Two years later, I'm still obsessed with We Are Lady Parts
Maybe it's time to enter my villain era.
*This post contains spoilers*
Created by Nida Manzoor, We Are Lady Parts (2021) revolves around the members of a all-women punk band as they swim and sink together through life’s many challenges including grief, romantic love and even fame.
I pinky promise, this TV show is everything you want and more. It’s so fucking fun. Where else are you going to see a music video about Malala Youzafsai and the Taliban featuring actual Malala? Click the play button right now, then come back and read this post.
We Are Lady Parts is the epitome of authentic representation. I hope every single person behind this television series knows the extent to which their combined efforts are changing how Black and Brown folk are perceived in the UK and beyond.
I could write a whole thesis about their cultural impact thus far, but what I want to write about today is how this season Manzoor cleverly employs meta-fiction as a storytelling device to explore representation.
More than ever before, the show is self-aware that it stands as both a fictional story, but also a commentary on the state of race and representation in the UK. In real-life, the cast and crew have done wonders for changing how the muslim community is represented on television. But in the world of We Are Lady Parts, the band members are doing the exact same thing within the context of the music industry.
By choosing to write record-label success into the ladies’ story, Manzoor touches on exoticisation within an industry that’s ultimately focused on making money, not about amplifying the work of woman of colour.
Bisma for example, receives backlash from the label when she decides to live life without her hijab, as they think it’s important for the band’s external image if she continues to wear one. They fail to acknowledge the full gravity of Bisma’s journey as a Black woman, as she tries to discover new facets of her identity outside being a wife and mother.
Throughout the season, Saira gradually loses control of her artistic vision as her label interferes with the production of their album. The girls tell her that incorporating too much politics into their songwriting is a risk, because they fundamentally just make “funny muslim songs” and that itself is enough of a political statement.
But I wonder: did Manzoor have to make We Are Lady Parts a ‘funny Muslim show’ to appease her network, the gatekeepers of money, and her stakeholders in the exact same way Saira has to stifle her political opinions to ensure she keeps the rights to her music and release an album?
In season 1, we found out that Ayesha is a lesbian. In season 2, she grapples with the process of ‘coming out’ to her parents and reaches a surprising conclusion: she doesn’t want to. I love that they didn’t force her to come out for the sake of being able to say ‘we were one of the first people to tell a story within the mainstream about a Muslim girl coming out’.
The writer’s room made her stay exactly where she was, which felt so true to her character. She doesn’t have to be the hero for all gay Muslims by coming out to her parents — she’s an inspiration just by existing as herself, just by being honest about what she truly does and doesn’t want to do.
I felt through Ayesha’s story, Manzoor was also making a bold statement to the viewers about how she intends to continue working within the industry. She’s making gigantic waves in the arts and culture space, but she’s going to do things her own way no matter what. We Are Lady Parts is a testament to what can be achieved when you simply stop giving a fuck about pleasing everyone around you.
What resonated with me most this season was the concept of having creative soulmates. In episode four, the ladies sign a record deal. This new era of success, however, comes with consequences as it means Taz has to step down as band manager.
Taz then begins her own journey towards solidifying what she wants to achieve with her record label. She decides to make Momtaz records a space to platform underrepresented musicians and train them up.
We find out in the last episode that some of the background music we hear which rounds out episodes 1-5 is actually the music that Taz’s trainees have been making.1
I thought a lot about how Taz’s journey with her company mirrored my own with The jfa’s. A day after I finished season 2, my team and I sat together on Zoom on a Sunday afternoon, as we usually do, but this time we didn’t discuss our new plans or projects, we read aloud our closing statement.
My grief sat with us, quietly mourning all the things we could have been, the things we were and the things we weren’t. My grief was also a warning, that my life is changing now in ways that I don’t recognise and it’s all harder than I thought it would be. Change is inevitable and I’m so scared of it. Selfishly I wish all my friends and I were changing and growing in the same ways.
The ladies experience so much change in season 2. I have been changing, too, but I think I hadn’t fully been able to confront it all until I saw people that looked like me confront it as well.
But I’m also ultimately so grateful for everything my team and I have been through. It’s so rare to create something from nothing and have it be bigger than all of us, to have it take up space in the world with its own identity and impact. It’s an experience unlike any other, and one I have the most trouble explaining to everyone else in my life.
As I watched Saira leak her own album to spite her record label, it was comforting to see the ladies of Lady Parts reach the same conclusion as the ladies of The jfa have: success is being able to say we did all of this together, on our own terms.
I want you to watch this show for a lot of reasons, but mostly because Manzoor has such a unique way of exploring the depths of what makes us human. She’s not afraid to give her characters complexity to allow us to confront our own vulnerabilities and all the things we’ve been running away from.
I loved watching the ladies evolve this season. It’s so wonderful that a piece of media can reiterate that we all contain multitudes, and the narratives we create for ourselves are never set in stone.
They just play with time and the idea of evolution so well this season.