Iggy Azalea would seem to have it all right now. The Australian rapper has achieved international stardom with her dual music and modeling careers, she’s dating a famous basketball player and is currently on a major U.S. tour, to plug her brand new album The New Classic — all at the tender age of 23. But life can be tough even when you’re at the top. After all, stars who play concerts for their adoring fans shouldn’t need to worry about being sexually assaulted by those very fans — in the middle of a show.
But that is exactly what Iggy Azalea says has been happening at her concerts, which has forced her to stop interacting with her fans by jumping into the audience and crowdsurfing. She has even needed to set up barriers on the stage between herself and the fans with their roaming fingers.
Apparently, Iggy says, just because she raps about raunchy subject matter and often wears stage outfits that reveal far more than they cover, her fans feel that it’s somehow okay to penetrate her private parts with their digits.
She made this unfortunate revelation in an interview on the New York City radio station Hot 97 Tuesday.
“It’s funny ’cause on my tour I’m only doing, like, 2,000-seaters. But we had to put up barriers because people try to finger me,” she told the morning drive-time DJs on Hot 97. “Buying my album for $12 doesn’t mean you get to finger me when I come to your city.”
It seems like something that shouldn’t need to be said. But just in case it isn’t clear — performers, whether Iggy Azalea or anyone else — do not want your grubby fingers in or anywhere near their private parts when they are trying to give a concert. Or anytime, for that matter.
There’s a word for that. Rape.
But Iggy Azalea — who was born Amethyst Amelia Kelly in New South Wales, Australia — says that these assaults that she has endured are nor mere spontaneous, albeit wildly inappropriate, outbursts of fan passion. Fans actually plan in advance to assault her.
“I will get lurk tweets for like a week before my show, like, ‘I’m about to go to the Iggy Azalea show and I’m going to finger her,’” she said. “And I’ll see it and be like, please don’t! That’s a violation. I don’t actually like that stuff.”
Azalea said that she believes fans get the wrong message from her songs — one of which is titled, “Pussy” — and assume that she would somehow enjoy being manually penetrated by a total stranger.
The offenders, she says, are more likely to be female than male.
“Girls will try to do it more than guys ’cause girls think it’s cool, like, ‘We both got vaginas, it’s fine,’” said Iggy Azalea on the Hot 97 show. “Doesn’t make it okay.”