An Actual Defense of Beyonce

This is my response to the Bitch Magazine article that half-ass defends Beyonce's "Run the World." I haven't run any other criticism of this video except people who say that, no, in fact, girls don't run the world. While I don't disagree with that statement, I entirely disagree that Beyonce's song and video are devoid of any message aside from consumerist delusions.

The main points critisized:
1. Beyonce equates power with having money.
2. Beyonce is not a feminist scholar.
3. The song uses the word "girls" rather than "women"
4. Features scantily clad women in her video.
5. Beyonce falsely asserts that girls rule the world. 

First, my interpretation of the song lyrics: The song does not actually say that girls rule the world. It says that men think they are better than women but they are wrong. This song acknowledges that industry trends (this beat is crazy) are being used to sell a minority point, similar to the work of M.I.A. It discourages girls from hiding their power, unlike Madonna in "What it Feels Like for a Girl," which asserts that girls are strong inside but "good little girls, they never show it." Beyonce is "hood with it," so she's talking to dis-empowered minorities. Beyonce raises a glass to those girls getting college degrees. She encourages men to respect strong girls and simultaneously tell girls there are boys who will love them for being strong women. Finally, she pushes the potential power of girls to "With our love we can devour/You'll do anything for me," a scary illustration of power challenging girls to push the limits of normality, even if their power scares them, because the normal asserts that a woman should be scared of her own power. Notice that the song is in a mix of the present and future tense.

Addressing the first point of criticism, there is nothing wrong with telling a woman she should make the same amount of money as a man does. This is really classic feminism we're talking about here. That Beyonce threatens the Boy's Club status quo here should not be confused with the rap industry obsession with bling. She's talking about working a 9-5 in this song. Finally, it is delusional to say that, in America, having more money does not open gateways to power. Whether or not that should be the case is not the issue. That's how it is right now.

Addressing the second point, the fact that Beyonce is not a feminist scholar is part of the reason that I listen to her music and a huge part of the reason that girls, who are so wrapped up in patriarchal values that they oppose feminism, listen to her music. Her brand of feminism is about friendship and support. She's about empowering women, not the top down approach of dismantling that invisible yet ubiquitous hand of patriarchy. Her target audience, judging by the sound of the song, listens to the radio and may not have any knowledge of feminist discourse. Beyonce puts her point into that perspective, not into the perspective of someone reading Judith Butler.

I don't think Beyonce's target audience is the women who are in power. How much do you think Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin care about black girls' on the verge of accepting or rejecting their own self worth? Even liberal women in power are, for the most part white. No offense, but a lot smart, young black kids mistrust anyone who is white and in any position of power. That's where Beyonce comes in. I realize I'm limiting this to America but a black woman, because she's basically royalty in her industry, singing in America know that African Americans and that community/history are her audience.

Beyonce embraces her sexuality and urges women to not only feel sexy but take charge of their own sexiness. Watch a few more Beyonce videos and tell me that's untrue. Also, I am personally disinclined from calling a woman that looks like a lion (note the hair, shoulder pads, bold jewelry) scantily clad. Partly because I'm afraid she could destroy me.

Again, Beyonce does not assert girls rule the world. The tense of her song implies her target audience is actually young women. Studies upon studies have shown that girls surpass boys in school until they get to the age that they start worrying about what boys think of them. And that's where Beyonce steps in.

Beyonce mixes radical, black, and practically conservative feminism in ways that a woman who continually demonstrates her ability to work her industry, which is music not cultural criticism, certainly has the right to mix. In fact, you should let her open you mind up to the notion and give yourself that right as well.

Gut Feelings

I just read an article about learning to be more intuitive. At first it seems counter-intuitive that you can learn intuition. I think this is because intuition has a connotation of being something that is ingrained. Something you either have or you don't have. Learning how to be intuitive rings of learning how to be smart. You either are smart or you aren't, right?

I vehemently disagree on both accounts. More later on the smarts.

