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0 Written by Meghan Garner
Feminists believe that Beyoncé is the ultimate embodiment of female empowerment, especially as an African American female artist, but do her songs have a positive effect on the female minority? Beyoncé is one of the very few artists that I have intentionally avoided listening to music from. Having been sheltered from worldly music for most of my childhood, I never interacted with Beyoncé’s music until my early 20s, which would have been around 2022. She was majorly popular – and still is – as a female music artist, but the reason I refused to listen to her music was because I had seen and heard, on a superficial level, that Beyoncé was sexually explicit in her performances with vulgar song lyrics. That fact alone kept me from listening to her music for several years, even to the point of strict, almost religious avoidance. It wasn’t until I was “forced” to listen to her song “Brown-skin Girl” presented by a UofL faculty member, Martha Mathurin-Moe, that I perceived Beyoncé in an entirely different way. Seeing how directly Martha was inspired and felt empowered as a female black woman, her passionate presentation inspired me to give Beyoncé a second chance, in my opinion. I do believe that Beyoncé is an incredible artist with a wide range of skills that have kept her career moving along with what is considered current pop culture, and it’s obvious that women are her target audience. How does Beyoncé depict women in her music? How does she inspire female empowerment and control with her music, and what, perhaps, are the dangers she is facing with her current marketing and entertainment strategies? I consulted with two main sources for this article, as well as listening to Beyoncé’s albums while writing down my own thoughts and reflections.
One article I read, written by E. A. Utley, was titled “What Does Beyoncé Mean to Young Girls?” The article consisted of a study done on a group of young girls ages eleven to sixteen, in which they listened to two of Beyoncé’s most controversial songs, “Run the World (Girls)” and “Flawless,” and how they perceived Beyoncé and her music afterwards. General questions sparked open discussion among the groups, and feedback varied based on personal biases, ages, and cultural backgrounds. After listening to both songs, here are my opinions.
I thought that “Run the World (Girls)” was a very loud, angry, and repetitive message that girls don’t need men and that they run the world with their “persuasion, endless power, and love that devours.” Beyoncé praises hardworking, smart women and mothers and college girls. This isn’t a song I typically listen to, and although I sort of agree with the words in this song—not the language used—I wasn’t entirely sure that the message matched the video. In some ways the power of femininity was obvious. The amount of ‘girls’ backing Beyoncé in the music video battle scene was portrayed as a strong but seductive army. And, I say seductive because Beyoncé and every female character was dressed in tight clothing that looked a lot like lingerie. Beyoncé swore, made a crude gesture, and glared at the opposing army of men, appearing ferocious and angry. I think Beyoncé’s message that girls will run the world could have been more effective had she and her army dressed up like soldiers wearing armor rather than like “prostitutes,” as one of the girls in the following study pointed out. “Flawless” included some commentary by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on defining feminism, and I think her words are really important, but not effective in Beyoncé’s song. Adichie addressed the double standards for girls and boys and the unrealistic expectations society has placed on women and success. Beyoncé’s words in this song feels more about her bragging about how good she looks and how successful she is, rather than telling other women that they are flawless no matter what. I interpret Beyoncé’s line “I woke up like this” as her waking up to success, popularity, money, fame, beauty, and sexiness in her individual celebrity life, and revelling in it. The music video reflects that message by showing a group of men and women partying, drinking, and rapping with Beyoncé. To me, this song reflects female empowerment exclusively from Beyoncé’s personal experiences, so this message isn’t relatable to a lot of women and girls who don’t have that kind of popularity and success that Beyoncé wakes up to every day. After contemplating my thoughts on these two songs, I was curious what each group of girls in the following study thought.
