In the middle of August, it seemed like everyone woke up one day and decided to bully Audrey Hobert on the internet. “I’m sorry but she has such an unseasoned boiled chicken pilgrim face. Some people are just not born to be stars,” ran one tweet with over 11k likes. This kind of vicious invective – based on insulting someone‘s appearance rather than their creative output – is apparently OK, you see, because Hobert is seen as privileged and well-connected.

In recent years, being branded a ‘nepo baby’ has become the modern-day scarlet letter, with New York Magazine’s 2022 cover story on “Hollywood’s Nepo Baby Boom” both reflecting and shaping culture’s obsession with the privileges afforded to a new generation of well-bred and well-connected young stars. It’s understandable to feel frustrated by the smooth, seemingly manufactured advancement of the offspring of Hollywood’s elite, particularly now, when opportunities in the arts for everyone else are diminishing with each passing year. 

But it’s equally hard to ignore how often a reasonable critique of structural inequality descends into, or provides cover for, misogynistic bullying. For young women in particular, accusations of nepotism or unearned privilege can quickly become a permission slip for a much broader kind of contempt. Audrey Hobert aside, Gracie Abrams has faced an obsessive, platform-spanning online hatred that doesn’t quite square up to her radio-friendly singer-songwriter pop. What started off as scrutiny of her career ascent has seen the pop star become meme fodder, written off as talentless, boring, bad at singing, and fundamentally undeserving of her success. At this point, Gracie Abrams has become less a subject of criticism than a catch-all online punching bag.

Stella Lefty is the latest young woman to become the internet‘s favourite punching bag. There are legitimate reasons to scrutinise her rapid ascent: she is the daughter of billionaire Eric Lefkofsky, and several of her songs have faced questions over their similarities to existing tracks. But none of that justifies the obsessive bullying she has experienced online over the past month, during which people have gone from editing her Wikipedia to falsely claiming she served in the IDF, to making X accounts pretending to be her mum. 

To reiterate, conversations about the ways in which nepotism and inherited wealth interact with the arts are important, but that has little to do with the people on X who just want carte blanche to call a woman ugly or stupid. Because far more than their male counterparts, it is young women who are treated as the avatars of privilege and subjected to online hate, often under the thin guise of social justice. Case in point: Hobert’s brother Malcolm Todd, also a successful singer with a public platform, has not experienced the same merciless bullying as her, despite having risen to fame under the same set of circumstances. 

Or take 2Hollis, whose mother, Kathryn Frazier, runs the prominent music PR firm Biz 3 and co-founded Skrillex’s OWSLA label, while his father is Tortoise drummer John Herndon. Or Gene Gallagher, or Cruz Beckham, or Moses Martin (son of Chris), who all performed at Reading and Leeds Festival this year. While these four artists, all men, have been described as nepo babies, none has become the same kind of sustained target of online ridicule as women like Abrams, Hobert or Lefty. Their privilege is criticised; with these women, that criticism so often expands into contempt for their looks, personalities and very presence in public life.

Looming behind all of this discourse around nepo babies is a deeper issue: entering the arts is becoming more and more inaccessible. Youth centres have rapidly closed across the UK, the cost of living keeps rising, and the music industry is increasingly dependent on the kind of social-media visibility that money and connections can make easier to achieve. Every second Instagram post lately reads like a digital debutante ball of famous kids announcing new brand partnerships, new acting roles, new singles that chart straight to the top.

Against this backdrop, it’s undeniable that large family fortunes and industry connections give people like Stella Lefty far greater chances of success, and it’s fair to be angry about that. There is also nothing wrong with thinking her music is derivative, overhyped or just not your taste. But there is a difference between criticising this system or the work it produces, and weaponising misogyny as a form of public punishment. All too often, online critique of Lefty and other young female artists seems to devolve into the latter rather than the former, and it’s getting us nowhere. It may be difficult to draw the exact line where reasonable criticism ends and personal abuse begins – we all have an inalienable right to think that someone’s music sucks – but once you’re comparing a woman’s face to boiled chicken, you’ve probably crossed it.