Although Beyonce has always been a so-called “sex symbol,” her recent work has been sexier than ever. From her lyrics to her provocative performances, Beyonce has clearly changed her look and sound along with her newfound family life.
Knowles is now a mother and a married woman. Her husband, rapper Jay-Z, has been leading her career choices lately as well as putting a large helping hand in her recent recordings.
Over the years, Beyonce has gained a huge following. I’ve recently learned that her fans aren’t just any kind of fans but they are also members of her “BeyHive”. Beyonce being the Queen of the hive and the fans being her “children”.
An actual “Queen Bee” is defined as the single reproductive female in a hive or colony of honeybees, which in layman’s terms simply means mother. Beyonce is fully aware of the mass following she has and in interviews often jokes about the so-called BeyHive.
After her short hiatus while giving birth to her new daughter Blue Ivy and becoming acclimated to motherhood, her first song release was entitled “Bow-Down”. A song that in a nutshell explained that Beyoncé was the greatest and that we all should bow down.
Granted, Beyoncé more than likely wasn’t being literal but the reality of it is that her fans are already bowing down to her. Beyoncé is being held at the highest of pedestals and being referred to as a Queen by her fans.
Without recording a song telling us that she is the mother and we are her children, the BeyHive has already proved that to be true. I personally love Beyoncé’s music however; she is no mother to me. She has made no sacrifices for me and is not helping me get to where I would like to be. With that being said, I will save the words Queen Bee and Mother for the woman who fits those titles.
I am a Beyoncé fan and after hearing that husband Jay-Z would be performing with her last weekend on the Grammy Awards I was ecstatic. I watched the performance with a member of the Bee-hive who is also a friend of mine. As soon as Beyoncé silhouette came across the television screen, she jumped up off the couch and sat Indian style almost 5 inches away from the screen, she turned the volume up to 62 and watched the performance bright eyed without blinking or turning away. After seeing my friend do so, I was so thrown off at her amazement to someone who seemed to be just another black woman to me that I caught myself watching my friend more than Beyoncé herself.
It seemed so odd to see a friend of mine look at another black woman like some sort of god. I’ve never seen anybody do that for a woman with greater power than just setting trends and teaching woman how to be sexy, such as Michelle Obama, Angela Davis or even Oprah Winfrey for that matter.
If anything, watching my friend’s reaction to Beyoncé showed me more about my race and sex than ever before. We are so wrapped up in looking up to a fake entertainment personality that we don’t know how to be ourselves.
We can’t be so busy looking up to a woman who already has a family, career and fame, call her the queen and follow behind. How much could we accomplish if we became something to look up to?
How far could black woman go if we all acted as queens and not followed societies definition of a queen? The things that we do today are the things we will be remembered for tomorrow. I will not allow my legacy to be anything but my own, I will lead and never follow. I will trend set and not ever be stuck on being “in-style”. I will create my own definition of sexiness and womanhood and I will be my own person.
I will be a Beyoncé fan and not a Beyoncé follower, keep the “BeyHive” elsewhere.
Alexis Jackson is a senior mass communication major from Oakland, Calif.