When I first heard about the song, I was sure Lily Allen’s “Hard Out Here” would be a dream come true.

When the music video dropped, I was still in class, so I had to wait to see it. In the meantime, I was greeted with exciting headlines from various news sources like “Lily Allen Returns to Mock Miley Cyrus, Robin Thicke, Et Al.” (Slate.com)

As a feminist, in the months since Robin Thicke’s premiere of “Blurred Lines,” I’ve had to deal with debates of all sorts. Some were on the “merit” of Thicke’s problematic contribution to the music industry, and others were people criticizing Miley Cyrus for her apparent state of undress in her music videos instead of the racist cultural appropriation and use of black women as props.

And honestly, besides all of these issues, there are far bigger fish to fry in the music and film industries related to female representation.

Anyway, I guess you could say I was pleasantly surprised when the video started. The video cuts to a scene of Lily Allen in a hospital gurney, presumably receiving a liposuction treatment, while her manager remarks on how much she’s “let [herself] go” and frantically schedules TV appearances on well-known talk shows for Allen. Allen turns to the camera, the background segues into a dance scene, and begins her singing, delivering a sharp critique of the injustices and sexist pressure faced by women in media.

“If you’re not a size 6, then you’re not good looking / Well you better be rich or be real good at cooking / You should probably lose some weight ’cause we can’t see your bones / You should probably fix your face or you’ll end up on your own,” she sings.

As the video progressed, I grew more uncomfortable for a number of reasons.

Allen brings feminism aplenty to the table, but completely marginalizes people of color and racial minorities in the process. She surrounds herself with scantily clad black women twerking in the infamous style that has captured the eyes and ears of sensationalized media. She claims to be striking out against Miley Cyrus’ use of black women as props in her music videos, yet she uses the same techniques in her increasingly provocative scenes.

The video illustrates a divide between Allen’s white, fully-clad body and the black backup dancers she surrounds herself with who she then uses to aggrandize herself by objectifying them further.

“I don’t need to shake […] for you, because I got a brain,” she says, as the black women around her do just that.

According to more recent statements that Allen has made regarding the music video on social networks such as Twitter, “Hard Out Here” was meant to be a “lighthearted satirical video that deals with objectification of women within modern pop culture. It has nothing to do with race, at all.”

Really, though, satire isn’t just an exaggeration of a concept pervasive in the music industry with a disclaimer afterwards that reveals it was somehow different than other times. For satire to be effective, there must be a certain level of condemnation apparent in the overarching themes represented. In this case, the medium manages to extol what it is supposed to be condemning.

Allen’s follow-up tweet seems innocuous, but “satire” isn’t perpetuating the marginalization of women of color (WoC) through a shocking music video and then yelling “JUST KIDDING!” when people actually start getting offended.

On a smaller scale, this music video does represent a lot of what makes the mainstream feminist movement problematic for those of non-white ethnicity. Allen’s video follows a long-held tradition of women degrading racial minorities in the process of trying to elevate themselves in the shifting power battleground that is the current patriarchy. Stepping on the toes of our supposed allies in the quest for equality certainly won’t do us any good. To paraphrase a commonly quote, my feminism will be intersectional, or it will be nonsense.

Various white women in positions of fame in the media are self-professed and widely celebrated feminists, yet they have a history of perpetuating harmful racial stereotypes and the denigration of minorities. Notable examples of this lie within Tina Fey’s uses of blackface, Dita von Teese’s fetishization of asian women, and Amy Poehler’s and Lady Gaga’s cultural appropriation, all of which contribute to the sense of detachment that many people of color feel towards mainstream feminist media.

That’s not to say that Allen’s music video is completely in the wrong. I remain a staunch feminist, and her tongue-in-cheek jibes at the other issues in the music video and her sly-digs at Thicke hit the proverbial nails right on the head.

Ultimately, though, in order for feminism to achieve its goals of equality, it needs to be as inclusive as possible, a shortcoming that derails important parts of Allen’s central message in “Hard Out Here.”