Dua Lipa Dominated The Brits Last Night, So Why Is Anwar Hadid Trending Higher Than Her?

Last night, Dua Lipa won two Brit Awards – for best British album and best female solo artist – cementing her as one of the UK’s most critically-acclaimed pop stars right now. With five Brit awards under her belt, it was a night of great career success for the London-born singer.

It was also the night she chose to honour frontline workers – calling Boris Johnson out to give them a pay rise – and Folajimi ‘Jimi’ Olubunmi Adewole, who died rescuing a woman that fell into the Thames, alongside Joaquin Garcia. With her speeches receiving applause not just at the ceremony but online too, it was clearly a night of great significance for Dua.

How is it then that this morning, Anwar Hadid was trending number three on Google Trends. Dua Lipa’s boyfriend of two years, when you click on Hadid’s name you’re met with breakout search terms including ‘Dua Lipa boyfriends’, ‘Dupa Lipa partner’ and when you search her name ‘Dua Lipa husband’.

Despite the fact that Dua was having one of the most successful nights of her career, and such a poignant one for raising awareness, it seems that all anyone wanted to know about was her relationship status.

It’s understandable the people are intrigued by celebrities love lives, of course, but our search history in context says a lot about our attitudes generally. Women dominated the Brit Awards last night, and we so love to think that we’re moving on as a society when it comes to not just how women are treated, but our expectations of them. And yet, on the night a woman’s career is being celebrated and her political opinions shared, people still care more about whether or not she has a boyfriend.

It begs the question, what are people hoping to find out? Does her relationship status change her value in the eyes of the public, despite her success? It would appear so, since everyone is so obsessed by what’s going on with her and Hadid.

It’s hard to judge, since everyone internalises misogyny in so many limitless ways, but with access to these tools to see how people search (versus what they post on social media, which is always wildly different) it gives us an opportunity to reflect on that question.

If your opinion of Dua Lipa changes based on her relationship status, if her value or worthiness increases or decreases, it’s time to question why. Where does the innate desire to judge a woman based on her love life come from? The answers to those questions may be obvious to some, but so many of us blindly act on our internalised misogyny without stopping to wonder how healthy that is for women at large.

In choosing to reflect, we can adapt how we think. We can watch Dua Lipa succeed without jumping on Google to find out whether she can ‘keep’ a man, whether she’s worthy or not based on her relationship status. Then, hopefully one day, Dua Lipa’s night of incredible career success will just be about that.

Click through for all the 2021 Brit Award winners...