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Bootylicious Yellow Bone: Beyoncé's Physicality as a Site of Racialized, Socio‐Political Angst Concerning Beauty, Class, and Essentialized Blackness

2023; Wiley; Volume: 56; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jpcu.13197

1540-5931

Leslie Similly,

Media, Gender, and Advertising

As a Black woman, Beyoncé has reached an unprecedented level of international fame. With more Grammy wins and nominations than any other woman in history (Exposito), multiple multi-million-dollar endorsement deals, and business ventures ranging from a clothing line to a film production company, Beyoncé has become a global brand in her own right. With this unprecedented level of success and stardom has come an unprecedented level of scrutiny that extends far beyond Beyoncé's music. Over the last decade, much scholarship has emerged concerning Beyoncé's particular expressions of feminism and activism in her lyrics and performances, but less attention has been given to the ways in which Beyoncé's physical appearance and self-presentation leave her suspended between the often irreconcilable demands of white mainstream and Black cultures. That is, Beyoncé's intersectionality1 and hyper-visibility have situated her in the center of converging debates regarding beauty, class, and what it means to be Black in America post the racial reckoning of 2020. Examples of Beyoncé's intersectional, cultural positioning within a racist, sexist, fatphobic society are that her curvy, prototypically Black physique helped bring about a shift in societal beauty standards, but a white woman, Kim Kardashian, is often credited with prompting this shift. And even though Beyoncé's curvy physique is largely celebrated as “fit” and “beautiful,” she must fend off pregnancy rumors every time she gains even the slightest bit of weight. Another example of Beyoncé's specific, intersectional cultural positioning is her light-skinned privilege and wealth, which have enabled critics to question the authenticity of her Blackness even after 2016 when she decided to use her massive platform to openly uplift and advocate for Black people. I argue that Beyoncé, in terms of her persona, has become a site upon which America attempts to hang its racist cultural baggage and shovel its abiding ambivalence concerning societal beauty standards, capitalism, and essentialized notions of Blackness. The clashing hyper-critiques of Beyoncé are an amplified representation of the ways in which multivalent renderings of racism, sexism, colorism, classism, and fat phobia converge in the everyday lives of Black women in ways that are essentialist and contradictorily prescriptive. Given Beyoncé's global impact and influence, it is worthwhile to explore the hegemonic, societal factors at play in, and subverted by, her status as a beauty icon. Beyoncé is widely recognized as one of the most beautiful women in the world. Beyoncé herself says it best on the track “Nice” from her 2018 collaboration with husband Jay-Z, Everything is Love: “I'm errybody type/Goddamn right/I'm so nice/Jesus Christ/I'm better than the hype/I give you life” (The Carters 2:07–2:13). And the masses agree—Beyoncé is flawless. Nearly every photo she posts to Instagram sets trends, from her shoes to her fingernail polish. Beyoncé embodies enough of America's currently celebrated beauty markers to place her at the center of beauty-related controversies within an ambivalent mainstream media, on social media, and, increasingly, within academia. Beyoncé affirms this in the music video for “Formation” as she pushes up the wide brim of her black sunhat, looks directly into the camera, and sings, “You know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation” (Beyoncé 4:30–4:34). Cause conversation she does, indeed. However, due to her simultaneous adherence to, influence on, and subversion of, Eurocentric beauty standards, the discourse that Beyoncé sparks concerning societal beauty standards and Blackness is far more socially valuable than the typical celebrity gossip that comprises the background noise of America's mainstream media. Black female bodies have historically been considered grotesque, animalistic, and unnatural (Carroll, 2000; Gilman, 1985). This is evident in the horrific lived reality of Sara Baartman, a South African woman who lived in the 1800s. While enslaved, a British doctor described her body shape, including large buttocks, genitalia, and breasts, as amusing, inferior, and oversexed (Young, 1997). Sara Baartman was placed on display for paying customers to view her naked body and became known as the “Hottentot Venus” throughout London and Paris, and her body parts were preserved and inhumanely kept on public display until 1974. She was finally returned to South Africa in 2002, after Nelson Mandela's protests, for a final burial (e.g., Qureshi, 2004). This historical context has had long-standing impacts on understanding Black women's bodies as hypersexualized spectacles for consumption (e.g., Durham, 