WARNING: Long Read

I UNDERSTAND THIS BEYONCE THING NOW

I read the "Proud Mary Performance" thread and I will admit I left annoyed. It started off cool. We were just giving out opinions. Some liked it, some didn't, (I thought it was okay, maybe I was expecting more from all the hype I heard). Then the thread turns away from the performance itself and turns into attacking and defending Beyonce as a vocalist, artist, and as a person. Beyonce can sing. Beyonce can entertain. We know this. So what's the problem? Why does she leave so many of us cold and unmoved despite the red-hot passion she injects into her performances? Why do you connect better with a Keysha Cole, a Mary J. Blige, or a Fantasia? Are they better vocalists than Beyonce? Better entertainers? Is it because they write their own songs? What's the deal?


Reginald Hudlin, the director of "Boomerang" said something that stuck with me. He said after the movie came out women came up to him and they all said 2 things: (1) Halle Berry's character is who they were and (2) Robin Givens' character is who they wanted to be.

Then this Beyonce thing started making sense to me. Fanstasia, Mary J. Blige, that's who we are. That's who we look like, they reflect how we live. Their songs, voices, or apperances may not always be pretty but neither is life. They are not particularly intimidating, if they walked into the room you would not really feel the need to keep an eye on your man. Then, there is Beyonce, glammed up, pitch-perfect, and over-the-top. She is who we (secretly) want to be. We want to have it all together. We want the baller boyfriend, the globetrotting lifestyle, we all want to be so fly that even our mistakes are hot.

Mary, Fantasia, and dem, are "real". They are our sisters, our girlfriends telling it how it is, Beyonce is a Barbie doll singing about life from some fairy tale land where she is the Queen of all that is hot. Right?

Beyonce tried to be "real" in "Me, Myself, and I" and you saw right through it. When did she ever have three kids in her home? **** please! Now Mary and the rest, we believe them. You and about 3 of your homegirls are going through the same **** they "wrote" about.

"I should have cheated". Leave me alone, go free yourself. You know what. That's exactly what I went through, I should have cheated on that *****! How did she know I went through that? She is so real !" I gotta buy that!" She wrote that about me!

Actually she didn't. Many of these "female-empowerment anthems" sang by our "real" soul sistas were written by men. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Beyonce was performing "Proud Mary" to honor Tina Turner. On Tina's last tour only one song on the set list was co-written by her. The rest were songs written by men, or covers of songs originally sang by men. Yet on stage she exuded a feminine sensuality so powerful it didn't really matter who wrote the songs. Thus, the best way to inject "realness" in a song, especially a song you didn't even write, is through live performance.

But this isn't about performing, songwriting, or even singing. It is about how we listen to music, that is we no longer listen to music, we look at it. If you're rough around the edges you are "real". If you have supermodel looks and a walk to match you are a manufactured pop tart. Our eyes wouldn't deceive us. Mary looks like she's gone through some stuff. She's had to have gone through some **** in her life. Right?


Right?

Yes. The truth is they all have gone through something. It's called womanhood. Beyonce may not wear her scars as openly but they are there as they are on all of us. Whether you grew up in the suburbs or projects. Whether you drive a Maybach or wait for the bus, we've all had our loves, losses, joys, and dissapointments. There is a pain that unites all women. And yet despite (or maybe because) of that pain we tear each other down on daily basis.

How many times have you simply walked through the mall and got the stank face from a girl who was "hating" on you. It happened to me. Me and a friend of mine walked through the mall, and you would not believe the negativity that was thrown at us. Girls giving us screw faces, rolling their eyes, sucking their teeth. I left the mall very bothered. What did I do? I just wanted to shop. Was all of that neccessary? They didn't know a thing about me other than what they saw and automatically and based soley off what they saw, they hated me.

"She thinks she's cute"

"Look at that fake ****"

My friend was ready to throw punches, I on the other hand was bothered and a bit hurt, yet a big part of me wanted to walk through that mall again, strut a little harder, toss my hair, and maybe throw in a wink at one of their boyfriends.

