What’s not to love about Beyoncé?

Great music with positive messages to women and a fellow feminista?!  What’s not to love about Beyoncé?

Beyoncé does have her fair share of scandalous, semi-questionable music but she also has a plethora of female empowering songs. She has 7 major albums produced, and has been featured on countless other albums and songs. She took a major risk by dropping her latest, self-titled album, Beyoncé, without any pre-release announcement or promotion. She broke the iTunes sales record and sold 617,000 albums in just 3 days (-I will admit to proudly being one of the 617,000 people.)

Myself and 616,999 other people will tell you how awesome her latest album is, but put aside the addicting beats and the phenomena that is Queen B and look at what her lyrics tell us….

(Courtesy of mtvstyle.tumblr.com)

“We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way boys are
Feminist: a person who believes in the social,
Political, and economic equality of the sexes”

Those golden words are just a few from the interlude by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie -a Nigerian-born writer and feminist- from her  TED Talk on feminism.

“***Flawless” = the anthem for anyone getting ready to head out for a night on the town. Beyoncé’s song reminds us that we, as women, are not just here for our male partners. While being married to the hip-hop king Jay-Z would seem like enough reason to be content and step down, Beyoncé disagrees…she makes her own and does not allow her male counterpart to outshine her -“But don’t think I’m just his little wife…”

An ability to combine fun and sexy with a feminist overtone? That sounds pretty feminista to me….it may seem like the Queen is trying to put down her husband and other successful males but to me, she isn’t. She is just asking to be seen aside from her male companion (and also wanted to provide us with a great confidence booster and catch phrase -“I woke up like this, FLAWLESS.”)

Perhaps the most inspiring of all songs on her album is “Pretty Hurts” -the song featured above. The emphasis put on looks by media and today’s society is damaging. Now, Beyoncé is one of the most genetically blessed females on this earth but she also acknowledges what that can do to someone. Even better, she takes the blame off of us for wanting to be perfect and places it on society as a whole-“Perfection is a disease of a nation.”

She makes a compelling argument against society’s idea of pretty and what the side of effects of these expectations have on us -beauty pageant contestants to the girl next door.

One of the greatest things about Beyoncé is her ability to be able to speak to an array of people -women, men, kids, adults -pretty much anyone. Even those who need help, through her philanthropy –#BeyGood. I see fans across the board which I think truly speaks to her greatness as an artist.