Lily Allen: Nepo baby term is 'sexist' because it's 'almost exclusively used for women'

Lily Allen has hit out at being labeled a “nepo baby”, claiming it’s sexist.

The term refers to celebrities who are deemed to have had a leg up thanks to being the off-spring of famous parents.

The singer and actress, 39, who is the daughter of actor Keith Allen, says she is called a nepo baby “all the time”, but her issue isn’t the just the constant association with her famous parent. Laying bare her grievance with the issue on her Miss Me? podcast, the Smile hit-maker explained the term is “infantilising” and compared it to women getting called “Karen”, because it’s used exclusively for women.

“Nepo babies, I think it’s quite like ‘Karen’, in the sense that it’s just a word that is basically used for women who are taking up space and we’d rather they didn’t and they should just go away,” she said.

“I’m called a nepo baby all the time.”

“I actually don’t really mind the nepotism thing, it’s the ‘baby’ that annoys me, it’s like, I’m 40 years old nearly!”

Alan, whose brother is Game of Thrones actor Alfie Allan, continued: “It’s meant to be infantilising. Also I think it’s something that is almost exclusively used for women, I don’t think I can even really name any male nepo babies.”

“My brother, for instance, doesn’t get called nepo baby and I do.”

The debate over nepo babies has been rumbling away for some time now and Allen for one is done with it.

“I feel like a lot of the time over the past 15, 20 years when I’ve been written about it will always say ‘Lily Allen, daughter of Keith Allen’ and I don’t see that happening with boys as often as it does with girls,” she said.

“It’s always like when we’re talking about women in these spaces.. there’s like a follow-up of what it really was that put them there.”

“There’s an element of truth to it, I grew up in a certain class bracket, I grew up in and amongst people that worked in media, and I don’t think I’ve ever really disputed that.”