Meditation, Anointing and Anger in Beyoncé's #Lemonade

There's very little that I can add to the conversation about Beyoncé's latest visual masterpiece, Lemonade. The pros, cons, dos and don'ts have already been talked to death, and all the best things have been said. But truthfully I'm more interested in how Lemonade makes me feel. I want to interrogate the reactions I had to what I consider to be one of the most profound pieces of work ever created by a black woman, both artistically and economically.

I watched Lemonade, end to end, on my own. I turned my phone off, silenced my notifications, and paid attention to the journey that Beyoncé had decided to take me on. I watched in awe as black women congregated and communed with each other as Beyoncé lay bear her own feelings and tapped into universal truths about existing both black and female. I cried as a Mardi Gras Indian blessed a dinner table full of empty chairs; places set for people who could never join the offering.

Much has been made of Becky with the good hair; an attempt by white women to find something recognizable to latch onto in a sea of womanhood both public and commercial, that for the first time, deliberately excludes them. But Becky is beside the point. Because the point is that Beyoncé sees us. Beyoncé sees and acknowledges black women and our struggles, and she centered her art around affirming our hurt, our pain, our suspicion and our betrayal. Beyoncé made an (another) album about being a black woman, and the pain and joy that it can entail.


Guiding us through the stages of grief, Beyoncé weaves a story of pain, heartbreak and most of all anger, that is all too familiar to black women. Routinely, we are labelled as crazy or unpredictable without acknowledgement of the abuse that warranted that reaction. We are betrayed and told his infidelity is our sin to bear, we're mocked for our attempts to become the women the world holds in high esteem. Lemonade explores the blatant lies and half-truths that black women are forced to swallow and the pathology we are cursed to bear. But most importantly it justifies the delicious destruction born of righteous and justified anger. It allows our anger, ever stymied, always dismissed, to bubble over, froth and foment, and acknowledges it as a valid reaction to repeated abuse. As Ijeoma Oluo writes in the Guardian:

This expectation of black women to suffer in silence is passed from generation to generation. Beyoncé explores this inheritance unflinchingly: "You remind me of my father - a magician, able to exist in two places at once/In the tradition of men in my blood you come home at 3am and lie to me."

And it is this inheritance that Beyoncé rejects throughout Lemonade. She refuses to suffer in silence, and instead delves deep into the hurt and betrayal that has rended her life and her love apart, and encourages us all to do the same. She rips our generational burden to shreds and sets herself and us, on a path to redemption through shared communion. The hurt she explores here is real and familiar; an old prophecy passed from mother to daughter and back again, repeated ad infinitum until it fulfills itself. It is a battle we prepare for from the moment we are old enough to distinguish our blackness.

Navigating The Fog: Self-Care Tips For Depressive Souls

Generally speaking, I try not to publish anything too personal here. Partly for security reasons, but mostly because twitter is where I go when I want to whine online and I try to leave this space for my criticism. But the last couple weeks have been tough for me and I'm finally on the other side of a mild depressive episode. I don't think I've ever just said it in public before, but I suffer from depression and anxiety and have on and off since I was about 14. It's not something I like talking about because mental-health stigma is real, and people can be less than compassionate about what they see as an unreasonable perpetual sadness.

For me, it's like a fog. I often don't realize it's happening until I'm in the thick of it, by which time it's too late, because I've already become useless to myself. Episodes last anywhere between a couple days to a couples weeks, but really bad ones have spanned months. I didn't graduate college on time because I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed or leave my room for much of senior year, and I flunked a class for non-attendance. This shit has consequences.

I'm not on medication because I'm afraid to ask for it, and I'm not in therapy because I can't afford it. It's something I largely deal with on my own because I have to; I have opened up to people in the past and it hasn't always gone well for me. That said, over time I've figure out a variety of coping mechanisms that help me manage. Essentially, the key is to do as much as humanly possible when you're feeling well to cut down on the daily decision making process. This way, when the fog hits, you can safely reach your hands out blindly and trust that whatever you grasp will help you keep going. The following habits haven't fixed me, but they have helped me feel less overwhelmed.

#Supergirl's Flimsy Feminism And The Erasure of Women of Colour in Popular Feminist Narratives

You might not have heard, but Supergirl is all about girl power. Kara Danvers is a girl and her best friend and sister Alex Danvers is a girl. Her romantic rival is Lucy Lane who is a girl and they both work at CatCo. for Cat Grant who is also proudly a girl who built a media empire. In her free time, Kara is Supergirl and many of her foes are girls. In National City, girls are everywhere.

