In Which I Speak of the Perfection and Cruelty of Beyoncé
Beyoncé is the only person in the world who could drum the word “Flawless” into millions of young girls’ ears and simultaneously declare herself a feminist — all without raising eyebrows. It’s a spectacular feat — even if it ain’t Oprah.
Lately I’ve thought of Bey as Icarian — she’s not too famous or too talented or too rich or too happy — but is she too perfect? The gravity of time, mortality, error, the mob — it pulls us all back to earth. Katie Perry tells young girls “you’re not flawless, but you’re perfect.” No matter how Bey phrases it, her gospel has always been “I am flawless.” It certainly looks true, but the gods have always judged perfection harshly.
I always assumed Beyoncé suffered from the same affliction as Michelle Obama — the one Barack highlighted in Dreams From My Father — the crushing pressure on members of the black middle class to be better, smarter, more perfect, to have to work twice as hard to prove you were just as good. But something makes me think Bey has locked on target here and can’t let go — that this isn’t compensation, but obsession.
And that’s where my thinking turns. When I see her as obsessed with and flaunting her superiority, I see something that will DEF make the bloggers unhappy: dominance. Suddenly she’s outside the bounds of trad-feminist notions of sisterhood and self-acceptance and in territory that is equally discomfiting for feminists and regressives: good old fashioned American-style fuck you dominance.
Step back and look hard at Jay and Bey: they’re both right out of an Ayn Rand novel. (His entire oeuvre, I might add, could be considered an objectivist rant if the rhymes and eloquence — and accomplishments — were removed.) These two don’t love their enemies, they crush them.
I don’t think Bey really cares if flawlessness is an unreachable standard for young girls. I think Bey just cares that she achieved it again tonight. And to be honest, I’m completely cool with that. Not only is it refreshing in a world of weepy sentimentalists who swear they’re here to save us, but it gives us something that the enraged and inferior lot cannot, the thing she’s blatantly telling us about: flawlessness.
Bey is better than you. And she knows it, and you know it, and she’s smiling. That this is something to celebrate is a far different message than anyone else is presenting on stage, and it’s a shift away from the whiny politics of resentment.
She is obsessed with one thing: her own fulfillment and expression. Everyone else is just cats clawing at the screen compared to that. So here’s to Bey. The Queen is dead, long live the Queen.