2012; Harris-Perry, 2011). (Mowatt et al. 650) Despite the misogynoir2 sewn in the fabric of this country, a small number of Black women have managed to subvert racist and sexist stereotypes to achieve stardom since the 1920s. Black women such as Josephine Baker, Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, and Diana Ross, to name a few, were, and are, renowned in the entertainment industry and widely regarded as mesmerizingly talented and beautiful. However, Beyoncé has reached an unprecedented level of fame and has achieved the status of beauty icon. Beyoncé has been able to achieve this level of stardom not only as a Black woman in a genre in which whiteness is currency, but as a curvaceous, not-stick-thin, woman in an industry in which curvy women in general have largely been viewed as overweight and undesirable. American culture has long enforced a standard of thinness and whiteness as requisite to attractiveness. Sabrina Strings discusses the racist conflation of Blackness and fatness via the exhibiting of the aforementioned Sara Baartman in Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. Strings writes that Baartman's “presence as a symbol of black femininity helped transform the image of the Hottentot from thin to fat. It also helped make fatness an intrinsically black, and inherently off-putting, form of feminine embodiment in the European scientific and popular imagination” (89). While mainstream American culture still does not regard “fat” bodies as beautiful, and the desired aesthetic for supermodels typically remains thin and angularly shaped, in the last decade popular culture has seen a shift in what constitutes an attractive, desirable body. Beyoncé and other entertainers, actresses, and athletes such as Sofia Vergara, Serena Williams, and Jennifer Lopez have helped normalize curvy figures. The bustle…was all the rage in 19th-century women's fashion. These huge structures (often accompanied with padding) were worn as a way of accentuating the female figure and enhancing the posterior. This means that during Sarah Baartman's time as a freak-show attraction, the very women gawking at the natural curves on her body would likely have been enhancing their own bodies to look like hers. The difference is that while these women were seen as fashionable for their manipulated forms, black women like Sarah were being treated like freaks. It seems like a black woman's body is only desirable (not to be confused with fetishized) when a white woman is wearing it. (Mwansa) Beyoncé has presumably been aware of America's ambivalence toward her curvier body type and the simultaneous shift toward its mainstream acceptance since the release of “Bootylicious” with Destiny's Child, the refrain to which lauds her shape by repeating “I don't think you ready for this jelly/’Cause my body too bootylicious for you babe” (Destiny's Child 0:55–1:04). While mainstream America, until relatively recently, has shown extreme bias in favor of “skinny” women, within the Black community, curvy, voluptuous figures have long been celebrated and viewed as beautiful and desirable. I see Destiny's Child as drawing upon this Black cultural preference in an attempt to bring appreciation of it into the mainstream. Beyoncé continues to glorify her physique and make reference to her curves quite often in her music as a solo artist. She draws upon the “naturalness” of her figure in something of a femme braggadocio in tracks like DJ Khaled's “Top Off” with the lyric, “My body, my ice, my cash, all real I'm a triple threat” (2:27–2:31), on the track “Savage Remix” alongside Megan Thee Stallion with the lyrics “If you wanna see some real ass, baby here's yo’ chance” (1:06–1:09). These lyrics could reasonably be interpreted as critiques of the growing trend of various types of buttocks augmentation procedures and surgeries that many celebrities—and aspiring celebrities—choose to undergo. Although American society has begun to acknowledge curves as beautiful, one carry-over from society's previous insistence on thinness as attractiveness is what I call the “tyranny of the tiny waist,” or a high waist-to-hip ratio. I would argue that a small waist is also requisite to attractiveness according to standards of beauty in the Black community, which allows for women of a larger size than mainstream conceptions of what is considered “ideal” to be considered beautiful and desirable as long as a woman has a small waist relative to the size of her hips, or, in other words, is considered “slim-thick.” An example of the tyranny of the tiny waist was on full display in June of 2018 when Beyoncé faced speculation that she was pregnant with her fourth child while on tour with husband Jay-Z because she appeared to have gained weight in her stomach and waist. Beyoncé did not explicitly dispel the rumors but included an encoded response to the speculation on a later tour date when she asked the crowd “You know that your flaws make you beautiful, right? Y'all know that right?” and patted her lower stomach