Mitski’s artistic quality.
It is truly heartbreaking to see her pour her heart and soul into such beautiful, complex songs that depict her unique experience as a woman of colour in America, only to have them reduced to ‘sad girl’ TikTok trends. After all, Mitski herself has said: “The sad girl thing was reductive and tired ten years ago and still is today … Let’s retire the sad girl shtick. It’s over.”
Your Best American Girl
One cannot discuss Mitski in relation to race and not bring up Your Best American Girl. Although not my favourite song of hers (I implore that you all listen to Crack Baby), it explores the issues she faces in relationships as an Asian woman, more so than any song in her discography, and it resonates deeply with me.
Your Best American Girl illustrates the persona’s experience in a relationship with a white man, who is described as an “All American boy”. In an interview with NPR, Mitski says “It’s just a feeling of loving someone so much, and yet being from completely different backgrounds and not being able to do anything about it.” The chorus begins with “Your mother would not approve of how my mother raised me”, showing the juxtaposition between the way white children and Asian children are brought up, as well as how people of different cultures often disapprove of the parenting tactics of others. Mitski’s own mother is a Japanese woman, so this is likely pulled from her own experiences. The aforementioned lyric is followed by “But I do, I think I do” in the first chorus, but is instead followed by “But I do, I finally do” in the second one, which shows the persona’s gradual acceptance of her being Asian, in spite of what her white partner or his family think of it.
The music video for this song, though simple, also conveys the same message as the song. Mitski is shown on a stool as a team does her hair and makeup, and she is seated across from her white male love interest, who is dressed in a wife beater and exhibits very casual body language. The stark differences in their appearances symbolise how women of colour are constantly under pressure to work twice as hard in order to be taken seriously, as opposed to white men, who are often rewarded for the bare minimum. In this interview with The Cut Mitski says, “A white male can write mediocre songs and be in a band and still be cool. I need to be the best, and not just the best, but know everything and be on top of everything and walk in and be assertive, or else the power will be taken from me so quickly. That’s the hard thing on the day to day, having to be better than perfect. I can’t relax.” This already creates distance between Mitski and this white male figure.
Then a white blonde woman enters the frame and begins kissing the man. She has light hair and light eyes, looking absolutely nothing like Mitski, and is wrapped in the American flag, painting her as the quintessential American woman. Ironically, she is also dressed in clothes that represent the indigenous peoples of America, representing how the white people in America are just as foreign as Asian Americans, yet still hold more privilege than even the Native Americans.
Alongside the shift in tone in the lyrics, Mitski, in the music video, also begins to realise that she will never be properly acknowledged by the white couple. She kisses her own hand, mocking the couple, symbolising acceptance of herself. Mitski is proud of her Asian-ness and how it has shaped her life, and dismisses the Eurocentric views of White America.
…And So Are We
After decades of being silenced, ignored, and ridiculed, Asian women are finally gaining the recognition they deserve in mainstream Western media. Just in the last few years, we have seen films such as Everything Everywhere All At Once, starring our very own Michelle Yeoh, gain much success. Finally, the stories of Asian women are being heard.
While this isn’t without its imperfections, as there are still cases of stereotypes and colourism even within Asian spaces, this recent rise in the respect and enjoyment of Asian media indicates the beginning of an era where we are invited to sit at the same table as everybody else. The playing field may not yet be even, but now we have an opportunity to play the game.
With Mitski’s popularity and the spread of her message, women of colour can find comfort in an artist who, in many ways, can understand them. In a world of suffocating loneliness and unforgiving mothers and light-haired boys who never spare you a second glance, there is solace in her sound.
[Written by: Kianna Chan, Edited By: Teoh Jin]
