Leave it to Queen Bey to take something as polarizing as feminism and make it — gasp — marketable.
On Monday, Beyoncé wrote an essay on income inequality between men and women. She wrote, "We
need to stop buying into the myth about gender equality. It isn't a
reality yet." The essay was her first feminist move of 2014, and it was
pretty great.
In 2013, though, she was one of several pop stars to turn feminism into
part of a marketing strategy. That may sound sinister, but it's not —
we should be glad she's done it.
2013 was Beyoncé's year. From her Super Bowl performance to the surprise album drop, Bey topped even Hova and has definitively proven that, yes, women can indeed have it all (though it is obviously hard work).
But not only did she outshine everyone else in the game,
she also made it clear that her feminism is a driving force behind her
success and hasn't hidden her life as a woman from the press. Quite the
contrary. She's opened up about her miscarriage, alluded to Jay-Z's former indiscretion,
and spoken openly about her life as a mother. Beyoncé humanized the
female perspective on a world stage, and she made powerful music about
being a fully-realized woman.
She isn't the only one making big waves in pop music with her feminism. Lily Allen and Miley Cyrus
also took to the air waves to spread their viewpoints and messages on
the topic. And the world listened because, increasingly, a feminist
stand from a pop star in the spotlight often elicits major Internet
discussion.
Miley Cyrus took a more sexualized, overt route to express
her brand of feminism — twerking away the naysayers. When asked about
her views on feminism, she told BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat, "I feel like I'm one of the biggest feminists in the world because I tell women to not be scared of anything."
Lily Allen, on the contrary, released a feminist anthem called "Hard Out Here," directly mocking Robin Thicke's
"Blurred Lines" and alluding to Cyrus' in-your-face approach to pop
music. Her anger about the state of the genre (especially its
sexualization of young women) comes across in the song, one line of
which states, "I won't be bragging 'bout my cars or talking 'bout my
chains / Don't need to shake my ass for you 'cause I've got a brain."