while singing “I'm flawless” (qtd in O'Malley). The fact that Beyoncé's curvy physique, which would have been seen as not thin enough in the past, is now considered “fit” and “beautiful” by mainstream entertainment media in America is remarkable considering the history of Black women and American beauty standards, even if a white woman is credited with normalizing this shift. However, these affirmative descriptions of Beyoncé's body are tenuous at best, as she is scrutinized and criticized by the media and on social media if she gains even the slightest bit of weight in her midsection. While the acceptance and celebration of Beyoncé's physique has helped catalyze a paradigm shift in terms of beauty standards, her status as an icon exemplifying Black women's beauty is complicated by another aspect of her appearance—her skin color. Beyoncé, like many Black women, is situated within a centuries-old colorist double-bind4 that plagues the Black community but is often enacted, perpetuated, and reinforced by white people and corporations claiming to operate via postracial sensibilities. Undeniably, Beyoncé's light skin color affords her and her brand a certain level of liminality, so to speak, between Blackness and whiteness. That is to say, while Beyoncé has always identified as, and has largely been viewed as, a Black woman, her light skin shrouds her Blackness in ambiguity and makes her more marketable and more palatable to white audiences. In a February 2018 interview with Ebony magazine, Beyoncé's father, Mathew Knowles, spoke out about issues of colorism that were embedded in his upbringing. After stating that he initially dated Beyoncé's mother, Tina Lawson, because he thought she was white, he asserted that “when it comes to Black females, who are the people who get their music played on pop radio? Mariah Carey, Rihanna, the female rapper Nicki Minaj, my kids [Beyoncé and Solange], and what do they all have in common?” When the interviewer asked if it was because of their light skin, Knowles responded, “Do you think that's an accident?” (qtd. in Andrews and Ferguson). While Beyoncé's father's comments unfairly couch Beyoncé's success in terms that seem predicated on her skin color without mentioning her talent or work ethic, he speaks to the very real issue of America's perpetual preference for Black women with lighter skin. Of course, that is not to say that darker-skinned African American women have not been able to achieve success in the entertainment industry. Brown-skinned and darker-skinned women such as Patti Labelle, Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, and others have achieved stardom, but in this current age of media marketing, the most famous and recognizable Black women entertainers typically have lighter skin. Colorism has long been a recognizable, familiar, and prevalent aspect of the Black experience that existed namelessly until Alice Walker defined it in her 1983 novel In Search of Our Mother's Garden as the “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color” (291). While colorism exists in one form or another for nearly every culture comprising people of color (for many of the world's people of color, colorism has roots in colonialism), a brief history of the origins of colorism as it affects Black Americans is necessary to understand the significance of this type of discrimination as part of the African American experience and is helpful in explaining its influence on Beyoncé's mass appeal and the controversy and questions surrounding her Blackness. During the centuries of American chattel slavery, one of the mechanisms of subjugation used by enslavers was the separation and hierarchization of lighter-skinned enslaved people, who were often the enslavers' own offspring, over darker-skinned enslaved people. Lighter-skinned enslaved people were often allowed in the house and granted more privileges and higher status than their darker-skinned counterparts, which communicates to the collective Black psyche that the lighter (closer to white), the better, in the most literal sense of the word. It is not difficult to understand the type of discord that this hierarchization would foster, as there were, and are, real-world, material benefits associated with having lighter skin and straighter hair. This racist system of hierarchization laid the groundwork for modern-day, intra-ethnic colorism within the Black community, which manifests among Black people in the form of distrust and suspicion of other Black people based on their hue. While the most extreme, erroneous stereotypes surrounding, and conflated with, Blackness apply most potently to dark-skinned Black people, “[colorism] also establishes hierarchies of Blackness that deny Black women of a lighter skin tone to their racial identity and associate[s] them with stereotypes of arrogance and undue comfort” (Davis 15). Lighter-skinned Black women are often labeled as “thinking they're better” than or “having it easier” than darker-skinned Black women. Beyoncé, too, has been subject to