Beyonce

Jay Smooth and his cat, telling it like it is.

Jay Smooth (who has been posting two videos a week lately—hooray!) has a new PSA up today on why the media should stop freaking out over Michelle Obama's love of Beyoncé.

Happy Leap Year Week!

• Sociological Images outlines how Leap Year Day was used as a day to reverse gender norms in marriage proposals.  
• Lucy Liu has been cast as Watson in CBS's new Sherlock Holmes series and many aren't happy about the gender flip.
• Two cool book projects are looking for funding: Radical Doulas by Feministing's former editor Miriam Perez, and a comics anthology about marriage equality. 
• At Native Appropriations, Adrienne looks at ANTM's clueless stereotyping of Native Americans. 
• The women of Community do a roundtable about the show, women in media, and the future of the series. 
• Joanna Chiu writes about how the recent spate of racism against Jeremy Lin comes as no surprise. 
• Monica Roberts of Transgriot on black transgender trailblazers at Ebony.com. 
• Charlotte Richardson Andrews writes about Iggy Azaela, white privilege, and hip hop.
• What does Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's Oscar win for Saving Face mean for Pakistan? Sadia Ashraf responds at AltMuslimah.
• Does Liz Lemon need a divorce from Tina Fey? Emily Nussbaum responds to the Liz Lemon backlash.   
• Viva la Feminista encourages folks to blog for International Women's Day next week. 
• Verizon Wireless has added Gender Identity protection to its employees. 
• Beyonce has been breastfeeding Blue Ivy (gasp!) in public.

Tell us what you are reading in the comments!

My love of Beyoncé has been well documented on this blog before, so I won't get into it again here. However, I do want to talk about Bey's new video for "The Best Thing I Never Had," or rather, talk about the way other people are talking about it. First, the video, which is mostly just Beyoncé dancing around and looking really pretty in a wedding dress:

OK, first things first: I am a Beyoncé fan. However, fandom aside (well, sort of, because you can't ever really throw fandom aside) I must say that I'm surprised by all of the negative pushback Bey's latest video, "Run the World (Girls)," is getting. Not because it's a perfect video with a flawless, amazing message (it isn't), but because so many people are fired up about it. On the one hand, this pushback is terrific, because it means lots of people are talking about race and feminism and doing a close read of a music video, which doesn't happen all that often. On the other hand, this pushback is a bit harsh and asks more of a pop song and pop singer (whose heart I believe to be in the right place—more on that in a minute) than is perhaps fair.

I hate to overload you with Beyoncé news, but just after I critiqued the Daily Mail op-ed accusing her of looking too white, news broke that Beyoncé donned blackface and pseudo African garb for French glossy L’Officiel. Why did Bey make this enormous misstep? According to reports, she participated in the African-themed photo shoot to pay tribute to Nigerian musician Fela Kuti.

Is Beyoncé Knowles’ bleached blonde hair and light skin reason enough to accuse the singer of racial treason? Yes, says Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who just penned a piece in the Daily Mail about how Beyoncé is betraying black and Asian (meaning South Asian) women with her exterior.

Because I'm not a musician, I'm a writer, I tend to like and analyze and pick at the lyrics of songs. But at the same time, to be any sort of a pop music critic I have to look at the whole package, not just the lyrics. Each part of a pop song is a deliberate choice, and sometimes those choices deliberately contradict one another, undercut one meaning and substitute another, add layer upon layer and give you things to think about with each listen.

Let's start this off right, shall we?

With Beyoncé.

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Jon Caramanica opens his recent New York Times piece on the changing landscape of "girl pop" with something Lady Gaga yelled during her recent run at Madison Square Garden:

"I hate the truth!"

My thoughts on Christina Aguilera's single and music video for "Not Myself Tonight."