What We Learned from the Intersection of Queerness and Race and its Role in the Lena Wilson and Amandla Stenberg Drama

Written by Emily Motti and edited by Nicole Ripka

The Main Characters

Lena Wilson (she/her) is a film critic. She attended Smith College where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in film studies and the study of women and gender. In 2018, Wilson joined the New York Times as a freelance writer and project manager. Wilson also ran a personal TikTok account where she promoted her film reviews and offered pop culture commentary, specifically from a queer lens. When her credentials were questioned earlier this year, Wilson posted a video highlighting her qualifications: she declares herself “a very talented writer who is particularly skilled in the art of cultural criticism who hails from a family of writers.” One of whom (her father) happens to be the deputy sports editor at the NYT.

Amandla Stenberg (she/they) is s queer actor and author most known for her roles as Rue in Hunger Games and Starr Carter in The Hate U Give. Stenberg’s latest project as actor and executive producer is for Bodies Bodies Bodies, was all the rage for moviegoers, especially young queer people.

The DM a.k.a The Catalyst

With stars like Rachel Sonnett and Pete Davidson, the A24 take on a slasher film, Bodies Bodies Bodies, was highly-anticipated and discussed all over the internet. It only makes sense that a film critic such as Wilson would share her professional thoughts on its release.

On August 8th, Stenberg privately messaged Wilson the following:

“Ur review was great, maybe if you had gotten ur eyes off my tits you could’ve watched the movie!”

To which Wilson replied (before blocking Stenberg):

“hey, amandla! generally a big fan of your work, but this sure is something. really wishing you well in your career and life, have a nice night.”

The Self-Sabotage

Rather than keeping the private message…well…private, Wilson took a screenshot and shared it to her TikTok page with the caption: “unfathomably weird to get ‘I don’t want you in the locker room while I’m changing’ bullying from a whole other lesbian.”

Wilson also took to Twitter to express how hurt she was that “the homophobia was coming from inside the house.” Her language insinuated that Stenberg, a femme-presenting lesbian, played into the stereotype that Wilson, a self-identified butch lesbian, couldn’t keep her eyes off of their chest.

When Wilson posted the private message and expressed her devastation, she said that she never once mentioned Amandla’s body in the film review. She doubled down on this claim in her comment section stating, “Would literally never even think to objectify someone in a review. Would be unconscionable to me,” thus creating an echo chamber of defense for Wilson.

This you Lena?

The excerpt above was not included in Wilson’s video and is only discoverable on the other side of the $3.75/week NYT paywall. Wilson’s credibility was protected by the paywall since most people coming across her TikTok did not have access to her review of Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, nor could they reference it for a fact-check. So when Wilson said that she didn’t mention anything about anyone's body in the review, people believed her. Her queerness provided a level of oppression that deceivingly distanced her from her whiteness. Some readers, however, ultimately got past the paywall to read for themselves and they shared their findings.

Social power

In Wilson’s video, she stated that part of the reason why she shared the DM is so that people who have more social power than her like Stenberg don’t get away with that kind of behavior. Critics of Wilson quickly pointed out that since the message was originally private, there’s no leverage of social power at play. In fact, if either of the two leveraged power, it was Wilson. Wilson had a massive platform with a TikTok audience of 150,000, a community of journalists, the power and protection of the NYT, and the support of other white, queer creators. Wilson clearly wielded her social power to harm and shame Amandla and get what she wants: validation and victimhood.

The Sexualization of Black Femmes

In her medium article dissecting this drama, writer Rivka Wolf articulates “We are inculcated with cultural scripts that tell us that Black women’s bodies are up for debate, available to be surveilled and critiqued and picked apart. Black women are subject to hypervisibility, presumed to be hypersexual, their sexuality overexposed and deemed different, monstrous, overexposed and out of control and discomfiting in a manner not often applied to white women."

Wilson chose to focus on the cut of Stenberg’s shirt, rather than reporting on the level of thought Stenberg put into developing her queer character, only further perpetuating the kind of relentless sexual attention Stenberg has experienced throughout her career. Thankfully, creator Cat Quinn (@catquinn) pointed out some of the amazing details that Wilson failed to include in her review, like Amandla’s two shorter (non-acrylic) nails on her dominant hand, a nod to their character’s queer identity.

White ally body language

Creator Alexia (@hotweirdg0rl) analyzed Wilson’s yt ally body language, which she describes as a white person falling or shrinking into themselves when they’re about to do “something incredibly fucking racist.” Imani Barbarin (@crutches_and_spice), an advocacy and communications professional, agrees with Alexia and added that because of the harmful stereotype that Black women are loud and aggressive, racist white allies will make themselves look small, like underdogs or victims. The body language in Wilson’s video, according to Barbarin, was purposeful in creating the narrative that Stenberg is the aggressor and Wilson is the victim. Yet another way in which Wilson weaponized her whiteness to create a narrative.

The silencing of Black creators

Wilson failed to listen to or address the black creators doing the emotional labor to explain the history of violence towards Black femme bodies and the fatal repruccussions of white women tears. She blocked a number of Black creators and limited the comments on her TikTok posts and on her Tweets, allowing only people who follow her to interact with the content. Creators tried to level with Wilson and left comments like, “Hey, I see your point of view, but I just watched Amandla’s video and I think you should take a look at their side of the story.” She instead painted Amandla as somehow mentally unwell, replying to one comment with “I will not be checking her story but hope she gets well soon.”

The Aftermath

Wilson has deleted her TikTok and Twitter accounts and Stenberg seems to have moved on, now focusing on teaching the internet how to pronounce her name and celebrating the success of Bodies Bodies Bodies. Some speculate that Stenberg’s message was meant to be flirtatious. Others shared stories about attending high-school and college with Wilson, and how her membership in a certain Facebook group might make her transphobic. Before deleting her TikTok account, Wilson uploaded a few videos only visible to her followers. In one of these videos, Wilson raved about her favorite movie of all time, Jennifer’s Body, an alternative “horror” film about teen-aged girls’ sexuality and friendship. You might be thinking, “that sounds exactly like Bodies Bodies Bodies.” And you’d be right! Except Jennifer’s Body’s is an entirely all-white cast.