Rare News Desk
Last night, Beyoncé and Jay-Z opened the 2014 Grammy Awards with this performance.
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People were offended by Beyoncé’s chair dance. I get it, and even tweeted that she’s better than that. She’s beautiful and talented and incredibly hard working, and she doesn’t need to resort to that, and it bugged me. Call me a prude, but I don’t think flashing your bits all over the place to get attention is a winning strategy. Beyoncé has the goods and can get by without needing to straddle a chair.
No, I can’t even really repost the lyrics here, and yes, there were large sections that were bleeped out for national television. However, this was far from a Miley Cyrus debacle. The man she was singing about and dancing up on was her husband. And he was the one that she shared the stage with.
This is a couple, arguably one of the most visible power couples on the planet, that has a presumably healthy marriage and a beautiful little girl. They are committed to each other, and they enhance each other. They have fun.
Is straddling a chair an ideal way for a conservative to portray marriage? No. Do you have a right to be offended? Sure. Nobody is making you watch it. If you’re uncomfortable with it, turn off your television or make your kids leave the room.
It’s important to remember, though, that when we promote the idea of marriage we are not trying to reach conservatives. They are the ones that already agree with us. We are trying to reach people that idolize pop culture. People that look at “Queen Bey” as a role model. People that probably don’t have both of their parents and were raised in tough circumstances. Those are not people that are going to be offended by Beyoncé crawling across the stage sans pants.
They may, however, see a couple that is very much in love and starting a family. A couple that is not constantly fighting rumors of infidelity. A couple that lives together and works together and supports each other.
Feminism has worked very hard to tell women they don’t need men. Women are supposed to be independent, because relying on a man is considered weak. We are are lied to by a culture that tells us we can do everything without a man. We aren’t supposed to need a partner, because we are supposed to magically be strong enough to have everything on our own. We, as a people, are so evolved that we do not need to be in mutually supportive healthy relationships or stay home with our children, because obviously you will not be fulfilled as a human if you are not a running a Fortune 500. If you believe movies like “Baby Mama,” we aren’t even supposed to need men to reproduce anymore. Our culture has reduced men to sperm donors, and glamorized the successful single woman in a way that sets insane ideals for young women.
Beyoncé does not need Jay-Z at her side to perform at the Grammy’s. She does not need him to sell albums. She wants him there. The fact that she made the choice to get married and then have a child is a statement in itself. She allows their relationship to enhance her life and career and it is a beautiful thing. She is inadvertently painting a picture of a healthy partnership that is not often portrayed in popular culture. She is not portrayed by the media as weak. She doesn’t look silly or dependent or old fashioned. She is one of the most powerful women in the world right now, and she’s sharing her life with someone who is making her even better.
This is not the way conservatives would ever package a pro-marriage argument, but perhaps it can reach people that were previously unreachable.
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