Supergirl as an avatar for 2016 feminism exists largely at a very superficial level that mostly works. The show is bright and sunny and endearing and consciously aware that it in addition to a bunch of cynical (mostly male) television critics, it also has an audience of very young girls. The girl power message is overt and highly unsubtle, but it works when one considers that girls as young as eight aren't necessarily ready for critical feminist theory just yet. Supergirl presents complex ideas about identity and womanhood and how they interact in the larger world in a way that is digestible to young viewers, and I think that's a net benefit.

The only problem? All the girls are white.

In The Corner Of A Dark Room Under A Thick Fog of Smoke: Declarations Of Agency In Rihanna's #ANTI

Over the last decade, Rihanna has cultivated a very specific image of herself. Shifting ceaselessly from cheeky to coy to naked sexuality and back again, Rihanna is the consummate chameleon, changing for the times and evolving when she feels the need to shed her latest skin. Largely, as an audience, we have projected our perceptions onto her. Each new iteration of music, hair and fashion has left just enough room for our own desires to rush in and fill the void. But on ANTI we see exactly what powers the Rihanna machine and she lets us into her head; here is a full body of work that examines every facet of her being and lays it bare on her own terms.

ANTI is peak Rihanna. Endlessly delayed, it's no coincidence that this is Rihanna's most daring and truthful work to date. She waited until it was right; until it reflected her the way she wanted to be seen, and then gave it away for free, ensuring that no one could mistake it for sheer arrogance or braggadocio. ANTI shows a side of badgalriri we've only speculated about before, and untangles the complicated issues of her place in pop culture and how it relates to her sexuality, her blackness and her feminism.

The thing about ANTI is that it almost doesn't work. As a singular entity it makes sense: it is a declaration of her personhood on all fronts. But take it apart and it becomes mush in your hands, exploring disparate ideas all at once with through-lines that are tenuous at best. And yet, the ideas themselves are crystal clear: there is no beating around the bush. Rihanna is here now and she knows exactly why and on what terms she expects for that to happen. Gone are the pulsing club bangers she's built her career on. Instead we're treated to raw, brooding melodies that conjure images of solitary contemplation. The music exists under an eternal thick fog of smoke traced back to a blunt; truths emerging as inhibitions come down.

The opening track, Consideration, (which she co-wrote) is the brash declaration of a new direction. The heavy bass drops deep as Rihanna's voice, higher and clearer than ever before, laments. If it wasn't clear before, it is now. Rihanna is over it, and she's ready to move onto something fresh and new. She's ready to grow and make music that can evolve with her, and she's demanding the space to do so. With that, she sets the tone for the complex delicacy she's about to serve us, combining styles and sounds until she achieves that magic cocktail that hits exactly the right spot.

On Kiss It Better, she taunts an ex, making him admit that he'll take her back no matter what. As guitar riffs sing in the background, Rihanna asserts herself both to him and to us as the audience: "You're always going to come back to me so why fight it?"

Work, the first official single, is a moody dancehall inspired track full of lust and longing. The messaging persists, though here she has convincing to do. The negotiation between disregard and sentiment is delicate, and Rihanna handles it expertly. She wants us to stay, but she doesn't plan to work for it. Slurring through the lyrics, the light disdain is palpable. Should you stay? Rihanna answers "Sure I guess..." She's far more concerned with her own pleasure than she ever will be with you.

On Woo, she's back to taunting, but it's on the deliciously dark and cutting Needed Me where she turns savage. Rihanna may long for company when the sun sets, but she doesn't need it and never did. Here she pointedly cuts her man down, reminding him that she's the one doing all the giving here. She asserts her sexual agency as someone who likes to fuck and is perfectly happy getting it elsewhere should the need arise. Here is the reminder: she's not the one tied to you and she never intends to be. The rejection is unambiguous and swift: "Don't get it twisted. Everything about you is replaceable."

But on Higher, Rihanna is lit and pouring her feelings out. On the all too brief track, her voice strains high and raw as she fights to ensure she gets the words out. She's independent yes, but the moments of loneliness and need still come. She's a savage, but not a loner or a recluse. She too longs for comfort and company, and she'll take it where it comes. The Rihanna amalgam to Adele's Hello, Higher breaks open the shell of the untouchable black woman and exposes the pain too many assume she never feels.