such stereotypical accusations, as evidenced by her father's aforementioned statements and the widespread suspicion she has faced when using her artistry to openly advocate for Black people from her privileged position as pretty (in terms of Eurocentric beauty standards), light-skinned, and wealthy, which I will discuss in more depth later. Margaret Hunter's extensive work on colorism, Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone, which focuses on the ways in which colorism affects women in particular, is useful to the discussion of how Beyoncé's coloring (skin, hair, and eye color) has been a factor in her mass appeal, and I argue, the public perception of her in terms of acceptable Blackness. As Hunter describes, because “beauty is a cultural construction, it is informed by other kinds of societal status characteristics, most significantly race. This helps explain why in the United States, where white racism still operates, light skin is often associated with beauty” (69–70). According to Hunter, colorism disproportionately affects women, as women's looks are more apt to be a factor in, or predictor of, relationship status. Beyoncé's appearance, in terms of her skin color and hair color, places her near the top of what Hunter calls the “beauty queue” (to be understood as a ranking) and the fact that she often wears straight hair styles has undoubtedly helped mainstream American and international audiences recognize her as beautiful (69). Despite her light-skinned privilege, Beyoncé has not been exempt from blatantly enacted colorism. In 2008, L'Oréal was accused of lightening Beyoncé's skin across several women's magazines in their ads for Feria, L'Oréal's line of hair color. David Li, writer for the New York Post, wrote that the “digital lightening” made her “virtually unrecognizable.” The brand received immediate criticism. However, L'Oreal denies retouching the images. Beyoncé did not respond (Li). This incident serves to demonstrate that colorism and a preference for lighter skin remains an issue in society, as there would have been no incentive to lighten Beyoncé's skin in the ad unless it was suspected that the image of her with lighter skin would contribute to a more favorable view of her and the product. The attempt to lighten the skin of an already light-skinned Black woman is a prime example of inter-ethnic colorism that cannot simply be explained away by lighting or an aesthetic choice to accommodate newly applied hair color. The perception of Beyoncé's beauty (and Blackness) is further complicated by her phenotypically, prototypically Black features (full lips and a somewhat wider nose) but ambiguous (light) coloring. While Beyoncé's phenotypic racial ambiguity undoubtedly contributes to her mass appeal, Beyoncé's light skin tone also renders her susceptible to accusations of colorist privilege (and cultural inauthenticity) by Black people with darker skin and/or those who identify monoracially as Black/African American, as Beyoncé identifies as Creole and African American (an aspect of her ethnic identity that I will treat more extensively later). Popular representations of the most desirable black women conceptually are analyzable in terms of current practices of “blonding.” By “blonding,” I am referring to the practice and preference of the entire population for extreme blondness in hair color, texture, and styling and its related implications, given all the historical meanings of this identity in terms of deficiency, desirability, and sexuality…every black woman who becomes successful in the media seems to have to perform blonding even if photographically alone at some level, from Beyoncé to Lil’ Kim, Mary J. Blige to Queen Latifah. (Boyce Davies 200) Hair has long been a complex, complicated aspect of Black womanhood, and even amid the splendid, ongoing “natural hair movement” there remain real, and often consequential, pressures for Black women to wear their hair straight. Boyce Davies's assertions about “blonding” certainly raise important questions about the preference for blonde hair as akin to society's insistence on straight hair as “good hair.” It is worth noting here that Beyoncé's now infamous reference to “Becky with the good hair”5 in the song “Sorry” on the Lemonade album refers not to a woman with well-styled hair but a woman with a naturally straight or loose curl pattern (3:39–3:49). “Good hair” is an unfortunately common expression within the Black community, but the aforementioned natural hair movement is challenging notions of what constitutes “good hair” by encouraging and inspiring Black women to don their natural textures rather than turning to relaxers to chemically straighten their hair. It is worth mentioning that according to Beyoncé's long-time hair stylist, Neal Farinah, Beyoncé does not get chemical relaxers and achieves straight styles using weaves, wigs, and/or a flat iron to ensure maximum versatility and to preserve her natural curl pattern (“What Beyonce's Natural Hair Really Looks Like”). While Beyoncé has