Liberté, Egalité, Beyoncé

When Beyoncé performed during Halftime XLVII, I was actually shocked to hear from those who were sourly underwhelmed with her performance.

I’ll get the sentimentality over with. Beyoncé was one of the key factors to my coming to terms with my homosexuality.

“Alright, Fran, that’s a stretch,” you say, but I kid you not. The 12-year-old me who checked out Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor” album from the library did a whole lot of over-enthused dancing and lip-syncing alone in his room until he finally admitted to himself he might be a little different from other boys.

Not only was Destiny’s Child my breach into the world of female R&B, but my breach into the world of secular music, in tandem with Gwen Stefani’s “Love. Angel. Music. Baby.” Before then, I had a devout ear for Christian rock that would only have deterred me from what I loved in pop music.

I am glad that I saw the truer light, and since then, Beyoncé has been my all-time favorite music artist/human being. She has taught me to love myself.

I don’t know why I found it so bizarre that Queen B does not resonate in the same way for everyone as she does for me. I have quite a bias.

So here’s my beef with the nonBey-lievers. As seriously and objectively as possible, here’s why Beyoncé is a living legend and the icon for my generation (pre-Gaga, post-Madonna). Here’s what Beyoncé means to me and can to you.

Beyoncé is a good human. Last year, she was not only the spearhead for World Humanitarian Day in an effort to engage her audiences with philanthropy in all its forms, but she voiced support for recently out artist Frank Ocean. She wrote not only to him, but to the whole he might embody: “Be Fearless, Be Honest, Be Generous, Be Brave.” She called Ocean an inspiration for those who have not yet come forward.

Beyoncé, to me, is a greater symbol of equal human rights than any other activist celebrities because she does with grace, without over-politicizing and without the vanity it comes with.

The early 90s generation, which I think largely misses out on the loud, yet garish LGBT movement spawned from Lady Gaga, has much to gain from the sophistication of Ms. Knowles.

Beyoncé is real and accessible. Her talent and experiences are vested deep in struggle, bouts of postpartum depression, self-doubt and existentialism.

Sure, these things lose their credibility when you make $40 million in a year, but her nerves make her accessible and humble, singing about psychological warfare when she isn’t singing from a diva’s perspective.

Bey fosters the diva in all of us — bear with me — in that success, independence and confidence grows from the hardship of your former failure. She attests that we can reappropriate the negativity in our lives in generating a better version of ourselves.

­— ftirado@indiana.edu