Catie Byrne
Features Editor

Candace Frazier, UNCG senior, hosted a discussion Sept. 16 in Tower Village about Beyoncé, feminism, how popular culture has influenced the perception of what a feminist is and how to measure whether a celebrity is intersectional in their feminism.

The night began as a small gathering of people in the Tower Village parlor. Frazier prefaced the discussion with a Prezi presentation explaining the definition of feminism, how media depicts feminism, why Beyoncé’s feminism is considered controversial and how it relates to intersectionality.

For reference, intersectional feminism is a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, critically acclaimed black feminist theorist, to mean how different facets of identity intersect. Initially, Crenshaw described this intersection as how black women navigate racism and sexism, however, the contemporary definition has expanded to relate to the intersections of all races, genders, classes, sexualities, ages and disabilities.

Frazier played a video by youtuber, AkilahObviously, to describe the ways in which intersectional feminism can be understood through the metaphor of different types of pizza.

“Say you’re born a cheese pizza, but the world is made for burgers… then there are deluxe pizzas like me, who happen to have different toppings and features than cheese pizza, and have their own problems to face because they are pizzas, and have different toppings…

Cheese pizzas are highly visible, meanwhile this is not the case for deluxe pizzas, our features are often seen by the untrained eye as extra weight, and too much of a problem and we’re left to crumble because the crust does not support us. It is much more difficult to be deluxe pizza in a burger world,” explained AkilahObviously.

This metaphor, Frazier explained, was applicable to her as a black woman, in that she experiences misogynoir, or anti-black sexism, an experience in which the racism one experiences is sexualized, and the sexism experienced is racialized.

Frazier qualified that as a straight, cisgender woman, there are “toppings” which she does not experience, and that while she does not experience them, she listens to her LGBT+ friends in order to be more inclusive.

The discussion then applied this concept to the ways in which Beyoncé has been associated with feminism in her music. Frazier played the Beyoncé songs, “Me, Myself And I,” “Pretty Hurts” and “Grown Woman,” and a video in which Beyoncé described her personal journey in finding feminism.

VanaMary Isaac, UNCG senior, said that although she took issue with the images of “his” and “hers” reinforcing heteronormativity in one of Beyoncé’s videos, the demand for celebrities to be perfectly inclusive in their feminism is an unrealistic expectation put on Beyoncé but not white feminists.

Of highly visible white feminists in the media, one of the discussion participants pointed to Emma Watson as someone whose feminism deserves scrutiny.

She argued that Watson was heavily rewarded for a speech that only hit basic issues of sexism and attempted to appeal to men more than engage an intersectional approach as to why feminism is necessary.

Frazier then brought up the way media outlets treat white feminists, Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, in comparison to black feminists such as Nicki Minaj.

Attendants of event discussed this in the context of the way Minaj was framed as being an aggressor towards spats with Cyrus and Swift on twitter, when both white pop artists had criticized a tweet Minaj wrote about to the prevalence of racism within the music industry, and specifically award shows.

People at the event felt as though Cyrus and Swift spoke out of turn, and that Minaj’s reaction was twisted and contextualized within widespread media to fit the angry black woman stereotype.

In relation to Beyoncé’s feminism, some felt as though she had not quite spoken as much about feminism as Minaj, but was also growing towards intersectionality in her feminism.

Isaac said, “In regards to Beyoncé, she’s awesome, and I think she is working up to be more intersectional. But I also think that, in regards to feminism, if your feminism isn’t intersectional, it’s nothing at all. And as I wrote on this conclusion chart, intersectionality leads to equity and accessibility, and that leads to many other great possibilities.”

Frazier concurred, and once again emphasized the importance of thinking critically about why so much scrutiny is placed on Beyoncé.

“I think with Beyoncé, she receives a lot of scrutiny because she’s placed on such a high platform. And she’s placed at this level, where, she has, like, literally no room for error. And I don’t think it’s fair that she’s scrutinized so harshly, in comparison to quote unquote feminists like Miley Cyrus, and Taylor Swift and Emma Watson, who will [say and] do the same things that Beyoncé will do, but will get praised for it, while Beyoncé gets slandered for it.

I feel like, in the feminist community, we need to take a look at why that double standard exists, and we need to dismantle it.”