Montéz Jennings | Chapman University

Editors’ note: Jennings’ essay is part of the collaboration, “Remembering bell hooks: Teaching/Learning/Thinking/Writing in Desperate Times“. The above image is used from the New York Times article “Feminism Made a Faustian Bargain With Celebrity Culture. Now It’s Paying the Price”

“I see a part of Beyoncé that is in fact, anti-feminist — that is a terrorist, especially in terms of the impact on young girls.” 

—bell hooks (“Are You Still”)

I graduated college almost a decade ago in 2016. Five years later, the unthinkable happened—scholar and author, bell hooks, died. Immediately, after hearing the news of hooks’ death, I began to reflect on the impact her scholarship had on my life, especially since I will be graduating with two Master’s degrees nine years after my introduction to her. Like most students in undergrad, I was starting to figure myself out along with my personal morals and ideologies. hooks is partly responsible for influencing my academic and personal journey into equity and evaluating the state of Black womanhood. I have hooks to thank for a crash course in feminism in the most unique way: I started reading and learning more of her work due to her comments about global superstar Beyoncé. 

In 2014, during a discussion at The New School, cultural critic and feminist scholar bell hooks called Beyoncé a terrorist. hooks specifically was referencing Beyoncé ’s 2014, Time magazine person of the year cover. She appeared on the cover in what looked like white high waisted underwear bottoms, a white halter bra, and a sheer-shimmery cover top. (See below).

The photo garnered a lot of criticism and attention from fans and journalists including statements like:

• “ I absolutely LOVE Beyoncé  but that outfit is SO Miley Cyrus”
• ‘Thigh-high boots, corsets, the teeniest of short shorts may be Beyoncé’s look du jour, but do they really have a place on Time magazine’s cover?”
• “Bey says Time magazine’s recognition is important ‘because it’s not about fashion or beauty or music; it’s about the influence I’ve had on culture.’ So why does she have to come half-dressed?’ ”
• “You decide she’s the most influential person. In the world. And then you let her grace your cover in her underwear. You don’t see how pathetic that is?”
• “IMO it looks really sleazy and slutty and she is a mother that needs to be a better role model”
• “Why is Beyoncé in her bra and pants on the cover of time magazine, while all the men are pictured looking bloodily (sic) intellectual.”
  

Alongside labeling her a terrorist, hooks had this to say: 

• “from my deconstructive point of view…she’s colluding in the construction of herself as a slave…it’s not a liberatory image” (“Are You Still”).
• “The major assault on feminism in our society has come from visual media and from television and videos ” (Are You Still).

These comments crafted a narrative about Beyoncé’s image and the control which she has over herself. This came after her self-titled album, released December of 2013. This was an album where fans saw and heard a blatantly “raunchy” or sexier version of the singer. In addition, this is where Beyoncé declared herself a feminist, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s explanation of what it means to be a feminist, something else that caused controversy for the singer. In 2014, I was two years removed from high school still trying to figure out the world and coming to terms with how the world perceived me. Of course, I was and still am a Beyoncé enthusiast. I grew up watching her in Destiny’s Child and clinging to her for long-lasting pop star representation. At the time, my vague idea of feminism was constructed of jokes from male comedians and the image of Angela Davis with a large Afro thrusting her fist. Feminism at some point became synonymous with whiteness or a running joke about man haters on television. Feminism and feminist were essentially words frowned upon in my community. Yes, Black feminist scholars had been talking about issues of Blackness and womanhood; however, it seemed to make people uncomfortable in having to question the unwritten rules of our community. For decades, simply saying, “I love Black women,’ was enough to appease the masses. For decades, Black women were taught to stay in the background and be forgiving. We were taught to be loving and to appease men, especially Black men. Black women were and still are conditioned to either accept minimum support regarding issues of misogyny in our community or pretend they do not exist to prevent divisiveness. 

As a sophomore in college, I was developing myself as a young Black woman and feminist. When I heard that a prestigious, decorated person such as hooks had called Beyoncé a terrorist, I felt hurt. I felt threatened in my womanhood and feminism as well as puzzled. I was dipping my toes into the concepts of feminism, capitalism, and later intersectionality. I questioned myself—

“Why are you personally threatened by these ideas?”  “Am I doing this right?” “What does it mean to be a terrorist?” “How is Beyoncé committing acts of terrorism?” “Should I stop listening to her?” bell hooks made me think, for what seemed like the first time. I realized I had a lot more work to do to understand feminism and the relationship to Black femme people. I’d call myself a feminist to spite my father and as effective as it was in plan, I needed to reflect on my own values and ideas about the Black body and Black feminism. So much of feminism is the image of a white woman advocating solely for issues that burden white women—for example, “free the nipple.” Although an issue that wouldn’t harm Black women, it is not at the top of our list of feminist issues. In a world where Black women are being paid less than white men, Black men, and white women, and experience higher mortality rates while being caught at the intersection of sexism and racism, taking my top off at the beach is the least of my worries. Yet still, there is the issue of defining feminism and what that means for Black women and how we work on creating a safer, better world for Black women and Black femme presenting people. 

