Beyoncé’s got the #1 feminist album of the year

Like most of the world, I woke up for work this past Friday to learn that Christmas had come 12 days early – King Bey had dropped a completely new album in the middle of the night with no warning, no promotion, and no worries (for good reason, the album skyrocketed to the top of the charts in 75 countries and has sold 878, 773 copies this weekend alone, shattering iTunes stores sale records). Entitled just Beyoncé this album is her magnum opus and an unapologetic statement of self. I honestly have so many feelings about this album that I could probably make this article last 20 pages. (This wouldn’t be something new to me as I wrote ⅓ of my thesis about Beyonce’s solo career so…I won’t subject you to that).

Beyoncé’s evolution as an artist is evident in this album — and it’s not just musical. Women in pop music that discuss gender inequality are relatively rare. Both Katy Perry and Taylor Swift, for example, have shied away from claiming a feminist label or have actively disavowed it. And in the past, Beyonce has edged away from opening declaring herself a feminist.

When asked if she was a feminist in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK in 2011, Beyoncé said  ”I don’t really feel that it’s necessary to define it. It’s just something that’s kind of natural for me, and I feel like… you know… it’s, like, what I live for.” But she has spoken the language of feminism. In her HBO documentary she stated: “You know, equality is a myth, and for some reason, everyone accepts the fact that women don’t make as much money as men do. I don’t understand that. Why do we have to take a backseat?” as well as saying in a GQ interview earlier this year “…let’s face it, money gives men the power to run the show. It gives men the power to define value. They define what’s sexy. And men define what’s feminine. It’s ridiculous.” Beyoncé eliminates any doubts – and hopefully, silences any haters – about her feminist leanings. She may have toed the line in the past, but this album very clearly defines and defends her feminist sensibilities.

While the entire album is worth listening to (on repeat), I’ve highlighted the top 3 songs that demonstrate Beyoncé’s avid feminist stance. In the words of Anderson Cooper “It’s Beyoncé’s world, and we are just living in it.”

1. Beyoncé has never avoided expressing sexuality in any of her albums, but this one seems to be turning the heat up a little more than I’m used to. Don’t take this as complaining – it’s definitely  not. “Blow” is a song that is literally, well, all about getting good head. Jay Z must be really killing it to have inspired a song like this. “I know you never waste a drip / I know you never waste a drip” while licking her lips and getting down in a 70s style roller rink. Talking about receiving oral sex so openly is a pretty bold move for pop’s reigning queen, especially given today’s pop culture climate.

   Evan Rachel Wood recently went off on Twitter about the cutting out of a scene in which her character receives oral sex to avoid an NC17 rating – and Ryan Gosling had the same complaint in regards to his movie Blue Valentine. Which of course begs the obvious question: you can show people being decapitated a strangled on camera, but god forbid you show a woman receiving oral sex.

   We hear so many songs on the radio that glorify male sexual pleasure – songs like “Slob on my Knob” by Three Six Mafia, “Lollipop” by Lil Wayne. But songs that do the reverse are markedly less common. Additionally, when we do hear women singing about sexual pleasure on the radio, it is usually centered around how good a man is making her feel through intercourse. Celebrating female pleasure that is not dependent on a penis is still pretty rare, which makes “Blow” all the more radical. To quote Tumblr user :“If Beyoncé roller skating in a Wonder Woman shirt while singing about cunnilingus ISN’T what feminism is supposed to be about, I have no idea what it IS supposed to be about.”

2. This song is a carte blanche take down of the constant pressure to be physically perfect all the time. The accompanying music video stars Beyonce as a pageant contestant, turning the pageant into a literal allegory for the societal pressure that women face to be pretty in American society. She name checks the conflicting messages women receive from the media: “Blonder hair, flat chest, TV says, ‘Bigger is better.’ South beach, sugar free, Vogue says, ‘Thinner is better.’” Then she ties them back to the struggle of self worth “When you’re alone all by yourselfl / And you’re lying in your bed / Reflection stares right into you / Are you happy with yourself?”Most women can identify with this struggle. I remember being in third grade and looking the mirror, thinking about how fat I was already and what I could do about it. When Bey comes home from the pageant and smashes the trophies she’s won in the past, they become a metaphor for the standards of beauty and behavior for women. When she’s smashing the trophies, she’s smashing the false standards of beauty in our culture. It may strike some as a simplistic metaphor. But most pop stars sing saccharine self love songs that fail to do much more than preach cliches. Creating a space for this sort of cultural criticism in pop music – and on a chart topping album –  is in itself groundbreaking. She ends the song with the question “Are you happy with yourself?” and answers with a resounding “yes.”

3. I think I might have screamed when I listened to this song for the first time. You may recognize this as a reworked version of the previously released “Bow Down/I Been On” from earlier this year. Bey took a lot of heat for using the phrase “Bow Down” as well as the word “bitches” in this song. In my opinion, Beyoncé asserting her musical greatness when shes at the top of the game is nothing offensive – and nothing we haven’t seen male artists do before.

   In Beyonce’s words, “The reason I put out ‘Bow Down’ is because I woke up, went into the studio, I had a chant in my head, it was aggressive, it was angry, it wasn’t the Beyoncé that wakes up every morning. It was the Beyoncé that was angry. It was the Beyoncé that felt the need to defend herself!” As for using the word “bitch” in her song, I am a firm believer that a woman using the word “bitch” imbues it with a power and agency that is absent when used by a man to denigrate women. Context matters, as always.

   But the most “flawless” part of this song is the sample of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ted Talk, which essentially becomes the second verse of the song:

   “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, ‘You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise you will threaten the man.’ Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support. But why do we teach to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors – not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. Feminist: the person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.”
   

   The message of “***Flawless” couldn’t be more explicitly feminist. She uses Adichie’s speech to cement her feminist beliefs. In opposition some of the criticism Beyoncé’s received for contradicting herself – critics have attempted to juxtapose “Pretty Hurts” with “Flawless” – I see this song as a manifesto of empowerment. When Beyoncé sings “I woke up like this – flawless” she doesn’t just mean it on the mornings when she looks well rested and Blue Ivy slept through the night. She means it on the mornings she has bags under her eyes, crusty mascara from the night before, and bedhead, too. And that makes it accessible for the rest of us as well.

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