If they insisted on not liking me, I might as well give them a reason.

Of course you won't admit to any of this. Although we have all been the girl walking through the mall, being hated on, we have also all been the girl on the sidelines throwing hate.

So we lie to ourselves and each other. We make it seem as though this is a battle between "real" and "fake", "deep" and "shallow". Take Spike Lee's "School Daze" for example. The "Wannabes" mocked the "Jigaboos" for having dark skin, and shorter, kinkier hair while the "Jigaboos" condemned the "Wannabes for relying too heavily on their Eurocentric attributes and thus they were somehow "fake". But neither that movie nor this Beyonce thing is about real hair or even about being "real". Neither side was being "real" with themselves. The hurt the "Jigaboos" felt from being told by society that they were inferior and less attractive caused them to hate the "Wannabes" And the "Wannabes" hurt from being told that they weren't "black" or "real" enough caused them to lash out at the "Jigaboos".

A great number of us have not yet learned to love ourselves as complex and unique indiviuals, aside from what the eyes see, aside from our skin tones, outfits, or hair textures. Because of this our views of others are equally superficial. Just like those girls in the mall can't know anything about us based solely on what they see, how can we detect "realness" based solely off what we see?

It occurred to me that Beyonce is that girl walking through the mall. Strutting hard, tossing her hair, and mesmerizing your man. You could walk up to her and ask her where she bought that purse or those shoes, and compliment her for working it so hard, but we possess too much ego and too many insecurities. We have not fully learned to show love to ourselves so how can we give it to others? We all fight the battle of who we are and who we want to be, and anyone who seems to be winning that battle becomes the object of our hate. So we ball up our faces, suck our teeth, and roll our eyes, as she struts on by.

There is something in that hate, that negativity, the whispers, the angry glances that drives her. That's where she gets her scars. She knows you want to be just like her, but if she lets you know that she knows , you'll hate her even more, and deep down, although the hate fuels her, she wants you to like her.

And secretly, you wanted to ask where she got those shoes, but she's probably stuck up anyway.

Right?

[Written By: xtc386 on BB]

That's true for some and not for others, not everybody who dislikes someone feels that way because they are jealous or secretly want to be like that person. Alot of the behaviour explained is very real but there are more reasons to dislike a person, and it's made to seem that people (mainly women in that article) dislike her because she is very attractive and has what they want or is 'mezmerising' their man but that's just a way of sweeping all 'haters' together like they're all the same and none of them have an justified or interested reasons because they've all got insecurities about themselves and Beyonce is so beautiful and talented so obviously she can do no wrong really and any time someone dislikes her it's because they're envious. That may be true based on image alone but I think a lot of the backlash she and her father got was because of behaviour not her looks. She has millions of people who support her looks and her talent.

It's also sad the way they make out that the 'women' who dislike her are the 'normal' plain ones with everyday problems and nothing interesting and with men who would check out Beyonce if they had the chance because they're obviously not satisfied with what they've got. I know that behaviour is real and the mall example but it's not all there is.

^

You make a point, but the article was just about is she real or fake...and why people do not like her because of her image. I have MANY times that she is not real artist just because of her image.

Ok, I don't see how it was about whether she is 'real' or 'fake' though. It seems more about how some people, mainly 'unattractive' women, view her as fake because they are insecure. It didn't really discuss any actual points about how she could be real or fake. I don't quite get what they would mean by that anyway when it comes to image unless they're talking about what makes a person less 'natural' i.e. non-medical cosmetic surgery, artificial beauty products that are non-natural from anything such as chemical soaps to hair mousse, to styling hair to fake hair, to whitening & straightening teeth to fake nails and nail varnish and make up, eyelashes to unnatural and unhealthy foods. They didn't mention any of that - that's why I didn't see how the title corresponded with the article when I first read it. They/he/she just mention how certain women perceive Beyonce, and might call her fake but not how she could be real or fake other then supposed bad experiences with men that somehow make a woman more real if they have them.

