Lily Allen's Got Some Harsh Words

Lily Allen's not one to mince words. In fact, part of what makes her so appealing is her penchant for saying whatever the hell it is she's thinking about the world in which she operates, even when that means calling everyone in the celebrity sphere "sterile f—king botoxed idiots." Allen's image semi-recently made the rounds with the release of — and then immediate racial debate caused by — her newest music video, "Hard Out Here," which directly addresses how Allen felt after returning to show business after her pregnancies. Now she's elaborating on that in an interview with Esquire.

I thought the people in that showbiz circle were my friends. But almost the second I got pregnant and I wasn't able to go out and party, they were suddenly quite nasty. There's a way that those people survive, and it's not by being nice. The way they make themselves feel powerful is to ostracize other people.

It's one part Jennifer Lawrence ("why can't we all just be nice to each other!") and one part Roseanne Barr, who went on a twitter diatribe against the Hollywood television system a little while ago — she maybe makes some interesting points, but it's getting buried under vitriol. That's not as evident in the above quote, but here's what she said next:

I feel like when I was growing up and dreaming of being a pop star, it was the days of Britpop when things felt authentic and anarchic, and people were taking drugs and having a lot of fun and having sex with each other and it wasn’t fake, it was real. So excuse me if I found it a bit disappointing when I arrived and it was a bunch of sterile f—king botoxed idiots that stank of desperation.

Allen may be saying something interesting here — about the ways in which the system of mass entertainment and who we value (and for what) is warped — but the way she's saying it she sounds like she's seconds away from throwing out a Holden Caulfield-inspired "phony."

We're not saying she's wrong. But it might be that debates over who in the entertainment business is the most "authentic" are sticky, stinky waters.