Beyoncé was featured in the Time 100 Most Influential People List, as well as being chosen for the cover photo, for which she posed in her underwear. Women have the right to be in control of their bodies, and to be sexual.īut by doing this, are you in control of your own sexuality, or using the most base, unoriginal way to gain fame and fortune?Ī recent example of Beyoncé failing to live up to the symbol of feminism she has become can be seen in the recent Time Magazine debacle. ![]() Of course, this argument isn’t a new one, and Beyoncé’s reply is always the same – female empowerment. But being a global superstar in Western patriarchal culture also seems to involve wearing skimpy clothing, dancing suggestively and doing other things that serve to blur the line between feminism and anti-or-postfeminism. ![]() The global brand of Beyoncé is all about empowering us to be strong, independent women, who recognise our inner beauty and don’t need men to succeed in life. But, as they say, with great power comes great responsibility, and when a global superstar labels herself a feminist, that responsibility is often difficult to uphold. Beyoncé could announce tomorrow that she will only perform from now on in a Godzilla costume, and people would just roll with it. Sure, there was a time when she undoubtedly had to go through this charade, but those days are long gone. But do we blame the industry for this, or the individual? The vast majority of performing artists are told what to wear, what to say and how to act in order to get ahead, but Beyoncé is not one of them. But like every woman in the entertainment business who names themselves a feminist, there are times when the pointy bra and raunchy lyrics don’t quite live up to the ideology. Singer, mother and self-proclaimed feminist. Now it seems the writer's words have themselves inspired an uptempo feminist anthem from one of the biggest names in pop music.Beyoncé. "We say to girls, you should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten The Man."Īdichie begins her talk by recalling a Nigerian childhood spent reading British and American literature which inspired her to write novels featuring African characters. Over the course of the 30-minute speech, the novelist argues that we do "a great disservice" to boys in how we raise them, putting them in the "hard cage" of masculinity and that we do "a greater disservice" to girls. The pop diva quotes Adichie's definition of a feminist as "a person who believes in the social, economic and political equality of the sexes". But of course when the time is right we expect those girls to bring back the perfect man to be their husband. If we have sons, we don't mind knowing about our sons' girlfriends, but our daughters' boyfriends? God forbid. "We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don't teach boys the same?"Īnother section sampled on ***Flawless argues that girls are raised "to see each other as competitors, not for jobs or accomplishments which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men".īeyoncé has also used lines from a part of the speech where Adichie queries parents' attitudes towards young people's sexuality: ![]() a source of joy and love and mutual support. "I am expected to make my choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. "Because I am a female, I am expected to aspire to marriage," Adichie says. Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Lagos earlier this year.
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