Cardi B slammed accusations that she was queerbaiting in her latest music video.
On Friday (July 23), the rapper addressed social media backlash which accused Cardi B of queerbaiting, which is a “marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ+ representation.”
Cardi B and Normani starred in their collaborative video, “Wild Side,” where the two are seen naked and dancing on one another. Social media users who attacked Cardi may not have realized that she is a member of the LGBTQ+ community and she has a growing baby bump. Rolling Stone released an article on artists who have been accused of the act, including Cardi, who responded to the accusation.
“Uuummmm @RollingStone queerbaiting? You do know we was trying to hide a whole baby bump right?” Cardi B wrote, referencing her current pregnancy with her second child with her husband Offset.
“Also I’m married to a man but I have express[ed] soo much about my bisexuality and my experiences wit [sic] girls,” she added. “All of a sudden ‘queerbaiting’ is the new word & people use it to the ground!”
“I don’t like this new ‘queerbaiting”’word,” she added in a follow-up tweet. “I feel like it pressure artist to talk about their sexuality or their experiences that they don’t feel comfortable speaking about. If a[n] artist kiss a girl on a video does that means she gotta show videos & text wit wit [sic] other women?”
Last year, Cardi came out as bisexual following homophobic accusations from past videos that she has since apologized for.
“I don’t support the LGBT community because I have ‘gay fans’ I support because of the confused feelings I had growing up on is it normal to like girls? I support because I know how hard it was for my gay cousin to come out to his very strict Dominican family,” she tweeted at the time.