Beyoncé is a multi-winning artist, who is well-known everywhere. And when I mean everywhere, I mean everywhere. However, she is more of an artist, she is a storyteller. She strategically uses her status and social media platforms to speak out and support issues that she is strongly passionate about. What is so clever about her is that when she promotes herself, she is promoting what she believes in and the messages she wants to send out at the same time. Her Instagram page, which in fact has close to 100 million followers, is very simple. She doesn’t caption majority of her posts but honestly, she doesn’t need to because whatever she post’s you can clearly see what she is trying to share to promote, begin a discussion or just to admire rare family photos posted in the viewers.
When I think of Beyoncé, I of course just start grooving to her song Love on Top and singing to songs like Halo, If I were a Boy and of course Single Ladies. As I begin to look back on when I first discovered her and now, she has never changed who she is. She carries herself as a confident woman who never ever cared what others thought of her. She continuously works and fights for what she believes is right and delivers the message she wants the world to hear especially through her music.
Her recent visual album ‘Lemonade’ is undeniably a true work of art. In my opinion, it truly defines her as Queen. It had a huge impact on the audience and contemporary society especially due to the number of messages being delivered. In a news article written by Kirsty Fairclough on The Conversation, she discusses and states the numbers of reasons why this album is so important. The album brings up the topics ‘concerned with race, feminism and identity’. Furthermore, the album ‘was designed to directly represent and speak to the black female listener’.
At the 2014 MTV VMA’s, Beyoncé performed several songs from her BEYONCE album. There was a moment when she performed in front of a screen with had the words in large bold letters ‘FEMINIST’. In a rare interview with Elle Magazine, Beyoncé explains the reason why she did this was to ‘proclaim to the world that I’m a feminist. It’s someone who believes in equal rights for men and women.’
So does Beyoncé matter?, I most certainly believe so.
References:
- https://theconversation.com/why-beyonce-matters-58542
- http://www.elleuk.com/life-and-culture/news/a30096/beyonce-on-feminism-motherhood-and-the-real-message-in-formation/
- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/beyonce-explains-performed-in-front-of-the-word-feminist-flawless-formation-a6970256.html
Miriam T 