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Beyonce is Exactly What Feminism Doesn’t Need

Beyonce

Beyonce is a woman who is unrivaled in the 21st Century in her fame and prestige. The Chief Executive Officer of World Pop Culture Ltd. Well, perhaps she shares this in part with her husband and co-icon Shaun Carter aka. Jay Z, another of the world’s rare popular titans. But when it comes to girl-town Beyonce is the mayor-in-chief who hasn’t faced serious opposition for her title in over decade. Her appearance at this years VMAs saw this star power backed with ‘FEMINISM’ – quite literally – fusing again her pop-culture panache with a celebrity brand of political activism, only with dance moves and choruses. Despite pundits everywhere applauding this as fourth wave feminism’s breakthrough moment and a tasty display at that, something doesn’t quite smell right. In fact, this music video-style of girl power, to my mind, leaves a rather sour taste in the mouth.

Fourth wave feminism (as it has become known) is the first mass feminist movement since the internet became the world’s umbilical cord. It’s ranks are famously populated by Tumblr activists, other bloggers, a new generation of women in print/online media and the legions of social media supporters who digest and share it’s content. Even before Beyonce stuck her name to it, it wasn’t exactly a member of the cultural ghettos, with publications of all political stripes (and none at all) commenting on and chronicling it’s rise to prominence over the last few years.

It’s a movement that’s been careful to amalgamate itself with previous waves. Third wave feminism (for example) advanced the doctrine that you don’t have to be a hairy – or “scary” – bra-burning revolutionary to be a feminist. The fourth wave has taken this commandment and converted it to conventional wisdom. In their books, being “sexy” is no longer anti-woman. Whatever the fuck that means. Hence why they can on one hand praise the merits of fem-queen Beyonce and hold her up as an icon, and on the other denounce the curse of “sexualisation” on young women. This – as it should become clear to anyone – makes little to no sense at all.

Beyonce is a symbol for female power, without a doubt. An owner of the stare-you-in-the-face “don’t fuck with me bitch” assertiveness that previously was the property of men only, but she wraps it all in a pop culture punch that makes it all the more irresistible. With Beyonce, you can feel that you are listening to a woman who is anything but a timid and fragile captive. She’s a person who commands the attention of millions with her talent, charisma and pronouncements of female power.

For many, She is also the symbol of female power in pop culture today. Masculinity does well by not having it’s personality or ethos thrust onto any one individual. We can all dream that George Clooney is the archetypal man inside us all: rough-edged and primal but unshakably suave and a catch with the ladies. But reality says otherwise.

This is due I think, mainly, to men’s traditional perceived role as the superior of the two genders — work for icons and flag-bearers is thin on the ground when you’ve nothing to fight for. Feminism would do well to recognise that shafting an entire theory (or even large sections of) into the silhouette of one ‘strong’ woman does the movement more damage than good. Especially one who so proudly contradicts so many of modern Feminism’s ongoing battles: the sexualisation of women, unfair standards of female appearance and the disproportionate amount of women feeling that modelling, acting and ‘beauty’ are their careers of choice.

If Feminism is looking for a 21st Century woman that women of all ages, colours and creeds can take something from, Beyonce is not it.

It’s like if I was at a party with some feminist bloggers. We’re all talking about the sexualisation of women in the media and how token statements of “girl power” and lipstick feminism are all bullshit. I’m just finishing off the Pringles and Beyonce rocks up. Catsuit on, swaggers in, shakes her ass to “Drunk in Love” and finishes off with a round of high-fives for the girls. Everyone’s best friends and I’m sat here thinking — is someone gonna say something about this?

We were just cussing people just like her. Girls, please. Take your Pringles back because I’m not getting this. One minute we’re all cool, having some drinks, with some coherent conversation about womanhood and female liberation, then she’s on the scene and everybody’s acting like it’s cool. I get it, nobody’s perfect and every woman (every person) has the right to do what they want with their lives. Just because someone somewhere landed a recording contract that went on to make her the most powerful woman in pop culture, doesn’t mean that woman has discarded her right to stand up for women. I get it. But why are we pretending that Beyonce is the perfect party guest when she’s the elephant in the room?

There is a deafening consensus that Beyonce is generally a good thing for women, whatever that means. But if we’re looking at examples of strength in the ranks there are so many more stand out examples. Top level business executives, high-ranking politicians, those in other areas of the arts – damn – other women in music. Adele has said in an interview with Q Magazine that she doesn’t “have time to worry about something as petty as what I look like” and that “I don’t make music for eyes. I make music for ears”. Surely a sentiment that better represents the message that having a vagina entitles you to the same right to be judged not on your looks but on your merits.

The slide into unattainable totems of beauty anywhere and everywhere for women is a big problem, and it’s obsession with self-maintenance and self-loathing is threatening to engulf men too. I don’t want feminism, gender equality, female rights, civil rights or anything like it to become a billboard. I don’t need it flashy, I don’t need it in sequins and I don’t need it in soundbites, slogans or twisty-handy moves where you point to your finger. Girls don’t run the world Beyonce, that’s kind of the problem. And you shouting round the place about how they do is kind of unhelpful.

In years forward into the future I think Beyonce will be seen as a stepping stone, a phase in which we saw female strength as the exception in an age where strength was still overwhelmingly male. We’ll acknowledge her contradictions, that no man of her stature was expected to show a bit of tit and arse on the same job, yet she was all too happy. Sat in a long legacy of women who were strong, independent when it was still weird to be, each and every one a product of their time. I could be wrong, Jay Z might be shooting an artsy nude piece for Gay Times as I type this. But I doubt it. Beyonce is a woman who is sexual in an age where female pop stars have to be and men simply don’t. Feminists and feminism gain nothing by embracing it.

 

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One Response
  1. let's be real September 26, 2014 / Reply

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