EDIT - thinking on it a little more - I think if the title had been more specific and less widesweeping the article would have been in better context. I can see how they're only describing one gorup of people and ok, if they had said that they were setting out to do only that in the title it wouldn't have felt as if it was missing a lot of elements and wasn't objective or actually discussing the title but rather only pertaining to it indirectly. For what they've done and what you say they were trying to do, they've done it but it wasn't exactly hard was it when the target is so narrow. But then again, I'm glad, because there's alway so much focus on 'attractive' people being rude vicious and obnoxious when quite frankly people who aren't socially accepted as high on the attractiveness scale do it all the time too and continuously try to take down people who are more physically attractive then themselves to their face or behind their back whether they know them or not. They have to pick on something to make that peson seem less superior, even if that superiority is only in their heads and put them down to feel better about themselves by thinking that person thinks too much of themselves or needs taking down even when that person hasn't done anything or doesn't think others are inferior or treat them as such . Many people judge solely on looks, make assumption on it and treat the people they have judged according to it, but don't realise how ignorant they are themselves for such limited thinking.

I just don't think that is all relevent to Beyonce who has other possible character traits which have led to her negative image - it would unwise to base negativity towards her soley on the way she looks because it might be based on other things but taken out on the way she looks. But that is of course unfair in itself and very ignorant - attacking something totally unrelated because they can't make a point. It's just tough to use the reason offered by the article for Beyonce because she is questionable and not seemingly entirely innocent and it doesn't seem to really be all about image. If the article was about someone who got negativity purely/wholly for their image because the negative people didn't know anything about their character, it would have more of a point.

First off, let me start off by saying that I thought that this article touched on some true issues. I also thought that the article made some pretty valid points. But at the same time, I felt as though it left out A LOT! I felt it was VERY one sided, VERY biased, and I could tell that this was a die hard Bee fan that wrote it.

The thing that black women need to realize is that they are BEAUTIFUL. They are beautiful with their frizzy unpermed hair, they are beautiful with thier dark skin complexion. Black women need to realize that they are beautiful. That they don't need blonde hair extentions. They don't need to bleach their skin or perm their hair to be beautiful. They need to understand that they already are!

HOWEVER... when they turn on the t.v and see black women that look NOTHING like them. That portray something that black women are NOT. That is when that seed of disparage is planted in thier mind. And then when they see this completely FAKE representative of a black women get praised, like Beyonce, that just makes that seed grow in their minds. Black women relate more to people like Mary J., Fantasia, and others because they represent a TRUE black women. Not some fake ideal black women that the media portrays. Not some black female that the media thinks look good. And I don't think is necessarily jealousy. I just think it's the fact that people like Fantasia are more real I guess

Beyonce is a fanstasy women, nothing more nothing less. I think women like Mary are much more tangible

I understand why people feel Mary more, she's rough, but not EVERYONE is the same. Beyonce is completly different, she's a complete different person. She's had problems of course, but she didn't grow up on the street, but why does that make her music pointless and such?

Beyonce to me catagorizes into a different catagory. She hides her personal life for her sake, do you blame her. She's never put her business out, and she's always kept a clean name. Not everyone is a badass, Beyonce for example.

She wasn't beat, she didn't do cocaine, but if she did we would never know, and that's understandable. She puts a different respect out, and I love that.

Thanks

I disagree with some u said but I really agree with that. Beyonce has said at NUMEROUS TIMES that she does not feed into the media, so she dont follow up on rumors are let her business out. She just continues with her life. I guess people like Mary just open up more.

The 10-paragraph (estimate) rant made by a die-hard fan hasn't revealed anything that wasn't already known. Like some other posters have noted, this article seems to only focus on "less attractive" black women" who dislike Beyonce and left out everybody else who dislikes her. But can you blame those women ? As Marques pointed out, the media (Beyonce included) has given these women insecurities to live with.

I think you all are slightly misunderstanding the article. It is just to show that just because those other artists seem more real than Beyonce doesnt mean they are.

I didn't realise that it was just about black women at all - just because the artists mentioned are black, people from all races act that way as different ideals of women are shoved down their throats.