Patriot Brief
Nicki Minaj criticized cultural pressure that discourages some girls from embracing their natural beauty.
She argued that uplifting one group of children should never require shaming another.
JD Vance praised her remarks for rejecting divisive zero-sum thinking.
What Nicki Minaj said at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest shouldn’t be controversial, which is exactly why it is. Her point was basic common sense: you don’t fix one group’s mistreatment by teaching another group to feel guilty for existing. Somehow, in modern culture, that idea now gets treated like a hot take.
Minaj wasn’t denying history, minimizing past wrongs, or playing culture-war games. She was doing something far more dangerous to activists — she was refusing to participate in the shaming carousel. Kids didn’t cause the problems adults keep arguing about online. They didn’t write the rules, and they sure as hell didn’t vote on them. Yet we keep asking children to carry moral debt they never incurred.
This is where the zero-sum thinking falls apart. Confidence doesn’t have a quota. Telling one little girl she’s beautiful doesn’t steal anything from another. The idea that it does is something adults invented, then dressed up as progress.
That’s why the moment landed. Minaj said what a lot of parents already believe but are told they’re not allowed to say out loud anymore. Let kids grow up liking themselves. That’s not radical. What’s radical is pretending that self-worth is something that needs permission slips and disclaimers.
From Breitbart:
Rap megastar Nicki Minaj called out societal pressure that has been making young girls “be afraid of loving themselves and loving the way they look,” adding, “I don’t need someone with blonde hair and blue eyes to downplay their beauty, because I know my beauty.”
“I think that no matter how you look, we should be trying to still into them to be proud of how they look,” Minaj told Erika Kirk at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest on Sunday, after being asked what she has seen in society “that has been a struggle for young women today.”
The “Super Bass” singer went on to say that she has noticed “a push” recently in the media “making young black children feel proud of themselves” while “at the same time, telling other children not to be proud of themselves.”
“I don’t want any child feeling that way,” Minaj said, adding, “If, as black women, we felt that we were not being represented and not being admired for our beauty — if we felt like that as black women, why would we want to do that to other women?”
“Why would we now need to make other people downplay their beauty,” the “Anaconda” singer continued. “I don’t need someone with blonde hair and blue eyes to downplay their beauty, because I know my beauty.”
Minaj added, “It doesn’t bother me that a woman feels and says that she’s beautiful. Why shouldn’t she feel that?”
“We’ve gotten to a point where certain colors or certain kinds of people have to be afraid of loving themselves and loving the way they look,” the rap superstar said.
“I don’t want what was done to little black girls done to little white girls. I don’t want it done to any girls. I want all little girls in the world to know that you are unique, you are beautiful, you are you,” Minaj proclaimed.
The “Starships” singer added, “I don’t like people making other people feel badly about themselves in any way.”
“We need to nurture young girls. Yes, whether they are black, white, Asian, Hispanic, they still need to be nurtured, they cannot continue to pay for other people’s sins. They haven’t done anything wrong,” Minaj asserted.
Vice President JD Vance reacted by calling Minaj’s remarks “profound” and praised her for not getting wrapped up in “zero sum thinking.”
“Nicki Minaj said something at Amfest that was really profound,” Vance said in a Monday X post. “I’m paraphrasing, but she said, ‘just because I want little black girls to think they’re beautiful doesn’t mean I need to put down little girls with blonde hair and blue eyes.'”
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Photo Credit: Caylo Seals/Getty Images
