There has been a great bruhaha about Beyonce’s new album and the “feminist message within it:

That Time Beyonce’s Album Invalidated Every Criticism of Feminism Ever


On Defending Beyoncé: Black Feminists, White Feminists, and the Line In the Sand

Here Beyoncé tell us about the message behind her album and references watching feminist “videos”on YouTube…where she came across Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Not to be elitest but I would have felt better about it if she had said that she was reading feminist authors…but hey Youtube is an acceptable present day resource of information. However to me it smacked  Beyoncé’s creative team’s click, copy, use M.O. to me. I can see someone being told to research “feminism” and coming back with a whole bunch of links… Not to sound hateful, I think that innately Beyoncé is a feminist: she enjoys gender equality in her career, and life, albeit she tends to do it in a leotard gyrating… but why quibble. And here is the crux of my inner struggle with this issue, I have an issue with women having to be hypersexualized, and physically exposed, legs spread, breast out, and the concept of feminism being linked to that image…  yes I know that sexual expression and freedom is a part of equality, and that men have to take their shirts off too, however, show me a woman in the entertainment industry that (regardless of the authenticity of her talent and excellence) has not stripped down for a cover? There are the handful who they don’t want to see naked, (the Rebel Wilsons, the Melissa McCarthys, Adeles, and Meryl Streep who has is still hot but just aged out) who get a pass…oh if you are a funny girl, they get a pass… the Whore, Slut Jezebel image is just another box that has been used to define and demean women—READ bell hooks… and these images, these behaviors in many of the women in music (especially) today do not call to mind (for me) feminism…it is a complex and complicated topic..

So my jury is a bit out on this one frankly, I am marinating a bit more on this one, in any case I do think that the song Pretty Hurts has a great message, read the lyrics here!