It was rather incredible that Hailey Bieber had lived in the celebrity bubble for so long that she truly believed her decision to don a shirt that read “Nepo Baby” would be met with something like laudatory praise from “the normals.” Not just for “having a sense of humor,” but for turning something “negative” into something “positive.” Because, to be clear, anything that is the truth is deemed “negative.” It always has been, but never more than at this present moment in “the culture.” And nepo babies do not like the truth underlying one of the latest terms coined by the internet.
To defend themselves in the wake of the backlash that crescendoed somewhere after New York Magazine released an article called, “She Has Her Mother’s Eyes. And Agent: Extremely Overanalyzing Hollywood’s Nepo Baby Boom,” the celebrity narrative being peddled is that they actually have to work “twice as hard” (per Gwyneth Paltrow’s assurance) to secure a foothold in the industry. To quote Cher Horowitz, “As if.” For, in contrast to the reality such nepo babies are inventing in order to tell themselves their privilege isn’t that vast or beneficial, the industry loves a nepo baby. Because, not only is there some assurance of “consequence” (i.e., shame to the family name) if a nepo baby doesn’t perform well, but there’s also the beloved “built-in audience” that agents, producers and everyone trying to make money in between so adore.
Lily Allen, a nepo baby who falls more under the radar because, in all honesty, few people outside of the UK are that familiar with actor Keith Allen or producer Alison Owen, also chose to wade into the conversation. Her means was yet another deflection of the issue at hand by remarking, “The nepo babies y’all should be worrying about are the ones working for legal firms, the ones working for banks, and the ones working in politics, if we’re talking about real world consequences and robbing people of opportunity.” In case Allen (now a progenitor of her own nepo babies) didn’t receive the announcement, the TikTok generation couldn’t give less of a fuck about being part of those industries. They all want to be “stars,” Pearl-style. So yes, it very much matters to them when an opportunity to be in entertainment does feel like it’s being “guarded” in favor of someone else with “industry clout.”
Allen went on to say that when nepo babies are mere children, “We don’t care about money or proximity to power yet. Many of the nepo babies are starved of these basic things in childhood as their parents are probably narcissistic.” Then what if—and here’s a big ask—celebrities decided not to spawn. That would seem to solve the problem Allen is calling out as being specific to famous parents, adding, “[The] entertainment business is not parent friendly e.g. touring/months away shooting. It can be hard to see one’s own privilege when you’re still processing childhood trauma, and a lot of these kids haven’t figured that out yet.” Does she happen to know that no business is parent-friendly or very sympathetic at all to one’s masochistic decision to spawn? At least rich and famous parents can afford child care for fuck’s sake. Unlike the non-nepo babies who are abandoned most of the day while their underpaid parents go out to shake their ass for the cash.
And so, the one thing that became fairly obvious after the discourse blew up—also thanks to Bieber’s shirt—is that, if your parents are blue links on Wikipedia, the general response of late is that you can go fuck yourself with any commentary about anything. No matter how “rational” or “reasonable” it might sound from the nepo baby perspective. Of course, defenders (even non-nepo ones) of the nepo baby will be quick to swoop in and say something like, “They never asked to be born, let alone did they even have a decision about who it would be to.” This being yet another mode of deflection. Like, can everyone just admit that it’s better? Why try to keep the reality shrouded in secrecy? That if you had the choice between being born to Dullsville and/or Povertyville circumstances, most would choose not to be. Even if it meant the sacrifice of dealing with constant media scrutiny. As most rappers say in a nutshell, “Scrutinize me all you want—I’m rich and you’re not, n***a.”
Another question that seems to have been brought up in the wake of the nepo baby witch hunts was: how are there suddenly so many of them? Is the baby boom in question a novelty? Or is it just that, in the past, celebrity progenitors were either 1) less inclined to spawn or 2) more inclined to keep the privileges automatically given to their children under wraps? But no, everyone knew Liza was Judy’s child, or that Carrie was Debbie’s, or that Kate was Goldie’s. Maybe what’s fundamentally changed in Hollywood isn’t the rampant presence of nepotism, but the public’s bovine acceptance of it. Like taking sexual abuse as par for the course of getting one’s “foot in the door” (by allowing a man’s penis in theirs) of the industry, many outsiders also long-accepted that some people were simply going to have an easier time “cracking showbiz” because of the connections they were born having. In effect, this is a #NotMeToo movement—“I didn’t get the same treatment as that nepo baby in the running because my last name means nothing.”
As for Hailey Bieber’s grasp at “owning” the phrase, some non-nepo baby celebrities tried to be polite about the “effort,” with Charli XCX weighing in, “I respect the nepo baby t-shirt attempt.” Whereas actual nepo babies, like Gwyneth (of course), were quick to jump in and praise Baldwin-turned-Bieber’s bid to repurpose the “slur,” gushing, “I might need a few of these.” For, obviously, celebrities are hoping to achieve what Black people did with that other “n” word: turn a derogatory term into something that’s no longer “offensive,” or something to be ashamed of. After all, nepo babies are so unaccustomed to enduring shame like the rest of those aspirants who have had to sacrifice dignity in the name of “booking a gig” (which they often don’t). But maybe the t-shirt that everyone really wants to see on “commoners” in response to celebrities like Baldwin-Bieber is: “Stop trying to make reappropriating ‘nepo baby’ happen.”
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