I’m not old enough to remember, but I can only imagine the hysteria that occurred the first time Mick Jagger gyrated in front of a group 60 years ago. Girls probably got crazy giddy, and men probably wanted to be Mick or kill Mick. His dancing, in its context, was a novelty. And 60 years later, people are still naming songs
after him.
Can the same be said for our female artists? Rihanna has Tina Turner legs and emulates some of her moves, yet the best we can do is call her slutty. Christina Aguilera has a voice that can trill longer than a fire engine, and yet people shook their heads and said it was such a “shame” that she “was selling out” when she released Dirty. We commend Chris Brown for getting Michael Jackson’s moon walk, swivel, and crotch grab down to a tee, but bow in judgmental disappointment when Beyonce shakes her hips better than--oh wait, no female from the older generation is famous for hip-shaking because we disapproved of it so much.
Point is, there is still a general attitude within society that frowns upon “scantily clad women” with “skanky moves” (*cringe*) , claiming that it takes away from their talent/image/self-worth. This is a sad mistake on society’s part. To not accept a woman fully because of her choice to show skin is to make her choice to do so less important than your method of judgment. If we were to respect a woman who had decided to dress revealingly and shake her hips, we respect her full package, skin-baring and all--the way that we receive shirtless, gyrating Adam Lavigne.
The most recent proof of this blatant disrespect is Beyonce’s halftime Superbowl performance. A couple of my Facebook contacts commented that the star was “trashy” and "slutty". One even said the only thing missing from her performance was a stripper pole, which, as if that’s not bad enough, was reinforced by many “Likes”. The fact that we, as social media users with so much freedom of speech, still resort to old standards of oppressive judgemnt saddens me. In my opinion, Beyonce bared a lot of skin- and danced her beautiful ass off. She werked it to her souls content and blew everyone’s mind with her marathon dancing. She sang like it was the last day singing was allowed in our free country, and somehow, throughout all this, she didn’t cough up any blood or faint. She was amazing. And God, I wish I could wear that get-up and look half as sexy.
In the music video for her song, “Run the World,” Beyonce and countless backup dancers are dancing in a sandbank, asserting that girls do, in fact, run the world. For the entire video, Beyonce is wearing sexy outfit after sexy outfit, and still dancing to keep the world going. It’s clear then, that to some extent, Beyonce has chosen to run the world and be damn hot all at once. So we should stop judging her so much. Because honestly, if you want her to put on more clothes and shake less because you can’t listen to what she’s singing, that’s on you, guys.
