Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the one and only Queen Bey dropped an album unlike any other. It was her second visual album to drop. It’s called Lemonade, and it’s amazing. Not only is it amazing for its rawness and realness, unlike anything that the world has seen from Beyoncé before, but for its feminist message. All of this seems to have been moved to the back burner though, with the search for “Becky” moving to the limelight instead.
One single line, in the entirety of a masterpiece, has taken over everything this piece of artwork has tried to do. When Beyoncé sang the one line, “He better call Becky with the good hair,” all focus seemed to be immediately be drawn away from the whole of the message and centered on just that one element. It is extremely twisted that something so empowering for the female gender has become so warped into a witch hunt for who it’s supposed to be empowering, a woman.
In the media, all you have been hearing is “Who is Becky?” Various names and speculations of who this mystery woman is, that it is assumed Beyoncé is referring to cheating with her husband, is in the lead for every story covering the album Lemonade. The BeyHive, as Beyoncé’s fans are referred to and includes a majority of women in the fan base, have taken over social media in a blind fury against whoever this “Becky” is that had the audacity to supposedly mess with Beyoncé’s man. But, in fact, there seems to be a much deeper issue going on here. The reoccurring issue, that seems to occur in the world entirely to often, of women shaming other women.
Nobody is harassing Jay Z, nobody is searching for answers as to why he cheated on his wife, nobody is dragging his name through the mud, and nobody seems to care that it took two in this situation and not just “Becky.” Why is this? Is it because he is not the woman in this situation? Why do we women do that to one another? Why do we put the blame immediately on other women with disregard to the men? Is it because “boys will be boys?"
The most important question is, how does a work of feminism turn into a problem for feminism? Everyone needs to take a step back from the accusations, finger-pointing, and name-calling to realize that there is something deeper to Lemonade. It is not Beyoncé calling out a woman. This is a piece of her that she has put on display for the world in order to bring about change. I can guarantee you that a woman who considers herself a feminist, like Beyoncé does, did not intend for the message she is trying to convey in Lemonade to turn into to something that is focused on “Who is Becky?” If, in fact, the purpose of all of this was to shame another woman, then we the people need to dethrone Queen Bey.
