While Dua Lipa clapped back at haters who mocked her dancing skills a few years ago, she says it was still a lot to deal with.
Being one of the biggest stars on the planet might be a dream, but it certainly came with a unique set of challenges for Dua Lipa. In 2017, a viral dance step – where she put her hands on her hips and shifts her weight between hips – made her the butt of numerous jokes online.
Called “lazy” and “uninspired” by the internet, the step spawned numerous compilations, including one on YouTube which has raked up 7.5 million views.
While Lipa clapped back at the criticism by including the very step in her viral hit ‘Don’t Start Now’, she still thinks the internet’s fixation with the step was, in a word, ridiculous.
In a new interview with Vogue, Lipa addressed dealing with popular, or unpopular opinions, online. “All I ever wanted was for it to be about the music,” she told Vogue.
“My goal was, I want the music to be good enough so that people would talk about that more than anything else. But unless you’re a fully formed pop star who’s trained in pop-star camp for five fucking years before you hit the stage for the first time, one misstep, one wrong move, one dance that doesn’t really work and it’s used against you. That was fucking hard for me.” she said.
Reclaiming her own power, however, is a theme with Lipa. Elsewhere in the interview, she talked about her earliest brushes with patriarchy and how they shaped her worldview.
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“I’ve always had this anger toward the patriarchy. I just never liked boys telling me what to do.” she said, before recalling how the boys in her primary school would play ‘kiss-chase’.
“Boys would start it and chase the girls around the playground, trying to kiss us. So you’re running around and laughing, but it’s a nervous laughter. You don’t really know what’s happening, and you’re supposed to be like, Oh, the boys fancy me. Like it was a game about winning their approval. I hated that.” she said.
Between the ages of seven and eight, however, she had had enough.
“By then I’d learned a tactic. I don’t know how I picked it up, but when a boy would come near me, I’d say, ‘Yeah, come here.’ And then I would pinch their shoulders like this until they fell to their knees. That was the point when I started standing up to boys, and the boys started being scared of me.” she said.
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Check out ‘Don’t Start Now’ by Dua Lipa:
