The Visual Album dropped unexpectedly, suddenly. It felt traumatic, shocking. In a world where we feel personally connected to our favorite artists during every moment of every day, Beyonce’s spontaneous, secretive album launch left fans scrambling. BUT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO KNOW, her fans balked. They were just as angry in their exclusion as they were excited for the release, and the lack of knowledge created a stronger, more immediate longing than knowing ever could in today’s 10 second sound bite world.

If the album were a shortfall, she could have chalked it up to a risk gone awry. But Beyonce probably knew better than to take that risk unprepared. And so, we find ourselves with Beyonce, Visual Album, a compilation of 14 tracks and 17 accompanying videos that take us on a visual and lyrical journey of what it means to be female in its most raw, erotic, provocative form. It is your first orgasm, your first love, your first child. It is the pains and joys of love and jealousy, it is the pleasure and power of sexual attraction, it is the manifestation of a woman who is done talking about being on par with her rap mogul husband. She’s too busy just doing it. She is too busy surpassing him in relevance, super-stardom, and empire.

Feminism in its current stage is bordering on obsession with the concept of a women’s right to choose: to choose her partner, to choose her abortion, to choose her career, to choose her family, to choose her children, to choose her body, to choose her sexuality. Popular performance art has made significant strides: Katy Perry kissed a girl, Adele kept her curves, Jennifer Lawrence and Tina Fey cracked silly jokes in couture. They have all made strides for women in pop culture and women in culture, period. They made a choice and were celebrated for making it.

The importance of choice in the feminist movement is not to be undervalued. Choice and the acceptance of those choices are pivotal steps in the conversation and evolution of feminism. To talk about choice is just as powerful as it is to exercise that choice and to be accepted for that choice, and many artists have preceded Beyonce in this conversation.

However, Beyonce’s Visual Album has elevated the conversation. Feminism in Beyonce’s world is no longer about the concept of choice and acceptance. It goes one step beyond choice, to a world in which choice is no longer a luxury, nor does choice alone define femininity. Beyonce’s version of feminism is not about celebrating choice but about exposing the nuances inherent in every woman as a result of that right to choose. Beyonce has not chosen a single self in her life nor in her art because she knows she doesn’t have to. She has selected all of the above, and each moment of Visual Album serves as reflection of that complicated, complex existence — as a mother, a bread-winner, a jealous girlfriend, a heartbroken lover, a sexual fantasy. She is as needy of love and affection as she is confident in her near-royal status. She is as openly sexual with her husband as she is affectionately tender with her young daughter, and both are perfectly appropriate, even within the same album, the same song, the same breath. And the beauty of this album is that she is showing women that soon, we’ll stop celebrating choices and we’ll start celebrating women, in all their flaws, in all their deviances, in all their heartbreaks and joys and passions.

Post-feminism will no longer celebrate the choice because in a post-feminist world, the concept of choice will no longer be rare enough to warrant celebration. Post-feminism will celebrate the complete woman, as Beyonce does so honestly, in every form she may take on from one moment to the next. She is a tender lover, an insecure beauty queen, a hardened mogul, a super hero, a softened mother. She is one woman at the same moment that she is every woman. And we will celebrate them all.