Why I’ve Started Listening to Beyoncé Again
The first time I heard “Flawless” I was driving through the desert with my best friend. The low winter sun was slowly sinking towards the mountains, creating long purple shadows and depth in the flat, empty east. The west looked like an art project I did in kindergarten, the entire mountainous horizon one roughly torn sheet of dark purple construction paper. Fiona sat next to me wearing a backwards yellow baseball cap as we drove through this grandeur of emptiness and simplicity, so unlike the many layers of color and texture, the varied planes of Seattle.
We were heading home after a road trip down south to tour colleges in California and Oregon, cutting through the little corner of Nevada that’s nested against California. My thoughts were as present as they ever were at that time, ruminating over the recent past and imminent future.
Fiona and I were in the same core humanities classes, which under normal circumstances would have been a lot of fun. As it was, however, the most we could do was keep each other company as we suffered. By some cruel convergence of chance, scheduling, and the patriarchy, a large group of white male jock types outnumbered the girls in the class two to one.
It turned out about as well as you would think.
We did a debate in AP U.S. History one day and I read the opinion I’d prepared. I wasn’t particularly invested; our positions in the debate had been assigned, and I was getting a cold. President Truman shouldn’t have dropped two atomic bombs on Japan during World War Two. He didn’t need to, it wasn’t worth it. I spoke calmly, levelly. I cited sources from class saying we could have won the war without killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and releasing radiation that would affect an entire generation. I thought I laid out a logical, well-researched argument.
You only think that because you’re Japanese. The other side had a chance for a rebuttal and he disregarded my rational argument, instead telling me I wasn’t even capable of forming one. There was no malicious intent behind his statement; maybe it would have been easier to brush off if there were. We had known each other since kindergarten.
I was too caught off guard to say anything in response. I had cited sources. Even the words of white male historians weren’t enough, not if they were coming from the mouth of an Asian girl.
Later, I told the story to a different teacher at the school, one I was close with. Well, you can’t say your race isn’t part of why you thought so. He was white, too. I’m barely even Japanese, I wanted to tell people. As if that mattered.
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Why is there war? The teacher asked one day.
One boys said, disputes over limited resources.
Moral and human rights issues, like slavery and the Civil War, or World War Two and the Holocaust, said another.
Because heads of state are, and historically have been, male. The girl’s face was carefully expressionless, her voice steady. My chest felt tight as soon as she finished her sentence — admiration and fear.
The boys were outraged. You can’t make such broad generalizations. They felt unfairly attacked. Not all men. I don’t think the irony of the aggressiveness of their reaction occurred to them as they shouted her down.
I went up to her afterwards, but I didn’t know what to say. What you said in class today was cool. But what I really meant was, I’m so sorry I didn’t say anything to support you while they were yelling at you.
— -
I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that girls never spoke in my junior year humanities classes if they didn’t have to. It had only been one semester and, driving north on Interstate 5 with Fiona, I really didn’t know if I had the energy for another one.
I’m not using hyperbole when I say that, at the time, it was the most marginalized and powerless I’d ever felt. It wasn’t exactly the most targeted or unsafe environment I’d been in; being catcalled while walking down the street feels more threatening in that moment than I ever did at any particular instant my junior year. But in high school I didn’t have the option to just keep walking, to move along to where I felt safer. I had to keep coming back, every day, and the experience was exhausting and diminishing in an entirely different way.
For months I sat in class and saw other girls give up trying to get a word in edgewise. I watched my male teacher not notice or address the problem. I listened to these boys reassert their power over and over as their thoughtless comments went unopposed in the exclusive space they had created. And somewhere along the way I decided I was better off keeping all my opinionated, bossy, bitchy thoughts to myself.
We’d been driving in silence for a while when Fiona asked me if I had heard any of Beyoncé’s new visual album. I hadn’t. Fiona told me she had a song I needed to hear and, as the last defiant notes of “Flawless” faded away, I knew she was right.
You wake up / Flawless / Post up / Flawless.
I listened to that song, and the entire album, over and over that semester.
Ridin’ round in it / Flawless / Flossin’ on that / Flawless.
Each time I did I regained a little strength and resolve.
This diamond / Flawless / My diamond / Flawless.
I was aware enough of sexism to see how bad this class environment was. And I was empowered enough to know that my opinions deserve respect. But, still, these boys were able to silence me. I had been defeated in a very personal way.
So I listened to Flawless before every cross country race. Drunk In Love and Partition and XO while I drove home. Heaven and Blue while I did my homework.
We flawless / Ladies tell ’em / Say I / Look so good tonight.
Beyoncé wasn’t the only one helping me through the following months. I had Sherman Alexie and Billy Collins, M.I.A. and Rebecca Solnit. But Beyoncé (the album) was the soundtrack of the following months, and Flawless became my mantra.
We flawless / Ladies tell ’em / I woke up like this / I woke up like this.
I had to do the work, though. I had to learn to speak through the doubt they’d imposed, and when they interrupted me I had to learn to push through sweaty hands and heart-racing, queasy self-doubt to interrupt them right back. I had to open myself up to better words. Beyoncé, then, did not exactly empower me but rather was essential to the process of re-empowering myself.
My sister taught me I should speak my mind / My man made me feel so goddamn fine / I’m flawless.
I made it through the semester and I got out of that high school. I took my gap years, traveling and working and having world-opening experiences. I was doing my own thing, and I didn’t need to listen to Beyoncé to feel strong and capable; when I needed affirming, supportive words, they came from inside me. Although, in all honesty, I was also traveling internationally and not spending very much time around white males. I’m sure that also helped.
But in the last few months, ever since I started college, I’ve found myself gravitating towards her music again.
Why is that, you ask?
I’ve found myself back in an environment where, fairly often, I find myself feeling tired and disempowered. And I could leave; I know that. But I left my high school, and I’m not about to let “them” beat me again.
Middlebury isn’t my high school; it’s a new type of hard, and the challenges manifest differently. But in the same constant, ongoing way it’s wearing me down.
Bey probably won’t be everything I need, and this essay isn’t even close to everything I have to say on the subject. But her words are still defiant and powerful and her beats are still bold and unapologetic. And her music still makes me feel as fiercely unbroken, as righteously pissed off, as they did driving through that construction paper desert with Fiona three years ago.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is: it’s a start.
