There’s Nothing on TV Like We Are Lady Parts
6 min read
Early in the second season of We Are Lady Parts, a delightful British series about an all-female Muslim punk band, a musician draws inspiration from the most radical person she knows: her adolescent daughter. At the start of a jam session, Bisma (played by Faith Omole) tells her Lady Parts bandmates about a recent argument with Imani (Edesiri Okepnerho), who was suspended for throwing eggs at a teacher over the history of slavery being removed from her curriculum—and who likened this action to Malala Yousafzai’s fight for girls’ education. After a quick chuckle, the other members encourage Bisma, the only mother in the group, to channel her exasperation into writing new music.
The resulting song is “Malala Made Me Do It,” a rollicking, irreverent country anthem that’s an ode at once to the Pakistani activist (“Nobel prize at 17 / The baddest bitch you’ve ever seen”) and to Bisma’s daughter, whose youthful conviction prompts the band members to reflect on their own small rebellions (“Stole biscuits from the staff room / Malala made her do it”). In a Western-themed music video that plays out in Bisma’s imagination, Yousafzai herself makes a cameo: Sitting on a horse, she slyly winks at the camera from beneath a beaded hat. The fantasy sequence is a highlight of this new season, and a neon-hued reminder of what makes We Are Lady Parts so special. From its first episode, the series has chronicled the band’s attempts to cultivate a meaningful creative identity in a world that often fails to see its members as complex people, much less artists. In tracing how Lady Parts comes together, and what it takes to keep the group together, the series elevates the familiar narrative of a musical origin story into a poignant, inventive exploration of self-expression and community building.
When I sat down to watch the first season a little over two years ago, I was expecting to be amused, perhaps charmed. And there is certainly a whole lot of subversive humor in the series, which was created by the British Pakistani writer-director Nida Manzoor. Two of the first songs we hear Lady Parts perform are “Ain’t No One Gonna Honour Kill My Sister but Me” and “Voldemort Under My Headscarf”; a rival Muslim punk band introduced in Season 2 is called Second Wife. But We Are Lady Parts is so much more than a collection of jokes about the absurdities that young Muslim women often encounter. By turns raucous and earnest, the series is unlike anything else on TV right now—in part because it doesn’t consider representation to be a worthy end goal of its own. Instead, the show allows its characters to riff on their identities in ways that reflect how young people actually talk to one another, without becoming didactic or self-serious.
We Are Lady Parts kicked off its first season by introducing an unlikely new member to the already established band: sweet, geeky Amina (Anjana Vasan), who narrates the series. When Amina first encounters Lady Parts, the 26-year-old Ph.D. student and volunteer music teacher is in desperate pursuit of a husband—a storyline that’s certainly familiar for Muslim women on-screen. In fact, the band persuades her to be its lead guitarist only by setting her up on a date with her crush. Amina’s concerns about how other Muslims perceive her, and her involvement with the band, animated much of the debut season, which established the series as a clever new take on reductive tropes. As the Lady Parts founder, Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), wrote in the band’s manifesto, the women use music to tell the real truths of their lives, “before we’re mangled by other people’s bullshit ideas of us.” This season, the show turns its focus to the struggles that many working musicians face: financial precarity, unexpected competition, and the existential compromises that major record labels expect of artists. After the band’s first tour, some conflicts have emerged among the members, and the show uses this distance to zoom in on aspects of each woman’s life.
Saira, for example, has long been the group’s righteous moral center: When her bandmates discuss the idea of doing a mascara ad, the front woman reminds them that they’re “serious musicians, not vapid agents of capitalism,” then pulls the Lady Parts manifesto out of her bag and starts reading from it. But her resolve starts to crack after she’s evicted from her apartment, which also served as Lady Parts’ rehearsal space. Unable to turn to her estranged family for support, and desperate to raise money for the studio time Lady Parts needs to record an album, Saira begins to lose sight of the values that define her. She agrees to do sponsored content for a sustainable-fashion line; more disastrously, she meets with a white manager who wants to sign the band.
That decision sets off a chain of events that forces Lady Parts to confront how the musicians’ personal and political concerns may clash with their desire to support themselves through their art. These questions become even more complicated when considered alongside some of the major changes that the band members are navigating outside their music—evolving friendships, new romantic relationships, and the social pressures that come with their semipublic profiles.
Because Lady Parts is a punk band made up entirely of Muslim women, it’s not just dealing with the kinds of quandaries that may challenge modern artists. So few groups like Lady Parts even attract a record label’s attention, both in real life and on the show. A veteran musician the bandmates meet this season—a Muslim woman blacklisted by labels after refusing to conform to their vision—cautions Saira against getting caught up in the excitement of a shiny record deal. “They’re gonna love having you on the posters,” she says. “But don’t you let them forget that you have got a voice.” Shortly after, when Saira broaches the idea of tackling political topics on the new Lady Parts album, the band’s manager tells her it’s out of the question: “There’s no ‘Atrocity Bangers’ playlist that you can be on.”
The way that this tension metastasizes—first within Saira, and then within the band—makes for some of the most honest and compelling discussions of artistic authenticity that I’ve seen on TV. It’s not just the new manager who balks at Saira’s sudden dissatisfaction with the band’s style of music. The other Lady Parts members initially resent the suggestion that they make only “funny Muslim songs,” as their musical role model puts it—especially Ayesha (Juliette Motamed), the band’s sharp-tongued drummer.
In a sense, the show’s incisive portrayal of this conflict is not surprising: Many similar conversations must have happened to bring this show into the world. Manzoor recently told Vulture that the bandmates’ struggles, in particular Saira’s, with the weight of their platform as Muslim artists do reflect a comparable feeling about her own career: “Being ‘Zeitgeist-y’ feels like it’s temporary, of the moment—but then, no other moment?” she said. We Are Lady Parts pushes back against the temptation to accept this kind of tokenism: Saira’s storyline shows the dangers of letting a scarcity mindset dictate one’s art.
The show’s frank depiction of Saira’s dilemma, and of another band member’s queer coming-of-age journey, is a striking achievement in a contracting entertainment landscape. Lady Parts can’t be everything to everyone, and the series knows this—about the band, and its own artistic mandate. As the industry pulls back on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and opportunities for people of color across the industry—despite audience demand—the all-Muslim writers’ room of We Are Lady Parts looks beyond these narrow conversations, instead leaning into the distinct joys and difficulties of the world its characters inhabit. Saira, Amina, Bisma, and Ayesha may feel like they have something to prove with their first album, but We Are Lady Parts has been self-assured since its premiere. Nothing makes that more apparent than how Season 2 examines fissures in the band without sacrificing the show’s remarkable warmth.
