Blog for the week of September 23, 2013

Last night, I spent some time watching Beyonce documentary, Life is but a Dream.  A couple classes ago we spent some time talking about Beyonce and this idea that she is a “modern feminist.”  I felt that the documentary actually contained a couple of feminist ideals that I would like to share with you:

1.     She talked about the importance of her relationships with other women.  Having a community of other women is very feminist.  So often when women become famous, rich, and/or powerful it becomes easy to dismiss other women’s experience or the importance of being connected to other women because she made it through and that woman can’t understand why everyone else can succeed.  Beyonce didn’t come off like that at all. 

2.     She understood that it was so much more difficult for a woman to make it in this world. She commented on how much harder she had to work to get where she is then a lot of the men that are in the same business because most people did not believe she could do since she is a woman.

3.     She understood and commented on the fact that women don’t make as much money as men (which is surprising considering how much money you can imagine that she makes).

4.     She talked about how centered her music was around empowering women in the way that she knew how.

5.     The documentary didn’t focus on her relationship with Jay-Z.  I thought that it would considering he is a powerful force in the music industry but surprisingly it didn’t.