Why Beyonce's Latest Album Makes Her a Modern Day Feminist

While I have always seen Beyonce as a strong figure of female empowerment, from Destiny’s Child’s Independent Woman and Survivor to Run the World, others have been less certain. I have read many conservative opinions of her ‘over sexualised’ dress sense amongst criticisms that she is being appropriated by the masculine music industry to represent feminist ideals in order to sell records to women.

I’m calling bullshit.

My reasons being, her newest, suprise-released album, Beyonce, is her most earnest revelation of female empowerment to date.

Pretty Hurts is perhaps the most explicit example of feminist ideas throughout the album, criticising the shallow and problematic nature of Western culture’s obsession with physiognomy. The video accompanying the song exposes this through an American beauty pageant, the epitome of vanity. Beyonce sings ‘it’s the soul that needs the surgery’, suggesting it is this ideology of female outward perfection which needs to be altered as it is regressive.

***Flawless is a homage to feminism, pumped with aggressive assertions of empowerment: ‘bow down bitches’. This is accompanied with the insistence that ‘Yonce is not just Jay Z’s ‘little wife’, perhaps a reference to her much-criticised decision to name her 2013 tour ‘The Mrs Carter Show’. ***Flawless seems a heated affirmation that she ain’t defined by no man *clicks fingers*. The borderline martial imagery is also manifested in Superpower, where a vision of people power questions society. 

The album’s sampling of a speech by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is also a brave moment. The speech discusses various experiences of the modern woman, and paradoxes the modern feminist is confronted with. Beyonce seems to recommend a reform of societal thought, not to value women for their looks or relations to men but for their actions.

Referring back to the conservative view of Beyonce being sold through objectification, the album does anything but shy away from these constructions. Songs such as Rocket, ‘Yonce, Drunk in Love, the subtly titled Blow, and Partition are all sexy as hell. From performing for Jay Z in the Crazy Horse strip club, to the fragmentation of the female body through close up, the videos accompanying these songs all conform to various examples of the male gaze.

Alone, these songs do not suggest a feminist message - indeed they are the types of songs other female artists, such as Rihanna (Pour it Up), churn out consistently. However it is the consciousness of the feminist argument, within other songs on the album, which casts Beyonce as a much more nuanced and intelligent artist. The aforesaid Adiche speech mentions how women cannot be sexual beings as men can. I would argue that these songs experiment with female sexuality to question such conservatism.

I’m sick of the argument that women who dress in a revealing manner cannot be feminist, as it’s for the attention of men. How do you then explain the primarily female audience at Beyonce’s concerts? Is she being objectified then? What if – and this is a radical premise –women just like feeling sexy. In fact, the sultry French passage in Partition translates (admittedly less glamorously) into English as ‘men think that feminists hate sex, but it’s a very stimulating and natural activity that women love’. There is a misconception, which Adiche addresses, that to join the feminist club you must A. hate men and B. veto sexuality. This assumption is beginning to be eroded, thanks to feminism’s inception in popular culture, of which Beyonce is a strong example.

Beyonce is not the perfect feminist, whatever that may be. But she is a real, nuanced human being, a strong, empowered woman who is a role model to millions. Her album charters real female experiences, with Heaven touching on her miscarriage, Blue about the unconditional nature of motherly love, and Jealous and Mine reflecting on the complexities of marriage.

Yet it is Grown Woman, the album’s finale, which encapsulates the spirit of the entire artwork. That line ‘I can do whatever I want’ transcends the song because it is what Beyonce has been saying in every song. She can so what she wants: she is Beyonce. She can be a seductress, mother, revolutionary, and businesswoman. And with this message she is speaking to all women: we can have it all. We don’t have to worry about whether being sexual compromises our ethics, or being a mother and wife makes us less ‘feminist’, to me that is not what feminism should be about: rather it is choice. To me, the message here is that we don’t have to be restricted by an unattainable ideal. We can have it all.