Jade Thirlwall has opened up on how she spoke about blackfishing to Jesy Nelson with the rest of Little Mix before she quit the band.
Jesy, 33, has been widely criticised for her changing appearance as many accused the singer of blackfishing, which is when a non-black person tries to appear black. The criticism came when she was still in Little Mix with Jade, Perrie Edwards and Leigh-Anne Pinnock. However, Jesy later quit the band after nine years, citing it was affecting her mental health.
Since then, she hasn’t spoke to her bandmates. Leigh-Anne previously branded Jesy’s attitude “harmful and problematic to people of colour” following the release of the video for her debut solo tune called Boyz. Jade has now shared her own thoughts as Louis Theroux asked: “I think it was you, that said someone reached out privately to her [Jesy] to express a few things about the song?”
Jade replied: “Oh, not about the song.” Louis clarified: “About the video?” Jade explained: “When we were together, yeah. That topic [blackfishing] was brought up.” Louis asked: “With her?” as Jade quipped: “Yeah, yeah… that’s all really.” After a pause she said: “Are you waiting for me to fill the silence?”
When Jesy left Little Mix, the group decided to shared that she was aware of the issue as they explained it to her before she even quit the band. They said: “One thing we will clarify regarding the blackfishing situation is that Jesy was approached by the group in a very friendly, educational manner.”
In an interview with the Daily Telepraph Stella magazine Leigh-Anne Pinnock said: “Capitalising on aspects of blackness without having to endure the daily realities of the black experience is problematic and harmful to people of colour. We think it’s absolutely not OK to use harmful stereotypes. There’s so much to say on that subject that it’s hard to sum up in a sound bite.”
Jesy hit back at the claims regarding her music video as she denied wearing fake tan. She appeared in an Instagram Live stream with superstar rapper Nicki Minaj and said she had been to Antigua weeks before the video shoot so she was tanned already. Jesy said during the livestream: “I personally want to say that my intention was never, ever to offend people of colour with this video and my song because like I said, growing up as a young girl, this is the music that I listened to.
“These are the videos that I watched and thought were the best. For me personally, ’90s/2000 hip hop, R&B music was the best era of music. I just wanted to celebrate that. I just wanted to celebrate that era of music because it is what I love. My intention was never, ever, ever want to offend anyone and genuinely it actually does really hurt me that I may have offended people and actually, like, hurt people’s feelings just by genuinely celebrating something that I love.”
Jesy added: “I genuinely didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, because I’ve got naturally curly hair.” When she addressed Leigh-Anne saying the group had approached her about blackfishing, Jesy said: “It’s just hard for me because I was in a group with two women of colour for nine years and it was never brought up to me up until the last music video I did with them.”
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