Racialicious Crush Of The Week: Beyoncé (With Shout-Outs To Tina Turner)
Of course, there was the tempest-in-a-teapot controversy of her faking her own performance at POTUS Obama’s second inaugural celebration. While Marine Corp Band officials waffled on confirming and denying what happened, music experts dissected the mechanics on the Beyoncé’s allegedly inauthentic singing, and some Republicans wanted to end the President’s new tenure over it, singing legend Aretha Franklin had to stack some facts: ”But, when I heard the news this evening that she was pre-recorded I really laughed…I thought it was funny because the weather down there was about 46 or 44 degrees and for most singers that is just not good singing weather.” As my mom said about the whole thing: “It would be different if Beyoncé did something like Milli Vanilli. But she lip-synced. To. Her. Own. Voice. I don’t see the problem here.” Not only does the controversy play too neatly in the Black-folks-are-forever-lazy stereotype, but it’s also the twin okey-doke myths of a Black women simply won’t ever give her utmost for Black men and that a Black woman’s decision always brings down a Black man, in this case, one of the most powerful Black men in the world–and the US’ first Black president, at that. Glad folks moved on from this foolishness–and enough of them gave it some direct side-eye along the way.
What finally moved me to the edge of actually liking Beyoncé is that she made her married name a pop-cultural event–more accurately, the bullshit pushback about it moved me to that edge.
The “Mrs. Carter Show” Promo. Via thehonestyhour.com
I asked Racialicious’ Senior Editor (and feminist co-conspirator) Tami Winfrey Harris about the tour’s name. She replied:
Normally, I find the whole “Mrs. X” cuteness annoying. Don’t get me wrong, I support a woman’s right to call herself whatever the hell ever, but, let’s face it, married women giving up their names is a vestige of patriarchy. We choose our choices, but not in a vacuum.
That said…
I got no beef with Bey and The Mrs. Carter Tour. Again, most of the people all het up about it are not taking into account sexism as it relates to black women and images of family as they relate to the black community.
Bey ain’t giving in to any patriarchal view on marriage; the patriarchy is pretty insistent that black women are unmarriageable, unloving and unloved. And no way you can argue that Beyonce has given up her identity for Jay-Z’s. She’s Bey-fucking-once. No one forgets that. And it’s interesting that, at the same time folks are complaining about the endangered black family and off-the-chain single, black women, they also want to come for a black woman who “did it right” by Judeo-Christian, middle-class, heteronormative, white standards, and is celebrating her love for her husband and child.
Example eleventybillion that as black women we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.
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