In defense of Beyoncé

When Beyoncé’s surprise album dropped a few months ago, the reviews were glimmering and golden.

Now that her music videos have come out on YouTube, that’s sort of stopped.
As Beyoncé leaned her cat-suit clad frame across tables and stair rails, many began questioning her media image and feminist philosophy, most notably figures like Fox News and Bill O’Reilly.

We all know where that’s going to lead us, but it’s good to address this criticism regardless of however extreme the news outlet.

With a track like “Flawless (feat. Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche),” it became easy to see Beyoncé’s message as hypocritical. People asked how she could fight for women’s rights and equality when she dresses up in diamond body suits and talks about having consensual, marital sex with her husband.

Well, actually, she can.

Beyoncé represents, for me, a new wave of feminism. It is not about trying to gain the sexual freedom of a man, or express oneself the way a man would. It’s about celebrating the feminine genius.

Beyoncé also joined forces with Condoleezza Rice and Jane Lynch for Sheryl Sandberg’s “Ban Bossy” campaign, which addresses stereotypes and stigmas that hold women back — a campaign I am also totally behind.

She wants people to realize women do not have to lose their femininity or sex appeal to gain equality or positions of power. The new fight must be fighting for femininity.

Even if being a woman means others discriminate against her and prevents her from gaining human rights, women should not have to give up their womanhood. Oppressors must change their points of view. It’s this strange, wishy-washy middle ground of feminism that makes more sense to me than the extreme feminist views of the 60s and 70s, or the polarizing actions of radical groups like Femen.

I, for one, don’t really feel the need to paint derogatory sayings across my stomach, run onto catwalks, assault and insult models and scream at the attending crowd that I need rights because I need them.

I don’t really think acting absolutely insane is going to do much for my movement. Beyoncé, however, is exactly the direction I want to be moving in.

Instead of saying women must be equal in the way that men are equal, that women must be able to sleep with whoever they want and avoid marriage and children and become as ruthless as the nearest business magnate, she wants to turn the discussion to one that celebrates what women have done and will do.

Femininity must be celebrated, not stigmatized. With more figures like Beyoncé in the media, that is what will, hopefully, happen.

ewenning@indiana.edu
@EmmaWenninger