Of course you can learn to be more intuitive. By the time people are teenagers, I believe they have had enough experiences in their lives that they can, by intuition, know a lot about most people and situations. The article I read suggests that, in order to be intuitive, you have "be in touch with yourself." It suggests meditation to achieve the inward stretch. Though I enjoy a good amount of yoga and love solitary, meditative activities, I believe there's more to intuition than occasionally slowing down to think.

Being intuitive, first of all, requires a lot of honesty. You cannot be intuitive by lying to yourself. In fact, a lot of times you can distinguish an intuition by asking yourself whether or not the feeling you are having feels like it's coming out of being honest with yourself. After all, if you are not honest with yourself, how do you know if you can trust yourself?

If you're going to be honest with yourself, sometimes you have to confront yourself. A lot of times, in the heat of passion, people feel or say things that they don't mean. After such a burst of anger, sadness, frustration or anxiety, they spend a lot of time convincing themselves that what they said of felt was the truth. Rather than listening to their intuitive side, which continuously posits that they were wrong, they find themselves continuously defensive against themselves.

There are ways that intuition can become muddled which make it difficult to decide if you can trust yourself. I think that being betrayed by someone you love results in a mistrust of yourself deep enough that finding your way back to inner focus can take a lot of healing time and patience. It doesn't hurt to find healing love, either. Just remember, if you try, you can trust yourself again.

Intuition is a powerful skill. It is not the kind of skill that has ever been taught in classrooms, and is probably one reason I eventually hated school. It is powerful enough that it must be used responsibly. It is inadvisable to challenge the limits of your intuition by continuously placing yourself in intuitively challenging situations, especially when your own emotions are involved. I say this from experience. But on this front, Susan King found a healthy outlet for her intuitive powers and I intend to find my own.

On the rearranging of disagreeable ways:

Creativity has nothing to do with the act of creating or invention. It is not solely artistic but the best art certainly interacts intimately with the idea of creativity. Creativity is kind of a misnomer for the ability to see something in many different ways. It's divergent thinking. Its resourcefulness. It's cleverness. At its best, creativity allows us to make the most of what we have.

In order to decide how you can make the most of what you have, you have to be able to see different ways of how to do best by what you have. For example, if you have a towel and you can only imagine it to be a device used to dry off wet things, you are limited in a situation in which you need something to serve as a pillow but only have a towel. (That example was inspired by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.)

On the other hand, using a towel as a pillow is a creative use of a towel. An increasing amount of imagination is required to see an object or situation in increasingly unconventional ways, considered to be more creative ways. It's not that you have to accept that believing a towel is a device used to dry off wet things is a wrong conceptualization of a towel, but you have to accept that in a situation in which you have a towel and need something that is not a towel, the towel can and must be thought of differently.

As a poor kid, I accepted that fact. First, you look around you and see that what you have is not quite what you want and sometimes not even what you need. You must then fully understand what you want/need and what you have. Then, you have to accept that what you have is not some kind of punishment. It does not matter if you have been wronged or if you deserved better. If you feel like your limited situation is a punishment, at least face the toil of having to be creative as your penance. If you feel you have been wronged, embrace the toil as something that will make you stronger and prove you to be more resilient than those who have wronged you would have imagined. Sometimes, you are your own disciplinarian or have done yourself wrong to land yourself in your situation. Maybe you deserved it. Good for you. But now you have to learn from it and, as always, make the best of what you have.

As I just implied, you have to exercise creativity even in non-material circumstances. Exercising it in material circumstances can help you conserve resources but being able to exercise creativity when you are depressed, for example, can save your life. I have demonstrated a dangerous ease for depressive proclivities. However, if I think to myself that my depression can be solved by a change in perspective, that there must be a better way to look at things or a better attitude to have towards them and cling to that conviction, I have found myself able to recover without ever having used mood enhancing drugs.

It's only in the context of creativity that the expression "Pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" really makes any sense.