Akilah: Hi YouTube, it’s Akilah, obviously, and today I wanted to talk about an issue that has been neglected on YouTube and in pop culture specifically when we talk about people like Patty Arquette and her Oscar speech and Nellie Andreeva at Deadline who thinks diversity is overtaking Hollywood and there’s just no roles for white people anywhere. So today we’re going to talk about intersectionality and feminism. What better way to tackle an issue this big than to talk about pizza. It’s a little cheesy.
Say you’re born a cheese pizza, but the world is made for burgers, right? You can go anywhere and get a burger. Burgers are the go-to fast food. Pretty much everything in the world is made to serve burgers. So you’re trying to say, “Hey, pizza’s just as good as burgers. Pizza it’s just as satisfying as burgers. Pizza deserves the same rights as burgers.” That’s all fine and good.
But then there are pizzas like me, deluxe pizzas who happen to have different toppings and features than cheese pizzas and have their own problems to face because they’re pizzas and have different toppings. We’re like, “What about us?” Cheese pizzas are by far the most celebrated pizzas in society, right? Like If you go anywhere on the menu there’s going to be a cheese pizza. In any facet of society whether that’s art, media, education, finance, history, cheese pizzas are the only pizzas that are ever mentioned. Cheese pizza is so celebrated that there are snacks that celebrate that flavor, like combos and Pringles and even bagel bites. Cheese pizza is highly visible.
Meanwhile this is not the case for deluxe pizzas, all right? Our features are often seen by the untrained eye as extra weight and too much of a problem, and we’re left to crumble because the crust does not support us. It is much more difficult to be a deluxe pizza in a burger world.
So when deluxe pizzas found out that cheese pizzas wanted to join forces and fight for the rights of all pizzas they were stoked, until they found out that all of the discussion about pizzas would be about cheese pizzas exclusively. In fact, cheese pizzas were like, “Hey, deluxe pizza, we’re going to get to your rights, but only after we achieve ours.” So now there are tons of videos and articles that talk about how cheese pizza is tired of being told by burgers to shave their crust and how cheese pizza’s getting called all these slurs because of what they choose to put in their pie hole.
Deluxe pizzas would love the privilege to care about being so menial. Historically when deluxe pizzas rises through the pop culture ranks and use their platform to promote pizza rights, cheese pizzas will shame them and then turn around and say, “Look at this cheese pizza. She’s got the right idea even when she says the exact same thing that the deluxe pizza has been saying all along.”
Deluxe pizzas’ unique features are often celebrated when they occur unnaturally on cheese pizzas. In fact, when they occur naturally on deluxe pizzas they’re often shamed. “Look how big your sausages are. Why is your pepper so curly?” So deluxe pizzas are unfortunately a little jaded. They’ve fallen to room temperature waiting for us to fight for their rights when they’ve been fighting for cheese pizza rights all along. They’ve been too strong for too long.
So how do we solve this problem? You know, I think it’s called intersectionality. When we talk about pizza rights, we need to be talking about all pizzas, not just cheese pizzas that are deemed socially acceptable and worthy of saving and worthy of having a place in popular culture. We need to be talking about pizzas who are sexually attracted to other pizzas, pizzas who aren’t sexually attracted to anything, pizzas who identify as burgers, and pizzas with different toppings. Because as great as it is to uplift cheese pizzas the world could use a lot more flavor. Thank you for watching. I’ll see you soon with another video.