.png)
It's no secret that the entertainment industry can be a rough place for women — and pop star Bebe Rexha is ready to call it out.
“I could bring down a BIG chunk of this industry,” she said in a recent post on X. “I AM frustrated. I Have been UNDERMINED. I've been so quiet for the longest time.”
She went on, “I haven't seen the signs even though people constantly are bringing them up and they have been SO OBVIOUS. And when I have spoken up I've been silence[d] and PUNISHED by this industry Things must change or I’m telling ALL of my truths. The good the bad and the ugly.”
X content
Rexha went on to write a series of posts about this promise of speaking out.
"You haven’t even heard 5 percent. You have NO IDEA," she wrote in one, and, when someone asked what stops her from speaking out, she replied, “THEY PUNISH YOU.”
One fan guessed that Rexha might have been referring to “the time they took [her] name out of Hey Mama.” “My love. That? Compared to all the other stuff you don’t know about? That’s Child’s play,” the pop singer replied.
Red carpet, meet Rexha.
For context, back in 2015, the singer featured on a song by David Guetta alongside Nicki Minaj and Afrojack, but her name wasn't listed in the credits. “What ended up happening was that it looked like a lot of names on the title, so they wanted to keep as many low features as possible. That’s what I was told, and it makes sense to me,” said Rexha to Billboard at the time. Rexha now calls this slight “child's play”.
Rexha later posted another message explaining her feelings around her initial post. “This is not just coming from a place of anger. It’s sadness,” she wrote. “I’m sitting in my hotel room in London Crying my eyes out. I’ve felt hopeless for the longest time. I’ve been walking a lot through this city and meeting fans and they have really ignited something inside of me.”
Rexha has hinted at the misogyny in the music industry before. Back in 2019, she said to PopSugar, "There's an unspoken thing — a sense of competitiveness — that women have in the industry because there are more men in the business. But if we stick together, we can create more room at the table, collaborate, and have more success together. It's invigorating."
That year, she also spoke up about ageism in the industry while calling out a male executive for body shaming her. “I recently had a MALE music executive tell me that I was getting ‘too old’ and that my brand was ‘confusing’,” Rexha wrote in a since deleted Instagram post. “Because…I’m a songwriter and I post sexy pics on my Instagram and that’s not what female songwriters are suppose [sic] to do, especially for my age. I’m 29."
"I’m fed up with being put in a box,” she went on. “I make my own rules. I’m tired of women getting labeled as ‘hags’ when they get old and guys get labeled as sexy with age.”
Although movements like #MeToo may have shed some light on how women are treated in an entertainment industry that is still predominantly run by powerful men, there is still a long way to go — especially in the music industry. Last year, GLAMOUR published an investigation that explored the rife misogyny baked into the industry, which many female singers and musicians still feel is largely a “boy's club”. With accusations levelled against the likes of R. Kelly, Ryan Adams and Marilyn Manson, and legal battles between Taylor Swift and big players like Scooter Braun, it seems that the music industry may finally be on the cusp of re-examining the toxic masculinity at its heart. And perhaps, Bebe Rexha will be a key part of that reckoning.
