Recently, we posted about the problems with Beyonce’s brand image: We love the girl power, not so much the racialized and sexualized fetishization. As blogger Janell Hobson wrote, Beyonce’s video for Run the World (Girls) presents a “cliched, sexualized display of the Battle of the Sexes in which power derives only from sexual and embodied prowess.”
So we heart that YouTube user NineteenPercent, who goes by Amber, posted a smart-aleck response to Beyonce. “Her new song is called ‘Girls Who Run the World.’ I don’t think it’s right that she’s out there promulgating historical inaccuracies to impressionable young women and imparting the false belief that they run they world,” Amber says, tongue-in-cheek. But she then imparts some very serious, very real truths, like how sex-selective abortions are practiced in India and China because girl babies aren’t valued. “I wish I were making this up,” Amber says. Along the way, she makes jabs at Dr. Dre and even Beyonce’s husband, Jay-Z.
Amber’s video is a smart, funny introduction to why feminism still matters. You can watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p72UqyVPj54&feature=player_embedded#at=115
Follow Amber on Twitter.
