This week, Lily Allen took some time to question the term “nepo baby,” which is now frequently used to refer to celebrities whose parents are also well-known.
“Nepo babies, I think it’s quite like ‘Karen’, in the sense that it’s just a word that is basically used for women who are taking up space, and we’d rather they didn’t, and they should just go away,” the “Fuck You” singer said on her Miss Me podcast.
Allen, 39, is the British actor Keith Allen’s daughter. Alfie, her brother, is a well-known actor who primarily appeared in Game of Thrones. This week, Allen went on, “My brother, for instance, doesn’t get called nepo baby, and I do.”
“I actually don’t really mind the nepotism thing, it’s the ‘baby’ that annoys me,” she said. “It’s like, I’m 40 years old nearly!”
Allen elucidated that the “infantilizing nature” of the term “baby” is “something that is almost exclusively used for women,” adding, “I don’t think I can even really name any male nepo babies.”
The singer-actress confessed, “There’s an element of truth” to the classification, ceding that “I grew up in a certain class bracket, I grew up in and amongst people that worked in media, and I don’t think I’ve ever really disputed that.”
However, she claimed that the thing that irritates her the most is the apparent male-female difference. “I feel like a lot of the time over the past 15, 20 years when I’ve been written about it will always say ‘Lily Allen, daughter of Keith Allen’ and I don’t see that happening with boys as often as it does with girls,” she said.
According to Allen, audiences are looking for an explanation for “what it really was that put” renowned women on the map, while male stardom seems to be accepted already. This is why she believes there is dissonance.
Later, she added: “And before you come at me for being a nepo baby myself, I will be the first to tell you that I literally deserve nothing.”
