Why I don't digg Beyonce

As of lately, I have been made to ponder about why I don’t really dig ‘Beyonce’. With these recent videos from her here at the top, I wonder whether anyone (especially males) is able to step back and analyze the ‘female’ image she has helped to (re)invent via her music and especially her videos. The topic has popped up in various discussions (at work and at home) and I have been motivated to express my thoughts and reasons as to why I am amidst a school of admirers swimming the opposite direction. It is immensely annoying when I hear my 5 year-old daughter singing ‘Who run the world? Girls…who run the world? Girls’….my opinion here is far from being uttered via a sexist platform...independence for women I support, rights of the opposite sex I support just as highly and I believe in a woman’s incredible ability to stand and support everything around her without the help of the opposite sex. However, all this I perceive through a social, cultural and personal understanding of what a woman is. This image is influenced and embedded within a morally and ethically charged experience and desire. That partly means an image of the woman that is both within reach and beyond our experience. To resist getting into essay writing, I would just imagine that a woman ideally for me is strong yet full of grace in her deliverance of that strength. On the other hand, there are many popular women (entertainers, singers and actresses) displaying some of these attributes yet I would imagine they have their own flaws too. Yet also, such blemishes are considered more interesting than the former. It’s almost as if it is more acceptable to be wild and uncontrollable than to be respectable and gracious.
The kind of image I understand that is being negotiated within popular music in the case of Beyonce is animated and vivacious, but in a confrontational and challenging manner. I understand that a big fan of Beyonce would argue that we should take her entire music into account, especially the side to her music that is more mature and gracious as in the case of more loving and romantic tunes. I would argue that, as of right now, in our imagination, the work she has put out in the forefront of her works speaks of a wild, unruly, and rowdy woman. A highly influential one too. Someone else might argue that we should see the artistic side, the creative and the aesthetic values of her imageries and take them as they are – art. They would more so argue that we should know better that television is television and entertainment is entertainment, and see the fun side to it – it is after all, just entertainment. The same horse crap argument they make about violent games, explicit movies, sexually charged advertisements, mostly to divert our concerns from moral and ethics to the sorry ass excuse of making a living. All the above we as adults can understand and see the artistic and creative dimension to the person and image that is Beyonce and we can understand that it is not in any way harming our conscience and perceptions of morals and ethics. All this we can deconstruct it into pieces and see that it is not challenging our perceptions of ourselves and our relationship to things around us (or can we?). Either way, it doesn’t really matter because it is our children that aren’t yet equipped with the critical and deconstructive tools needed to relate to the world in front of them. A world that is becoming more adult-orientated and one that looks beyond and past our concerns for our kids while wiping their tears and snooty noses with dollar bills….The kind of woman I prefer my daughter to aspire to be like is strong and gracious, yet intelligent in approaching her world. Not one who aspire to rule the world in the expense of some violent and oppressive opponent. A woman who can conquer her oppressive demons through ethics and morality but most importantly, through God…..