Similarly to Jenna Marbles, Lilly Singh (also known as IISuperwomanII) bases many of her

Lilly Singh shows off her hip-hop inspired, playfully androgynous style

comedy sketches on gender, particularly ridiculous things that “girls” do, but from a decidedly different perspective: she is a 25 year old South Asian Canadian living with her Punjabi Indian parents. Lilly has a fanbase of over 5 million subscribers, 80% of whom are girls between the ages of 18 and 25 (see here) and who seem to come from a wide variety of racial backgrounds, based on the video comments. Clearly, many young people respond to Lilly because she offers something different; a more balanced representation of race and gender in the media. As Mary Beltran explains in this analysis of primetime television, the increase in racially diverse characters on major networks does not necessarily imply any improvement in their representation. Often, on shows like Glee, the audience learns to identify with the perspectives of the white characters, and to think of minority characters as charming diversions, but not the main drivers of the plot, which actually ends up reinforcing white dominance. To make matters worse, there are even fewer steadily employed minority writers than minority actors, which leads very little accurate cultural representation of minority groups; instead, we watch a cast of colorblind, thereby whitewashed, characters. Which is  what makes what Lilly a bad-ass: from conception to final cut, she controls the message.

Lilly relies on over-the-top generalizations for humor, and she recognizes that gender and racial oversimplification is not exactly politically correct. For example, in her interviews, Lilly says she is constantly aware of her use of the stereotypical Indian accent: how much is too much? Even if she mocks the accent lovingly, whose to say that someone won’t take her videos and use them to reinforce hateful stereotypes about Indians? I think that’s just the nature of self-expression, and the risk that Lilly may be misunderstood shouldn’t stop her from saying anything at all. When Lilly adds the accent, or casually includes an Indian film or song in the background, she normalizes an all-too-often exoticized culture for her audience.

In the above video, Lilly dresses in drag supposedly to poke fun at men, but the whole skits to me seems less like a way to call out gender performativity (which is the typical point of drag according to the lovely Judith Butler), and more like a reverse way to make fun of women for their irrational behavior. I have conflicting feelings about this skit. On the one hand, complaining about periods helps girls bond over a shared experience. On the other hand, the emotional woman, rational man stereotype seems to be more of a social construct than a physical reality, according to a wide review of psychological research. Is all this stereotyping really helpful? With Jenna, I can see an element of masquerade, but with Lilly, the feminine characterizations strike me as slightly less ironic. Will girls learn from Lilly that they really are supposed to be incapacitated and weak when they menstruate? Or am I just taking this way too seriously? Despite these limitations, Lilly’s distinct voice adds something new to the conversation about stereotypes, what they are, and who can use them.