Beyonce Is Destroying Your Daughter, Not Empowering Her

By Matt Walsh

Over the weekend, pop singer Beyonce released a new album called “Lemonade” (because if life gives you lemons). For a piece of work hailed as “groundbreaking” and “brilliant,” it’s strange that the title is one of the most overused cliches in the history of cliches.

But this is the advantage of being a feminist sex icon in modern America. Everything you do and say will become the greatest thing anyone has ever done or said, that is until the next thing you do or say. Beyonce does not occupy this category alone, but due to her race and her dancing ability, she stands at the pinnacle of it.

Never mind that “Beyonce” is more a brand than a person. The lady herself is a person, but what’s presented to the world is a carefully constructed and marketed product. It’s a narrative, a story, a walking and talking fantasy novel for girls. I don’t know how much of the final manuscript is Beyonce’s brainchild and how much comes from the team of people around her, but rest assured that everything we see is manufactured. This, after all, is a woman who hired a “visual director” to follow her around and document and stylize her every move.

15 Examples of How Modern Hip Hop Artists Borrowed Fashion Styles From 16th Century Paintings

The tumbler B4-XVI berforesixteen has made a hilariously clever and all too accurate comparison between contemporary Hip Hop artists and paintings made before the 16^thcentury, making everyone involved look quite ridiculous. When you first look at the fashion styles of centuries old paintings, you would not think anyone today would ever dream of looking like that, let alone a celebrity. However, if you think about it, what kind of person would wear flashy jewelry and frivolous fur coats? Well, Hip Hop artists! Their extreme amount of “bling” and often baggy clothing somewhat resembles the capes and jewelry of royalty depicted in classic paintings.

What Just Happened? The Björk Experience at MoMA

This morning, three Hyperallergic editors — Elisa Wouk Almino, Jillian Steinhauer, and Benjamin Sutton — ventured out to see the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) latest foray into avant-garde pop star curating: Björk (an exhibition that needs no subtitle). The show consists of a number of scattered components: instruments used in the making of Biophilia(her 8th album), on view in the lobby; two custom-built boxes/theaters that show, respectively, the new MoMA-commissioned video for “Black Lake” and a looping retrospective of her music videos; and an installation called “Songlines,” which features dresses, props from videos, and notebooks in a maze-like series of rooms, accompanied by a 40-minute “experimental sound experience” called “The Triumphs of a Heart” that mixes Björk’s music and a fictional fairy tale.