Pose is a return to the Rihanna we know and love. While the sound is new, the lyrics recall the swagger and surety we saw in Pour It Up. Hate if you like, but have a seat while she gets loaded and works it. On Sex With Me she brags about hitting it better than anyone else. On both, she's little concerned with outside validation. Feel free to come along for the ride, but don't expect to be missed if you don't.

*****

Taken together, the disparate parts of ANTI form a cohesive whole. Here is a woman a decade older and wiser, sure of herself and the direction she intends to take her life in. These tracks open her up and lay her bare as a whole person, showing the ways in which conflict can exist in harmony. The music is daring and intimate. She lets us see the strings in a way we never have before, perhaps an effort to undo the "bad bitch" label she has inhabited for so long. It's not that she won't cut you down with a sharply chosen emoji or gif on instagram, it's that there are levels to being Rihanna, and under the surface, there exists more than the "sexy Bajan pop princess" we've come to know and love.

This is the album Rihanna wanted to make rather than the one that we expected from her, but that too shows growth. Her declarations of sexual freedom serve as metaphor for very real freedom: from commercial constraints or a continued need to prove her staying power. She's established herself as a powerhouse and her legacy is set. Now she seeks out experimentation and nuance.

ANTI may be less radio friendly and traditional, but that is the point. This is not establishment. This is her truest self in music form and it's anti-everything. There are none of her usual themes and no pop hits. Rihanna has set herself firmly in opposition to not only to her own past musical ethos, but to the very music industry itself.

About "Only" Representations of Women In Pop Culture

When it comes to women in pop culture, it's often hard to find the right balance. There are so few female characters being written into the media that we consume that inadvertently, each individual female character becomes an avatar for every other woman in that universe. She's the only one, therefore she's every one. But eradicating the smurfette principle altogether isn't all that difficult. There's an easy fix:

If you don’t want your female character to represent all women, then she can’t be the only woman around. If you want your female character to make stereotypical mistakes and avoid accusations of misogyny, then you have to have other female characters around not making those mistakes.

It's such a simple idea, and yet so many pop culture products still seem to struggle with it. And the curious thing is that it applies to all underrepresented groups in fiction. When you have several different variations of the way that men are allowed to exist in your universe and only one way that women are allowed to exist, criticisms will necessarily fall on that character, because she is now tasked with being everything to everyone looking to see themselves in that piece of media.

It's reflective of the backlash to the characterization of Black Widow in 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, and the implication that she was was also a "monster" because she was infertile. While Black Widow's feelings about her forced sterilization and her guilt over her time as a spy are valid and reasonable, they become the representative way that all women in that universe are meant to view romance and fertility because she is the only female Avenger, and the most significant female character in the film and the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Another example is the discussion surrounding Claire Dearing in 2015's Jurassic Park and the fact that she wore high heels throughout the entire film, despite being chased by (literal) dinosaurs. In the context of the film, the fact that nothing is said of her trekking through the jungle and running from a T-Rex in 5 inch heels makes her character seems silly and prideful. And that doesn't take into account the shaming that she endured throughout the film for not being able to relate well to her two young nephews, or to make a relationship work with the cocky hero. It's implied that Claire, is silly, prideful, frigid and a terrible mother, and no other significant female characters exist in the film to individualize that supposition. Contrast this with the Ilsa Faust character in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. While running away from a gunman across a rooftop with hero Ethan Hunt, she specifically asks him to help her get her heels off so that their getaway is not compromised.

In the end, it all comes down to the danger of a single story. As author Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche said in her famous Ted Talk, the problem isn't that stereotypes are not true, but rather that they are not the whole truth, and they don't give us a full picture of the complexities of the people around us. When you only have one of something, or in this case, someone, everything about them becomes the default of their kind, simply by virtue of being alone. It's why diversity in media is important from the top come down. When you have more than one female character, each of them becomes an individual with their own quirks and personalities that stand apart from other women. The weight of expectation is lifted, and it allows for some of them to fail, or be clichés, because there are other characters that can contradict that characterization.

A great example? Last year, two shows starring black women were cancelled: Minority Report and Extant. And while I will miss both of those shows, I'm not worried about seeing myself onscreen, because other, complex black women still exist on television on Scandal, Sleepy Hollow, How to Get Away With Murder, Empire and Blackish. Because neither of these characters is the only one, we're able to get diverse representations of black women, from severely damaged lawyers with compromised ethics, to FBI agents battling the paranormal, to loud, brash music executives who just want to leave their mark on the world.

None of them is telling the only story.