been less-than-vocal in interviews about her choice to maintain her natural texture, she includes the lines “F*ck these laid edges, I'ma let it shrivel up/ F*ck this fade and waves, I'ma let it dread all up” in the song “Black Parade” on the album Lion King: The Gift (Beyoncé 2:47–2:54). She also says, “This Ain't no perm. This that nappy” on the song “Power” included on the same album (Nija et al. 1:49–1:51). Beyoncé also defends her daughter Blue Ivy's hair texture and her choice not to straighten it with the lyric in “Formation,” “I like my baby heir with baby hair and afros” (Beyoncé 0:32–0:35) perhaps as a response to criticism that Blue Ivy's hair looked “matted” and a ridiculous petition on Change.org that accrued over 6000 signatures to “encourage Queen Bey to comb it” (Eggert). These tasteless attacks on a child's hair attest to how notions of “kinky hair is bad hair” have permeated American society. Beyoncé, like so many Black women, is pressured from all sides regarding how to style her hair. If Black women decide to wear their hair natural, they face criticism that it looks “unruly” or “unprofessional,” but if they wear weaves or wigs (which are a go-to protective style for many Black women with unprocessed or natural hair) they are accused of trying to be or look white. If they relax their hair, they are accused of placing Eurocentric beauty standards over their own health, as chemical relaxers have been proven to be toxic and unhealthy. From my perspective, as a Black woman with natural hair, the movement toward decolonizing beauty standards must extend to normalizing Black women styling our hair any way we choose (including styles and colors that are considered Eurocentric). While many of the current scholarly conversations surrounding colorism and texture discrimination highlight discord and suspicion between light- and dark-skinned Black people, colorism as enacted by non-Black people in the form of a variation of acceptable Blackness warrants further discussion. I find it worthwhile to show how Beyoncé's activism has in many ways forfeited the “acceptable Blackness” afforded by her appearance even as some critics called Beyoncé's Blackness into question. Following the release of the music video to “Formation,” the first single from the Lemonade album and Beyoncé's 2016 Super Bowl halftime performance, many white fans (and non-fans) took to social media to express their surprise and outrage at the aesthetic choices and imagery depicted in the performance. Beyoncé and her dancers wore revealing, all-black renditions of militant uniforms reminiscent of the Black Panthers circa the 1960s. The choreography called for these women to “get in formation” and line up like soldiers. Mwansa writes that “the booty-shaking, female empowering Beyoncé with her universal themes of overcoming heartbreak was actually black all of a sudden, and this made people uncomfortable” (Mwansa). A subsequent episode of Saturday Night Live spoke to this discomfort in a skit entitled “The Day Beyoncé Turned Black” that depicts white people watching the video to “Formation” and collectively reacting with interrogatives like “Beyoncé is Black?” (1:33–1:34), alluding to the fact that those unfamiliar with Beyoncé's body of work know her solely for songs like “Put a Ring on It,” her hit song turned international catch-the-bouquet anthem that, though sassy and assertive in its lyrics, is decidedly unracialized. “Formation” however, makes unapologetic, culturally Southern Black references like “hot sauce in my bag swag”6 (Beyoncé 0:43–0:46). This line is likely lost on listeners unfamiliar with certain aspects of Southern Black culture, the nuances of which invariably get lost in translation. In addition to this type of Southern Black cultural reference left un-decoded for the masses, Beyoncé's Black Lives Matter-aligning activism was on display in every aspect of “Formation,” including the lyrics, imagery in the video, and Super Bowl performance. Melissa Harris-Perry writes, “[I]n 2016, Beyoncé, a pop star, chose to be a problem.” Harris-Perry cites the “stream of cell-phone videos of fatal encounters between African Americans and local police [which] sustained a national controversy that, in some quarters, came down to a choice between one and the other” for the shift in Beyoncé's image and branding and states that Beyoncé “chose blackness even as many Americans rejected it, taking sides and never wavering.” Like Harris-Perry, I see Beyoncé's overt politicization of “Formation” as a direct reaction to, and in protest of, the unending string of police killings of unarmed Black people. The imagery in the video to “Formation,” such as the controversial scene in which Beyoncé sits atop a police car as it sinks into flood waters (Beyoncé 4:29; 4:32), seems to be a direct response to instances of police brutality and the government's lethargic response to the urgently dangerous, then lethal, conditions following hurricane Katrina. As a response to the imagery in “Formation,” police officers issued