Group one included a couple of Latina girls who concluded, ‘Flawless’ increases their vulnerability to the negative stereotypes of people who do not know them but have derogatory perceptions of the neighbourhood from which they hail” (Utley, 7). They felt very strongly that Beyoncé was not doing herself any favours by dressing up inappropriately. “In their community, there are negative consequences for girls who dress and behave like Beyoncé. Sexual impropriety is not just a choice for them; identifying themselves as good girls is a matter of safety” (Utley, 7). Group two included four African American girls who gave positive feedback when asked if Beyoncé was a feminist; however, Beyoncé’s feminist message didn’t really come across that way due to her sexual impropriety. “Despite these critiques, all of the girls agreed that Beyoncé is a feminist” (Utley, 4). Mostly fans of Beyoncé, they concluded that Beyoncé encouraged other girls to fend for themselves and that they can be whatever they want to be and to do whatever they want to do. “The youngest girls in group three noted that version of Beyoncé’s equality where women are ahead of men made them vulnerable to violence, and Gabriella argued in ‘Girls’ [Beyoncé’s], like, girls are way better than you guys, you guys are nothing, we’re more important’ especially as she disrespectfully ripped off a man’s badge” (Utley, 7). From group four: “The girls did agree, however, that pop culture is not necessarily the best place to convey feminist messages because the sound, visuals, and format are too distracting especially to boys who need the message the most” (Utley, 5). Out of all the groups, group five was less concerned about her sexually explicit dancing and inappropriate dress. They saw this more as a message of empowerment, as Beyoncé is unapologetically herself, presenting the way she wants to present herself.
When assessing the girls based on vulnerability they felt after listening to Beyoncé, most of the girls admitted to feeling insecure. Even “The most avowed fan in any of the groups was the lone girl who admitted to feeling insecure when faced with the image of Beyoncé that she admired so much” (Utley, 6). One of the girls named Whitney explained that although Beyoncé is an icon, she’s seen too many girls try so hard to be like her and other pop stars. She stated, “You should be comfortable with you. And yeah, Beyoncé’s talking about it but she’s not really being her… Being flawless is not wearing makeup, not wearing wigs, things to make you, you know, better than you” (Utley, 6). “Moreover, Whitney alludes to a distaste for Beyoncé’s adoption of normative white feminine beauty norms. Her blond hair extensions and light (bleached) skin remind black girls that appearing beautiful is akin to appearing as white as possible” (Utley, 6).
It didn’t seem that many of the girls wanted to be like Beyoncé, and the girls who did face peer-pressure from the other girls that Beyoncé was bad. I found it interesting to read that all the girls looked to their mothers as role models. Many of the girls said that their mothers faced poverty, instability and stress, but the girls were so proud of their hard-working mothers, saying that Beyoncé can’t really say that Beyoncé had a similar upbringing to their mothers or to themselves. Hannah said, “She lived in Houston, Texas, and she had a really nice house when she was little and she was in a singing group… So, basically, like she was born almost already there, right at the top—not at the bottom” (Utley, 9). This is an example of “mother respectability” that affected each of the girls’ views of Beyoncé based on how they were taught to see good and bad, vs. respectable feminism and inappropriate feminism. None of the children or teens were familiar with how their mothers overcame these lows in life either: undoubtedly, with support from family and friends. “This discourse of individualism further contributes to the respectability hierarchy between bad and good mothers by implying that bad mothers need support whereas good mothers are independently successful” (Utley, 7).
Utley quotes that “Gonick (2007) suggests that successfully presenting as a feminist entails tremendous ambivalence because the contradictory impulses of femininity and feminist make the realization of new ideals fraught with discomfort and impossibility” (10). I understand how different femininity and feminism definitions can differ in their definitions. Based on what I was taught to believe about being feminine, being a feminist in my mind does fit what Beyoncé seems to be for the girls—an inappropriate bad girl who doesn’t seem to live what she believes. Utley wonders how much of these girls’ opinions were generated by cultural respectability views; because when “Absent the sexism, classism, and colorism described by other girls, Bobbi and Emily, who are white, and Natalie, who is black and Polynesian were less familiar with the oppressive experiences described by the other girls and less likely to critique Beyoncé’s impropriety” (Utley, 8). I can understand how religious, cultural, and respectability views change how you perceive certain ideologies and political messages. It’s clear that more research should be conducted on a greater variety of girls and ages; however, each one is going to be biased based on their own upbringing and experiences. It’s impossible to create a perfect scenario in which everyone is completely unbiased in their opinions because we are human. “The most interesting contradiction is not that Beyoncé’s videos do not match her lyrics or her feminism does not match her outfits, but that the girls critiques her for not being a good role model even as their critiques espoused the girl power feminism that she models for them” (Utley, 10). Although Beyoncé outwardly manifests that “girl power feminism,” the main concern is clearly that her presentation in music videos is erotic and distracting. I dive further into my research by reading an article titled “Empowered or Objectified?”
