Halsey calls out magazine for ‘disrespecting’ pronouns and ‘bastardising’ their words: ‘Do better’

Halsey poses in a polka-dot dress on the red carpet

Halsey skewered a magazine for “disrespecting” their pronouns and “bastardising” their words.

The “Without Me” singer, who recently welcomed her first child, took aim at Allure, an American beauty magazine published by Condé Nast, after she appeared on its August cover.

In a series of since-deleted tweets posted Wednesday afternoon (21 July), the 26-year-old demanded the publication “do f*****g better”.

She slated Allure for not using her proper pronouns and for bungling one of their quotes reflecting on “the privilege of being a white child of a Black parent”.

Halsey’s relationship with the media, one they said they told Allure was already frayed, has now been so soured by the interview, they said, they will no longer do press moving forward.

“All of this ironically on the tails of an article where I give your author the intimate admission that I hate doing press because I get exploited and misquoted,” she tweeted.

“Do f**king better…?”

They concluded their tweets by simply saying: “#NoMorePress, goodbye.”

What did Halsey say?

“First your writer made a focal point in my cover story my pronouns and you guys deliberately disrespected them by not using them in the article,” Halsey began.

Halsey quietly announced in March that their pronouns are she/they. “The inclusion of ‘they,’ in addition to ‘she,’ feels most authentic to me,” she said in an Instagram story.

Despite the Allure interview explicitly mentioning Halsey’s pronouns and even quoting her saying pronouns “help better understand yourself”, it instead used only she/her pronouns throughout. It has since been edited to include both she and they, however.

“We’ve heard your feedback and you’re absolutely right: we messed up,” the outlet said 14 July in a tweet. “We are adjusting our cover story with Halsey to use both ‘she’ and ‘they’ pronouns.”

Halsey also accused the outlet of promoting the interview using one of their quotes out of context, referring to a since-deleted tweet that read: “Throughout her life, Halsey has struggled with her identity as a white-passing Black woman (her mother is white and her father is Black).

“‘A lot of people try to write off a lot of my experiences because I present white’.”

Halsey

Halsey presents the Rock Icon Award on stage during the MTV EMAs 2019 at FIBES Conference and Exhibition Centre on 3 November 2019 in Seville, Spain. (Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

In response to the plucked out quote, Halsey said: “Then your admin bastardised a quote where I discuss the privilege of being the white child of a Black parent and intentionally used a portion that was the antithesis of the point I was trying to make.”

Within the interview itself, Halsey explained how many of her experiences have been shelved because they “present white”.

Yet, they continued, nothing she has experienced in life could compare to the “disadvantages and violence” they would face if they were “phenotypically Black”.

“No matter how many tears I’ve shed because I’m not connecting with my family or my culture in a way that I would like to, or because the waitress thinks I’m the babysitter when I go out with my family,” Halsey said.

“None of that would compare to the tears that I would shed for presenting phenotypically Black and the disadvantages and the violence that I would face because of that.”

PinkNews has contacted Allure for comment.