a short-lived threat not to provide security for Beyoncé's concert tour claiming that Beyoncé is “anti-police” (Boursiquot). Beyoncé later released a statement in an interview with Elle magazine stating “anyone who perceives my message as anti-police is completely mistaken. I have so much admiration and respect for officers and the families of officers who sacrifice themselves to keep us safe” (qtd. in Boursiquot). Of course, Beyoncé's stance can be (and seems to be) anti-police brutality without being anti-police. While much of white America and the police force was having its reaction to “Formation,” some Black critics took issue with Beyoncé's proclamation of her Creole7 (mixed race) heritage in the line from “Formation,” “You mix that Negro with that Creole make a Texas Bamma’” (0:27–0:31) and “I see it I own it/I stunt yellow bone it (Beyoncé 0:46–0:49).” Yellow bone is a term that many Southern Black people use to describe light-skinned Black women. Davis argues that following the release of the music video to “Formation,” “there was a palpable sense that the Black community was having difficulty accepting or respecting that this wealthy, famous, normatively beautiful and desirable, light-skinned, Black woman of Creole descent who wears long blonde weaves could truly comprehend the trauma and suffering of the Black diaspora” (11). It would seem that essentialist notions regarding what constitutes Blackness prevailed in many people's interpretation of the above-mentioned lyrics to “Formation.” In historical context, these lyrics are deeply problematic. The racial label “Creole” for example, is a term that has historically been used by people of African and European descent to set themselves apart from other African people. Beyoncé has been known to celebrate her Creole ancestry (Rowley, 2016) and the suggestion that she makes use of her status as a “yellow-bone” to support her in attaining her goals alludes to an awareness of the privileges associated with her light skin. Despite claiming a preference for an African phenotype, she does not seem to challenge the colorist notions that have persisted throughout history. The most famous lines of “Formation,” these bold words assert Beyoncé's self-acceptance, not just as a “yellow bone,” light-skinned pop star, but also as a Black woman who loves her Black features. “Afros,” “negro nose” and “Jackson Five nostrils” are all representative of the stereotyped features of both “revolutionary” and “unsexy” Blacks, as defined by media representation and Western standards of beauty. If Beyoncé wanted to praise features most aligned with “Black beauty,” she would instead have discussed other body parts, such as her “big lips” and “big butt.” Instead, she focuses on what makes her powerfully, and almost defensively, Black. (Luders-Manuel) I read Beyoncé's self-designation as a “yellow bone” as a simultaneous acknowledgment of the unearned privilege afforded by her light skin and unapologetic pronouncement that her light skin does not negate, dilute, or undermine her Black identity. In the current socio-political landscape (post-2020's racial reckoning and amid the ongoing global pandemic) there has been renewed conversation concerning capitalism as a function of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. And increasingly, Beyoncé's wealth and conspicuous consumption are regarded as both aspirational and unrelatable or in conflict with Blackness. Following the release of the music video to “Formation,” scholar Alicia Wallace argues that “the song itself continues to center Beyoncé, alluding to haters, paparazzi, and designer clothing. She ultimately places her stamp of approval on the same capitalist system that has oppressed generations of the same black people the song is said to empower” (192). While many of Beyonce's lyrics and imagery inarguably laud materialism, which can certainly be problematic considering the very real racial wealth disparity in this country (and specifically in New Orleans, which is the community Wallace seems to refer to here), necessarily equating Blackness with economic hardship and struggle is also problematic. I find it important to note that Beyonce's somewhat concentric position, musically, between pop and hip hop at least partly explains the capitalist leanings in her lyrics, as acquisition of material luxuries and wealth have long been a cultural trope in modern hip hop. However, because Beyoncé lauds what I call artifacts of affluence in her music but does not discuss her struggle to get them, she is regarded as aspirational but somehow para-Black or Black-adjacent. Jay-Z, however, often and openly discusses his ascendance from the Marcy housing projects to billionaire status, and his Blackness is not called into question. In other words, since Beyoncé did not get it out the mud, so to speak, she's regarded as not having a true Black experience or enjoying an economic ease often associated with whiteness. A recent controversy, which illustrates my assertions concerning Beyoncé's w