K. A. Hansen conducted a study on Beyoncé’s music video “Partician” and her mini YouTube documentary Self-Entitled. “Seeking to illuminate how Beyoncé navigates and negotiates articulations of gendered identity and sexuality performatively, I map audiovisual aesthetics against the technologies of pop texts, which contribute to staging the gendered body through processes of production” (Hansen, 165). Keeping in mind that pop artists have to maintain certain aspects of their professional and personal life in order to keep up with the expectations of their fans, Hansen addresses potential pressure and agendas forced on a lot of pop stars. Beyoncé wasn’t an exception, and she confessed during one of her interviews that “she used to feel stifled by a sense of responsibility toward her fans, whereas she now feels that, ‘at this point, I have earned the right to be me and to express any and every side of myself’” (Hansen, 167). Hansen noted that most pop stars are objectified and idolized in their music videos, so “an understanding of the reciprocity of the music-image relationship in pop videos is useful for a consideration of how Beyoncé’s gendered display is facilitated through audiovisuality” (168).
In “Partition” Beyoncé sings that she just wants “to be the girl he likes,” [presumably Jay-Z], while the video features Beyoncé in costumes and lingerie dancing erotically in her fantasy of having sex in the back of a limousine. “Saturated images follow the movements and curves of Beyoncé’s body as the cameras shift relentlessly among multiple iterations of the singer, all of which are framed in a space that comes across as distinctly sexualized through the ways in which gestures, sounds, lyrics, costumes, and props are employed to constitute the audiovisual text” (Hansen, 168). Upon my own viewing of “Partition,” I was shocked to see a complete side silhouette of Beyoncé’s naked body moving on a platform/table. It concerns me how music videos like this aren’t censored—anyone with access to the internet can see this. I agree with Hansen’s statement “that music and sound also play a major role in powering the sexualized display in pop videos, audiences’ and critics’ tendency to dwell on visual imagery is significant” (170.) Feedback from fans and critics were both positive and negative. “Granted, there are many positive comments online as well, and they tend to focus on freedom of choice and female empowerment through sexual display, an angle that resonates with the feminist argument presented by Beyoncé herself” (Hansen, 170).
A valid point is also made that suggests Western culture fetishes the female body, which is one hundred percent true in my opinion. Growing up, my family and social circles circulated the idea that a woman’s body is sexual and provocative, detrimental to my testimony and a stumbling block to men’s minds if I didn’t “cover up.” While I agree that my body is private, I disagree with the amount of pressure placed on women with that kind of thinking—that it’s the sole responsibility of the woman to prevent unwanted sexual attention by being appropriately dressed and remaining chaste. I resonate deeply with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s words that were included in Beyoncé’s song “Flawless”:
“We say to girls, ‘You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man.’ Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support, but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage? And why don’t we teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors: not for jobs or for accomplishment, which I think can be a good thing; but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. Feminist, a person who believes in the social, political, and economical equality of the sexes.”
To me, this message included in Beyoncé’s song feels out of place. Not that she isn’t trying to celebrate her body and be herself and be sexual, but because her lyrics and music videos continue to reflect the stereotypes of women only being seen as something sexually desirable, subject to societies impossible, unrealistic beauty norms. I doubt the majority of men viewing “Partition” would say that they found themselves looking at her body in awe and not in lust. Beyoncé clearly wanted viewers to lust after her. She presents her beautiful body in such a confident, visually accessible, and sexual way; and yes, she’s celebrating herself in her way but she’s causing potential viewers to do the opposite of what she preaches and see the female body as only a sexual object. She is weaponizing her body to fight against the people who try to fetishize the body and oppress women into being sidelined and invaluable. I understand Beyoncé has freedom to self-express the way she wants to, but “I see a discrepancy between Beyoncé’s self-preservation as a feminist and her employment of audiovisual aesthetics that objectify the female pop artist according to normative expectations of gender and sexuality” (Hansen, 165).
Based on the previous study done by Utley, most of the young girls were uncomfortable with Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)” and “Flawless”—also songs that Beyoncé made sexual. Sexuality is a trend that runs in Beyoncé’s lyrics and music videos, and I think she risks making girls and women insecure and unconfident. While she is clearly a feminist, she is not a role model for girls; and she’s hardly doing much to defend stereotypes aimed at women.
Bibliography
- Hansen, K. A. (2017). “Empowered or Objectified? Personal Narrative and Audiovisual Aesthetics in Beyoncé’s Partition.” Popular Music and Society 40(2): 164–180.
- Utley, E. A. (2017). “What Does Beyoncé Mean to Young Girls?” Journal of Popular Music Studies 29(2): 12 p.