Nearly ten years later, as Beyoncé starts another world tour, I reflect on these comments and their relationship to the true definition of feminism and Blackness. With people like hooks doing work to challenge these ideas, I realized why I felt so threatened. I needed to challenge my world views and the ways I had been conditioned to think. At that moment in 2014, watching hooks speak, my mind started to come apart, like puzzle pieces falling out of a box. I needed to put them back together. Essentially, I needed to redesign my puzzle. In doing this, I realized that scholarship is about thought and critique. We as active audiences of any person or art should be able to enjoy cautiously and critically examine what we are consuming. What and how we consume influences the perception of the world around us. When we do not consume consciously or critique critically, we are plagued within the binary of ignorance. We will continue to have views or ideas that could impede upon our livelihoods. For example, hearing hooks call Beyoncé a terrorist, I could have easily dismissed these claims, accusing hooks of unfairly discussing the singer’s image without understanding the implications of what she is saying. I could have simply written hooks off as being hateful or wanting to hinder the singer’s success. However, I was intrigued not only by the provocativeness of the words but also the boldness of the claim and the underlying meanings. In taking interest in these claims, I had to learn how to deconstruct statements and evidence. I had to learn the lens that hooks was using to examine the magazine cover and the popstar’s imagine. Once I was able to learn the what and how of these things, I was able to start putting things back together and forming ideas based on scholarship by Black women. In addition, one of the most important things was learning to take critiques, give well thought critiques, and how to apply those critiques. I felt like I had a new skill, and I was ready to use it. 

Through bell hooks discussing the effect of Beyoncé’s “feminism,’ I became engrossed in Black feminist literature but also in defining my ideas about the Black body particularly Black women’s bodies. Our bodies are not our own, often open for public critique and discussion. Our bodies are never our own, especially as young women. This is a lesson we learn early. Autonomy is a word foreign to our vocabulary. The idea quickly passes as our bodies are constant reminders of birth, a bill, or sexualization. Whether we are beaten, policed for clothes, or told that our size makes us seem intimidating, it is clear that every opinion or criticism is warranted and necessary. Revisiting the previous comments about the time magazine cover, I cannot help but think of hooks in Feminism is For Everybody, when she said, “understanding the way male domination and sexism was expressed in everyday life created awareness in women of the ways we were victimized, exploited, and, in worse case scenarios, oppressed” (7). In being aligned with the aesthetic of being a feminist, the commenters were partaking in a kind of dog whistle misogynoir which happens often to Black women. We are more concerned with how the person of the year is presented or concerned more with whether the image is curated for the self rather than the influence on the culture. 

In Beyoncé being labeled a terrorist, I ask myself, can we truly free ourselves with tools from our oppressors? Can we turn these images and ideas of Black femme sexuality on their head? Can we truly invert a narrative? Well, yes … and no. Here is where I think back to my first encounter with hooks and the ways she made me think. I am thinking about the duality of Blackness here. Because these are the tools we have, we must use them to the best of our abilities. hooks calls example to this when she says, “Women stripping their bodies of unhealthy and uncomfortable, restrictive clothing—bras, girdles, corsets, garter belts, etc.—was a ritualistic, radical reclaiming of the health and glory of the female body” (Feminism 31). I ask myself, “are Black women not allowed this reclamation in some way?” However, I do not always agree with using sexuality or sexiness as a personality, I do think Black women should be given some margin of freedom to explore. I think back to the same time, circa 2013/2014 when Miley Cyrus was trying to rid herself of her Disney identity. Both Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus were hyper-visual because they making music and a transition in image. For Miley, she partook in cultural appropriation, almost to the degree of minstrelsy. She was allowed to find herself whilst playing dress up in a culture and music despite criticisms from Black women. It seemed like she embraced the claims and dived deeper into appropriating the culture. Those critics and their critiques were easily discarded by the masses while she made mockery of hip-hop culture. Years later, she was called a “badass” feminist by a popular women’s magazine. She is currently praised for being an “intersectional feminist” (Blaec). So, I ask why can Miley Cyrus gyrate at the VMAs then years later boast about buying herself flowers and be applauded? Why are Black women not extended the patience that white women are given? As hooks said herself, “All white women in this nation know that their status is different from that of black women/women of color. They know this from the time they are little girls watching television and seeing only their images and looking at magazines and seeing only their images. They know that the only reason nonwhites are absent/invisible is because they are not white” (Feminism 55).

If we truly seek to move forward with Black liberation, especially of femme presenting people then we have to move on from what is acceptable for femme presenting people. 

There is some respectability politics in calling Beyoncé a terrorist and labeling her a slave. There is an air that suggests there is a certain way for Black women to be feminist. We have to be critical about the images we calculate and be open to the ever-changing concepts of feminism. No. I will not call Beyoncé a terrorist and yet I will not disagree with hooks. We should critique our public figures yet be mindful of the circumstances they too are put in. I cannot help but remind myself that we must critique with grace. A woman who had to grow up in the public eye, chasing stardom since the age of nine in a Black femme body with a manager who was not only male but also her father. This same man who committed acts of infidelity, fathering children outside of his marriage while her mother suffered silently under the guise of “praying the hurt away.” This little girl, like many Black girls, grew up watching these behaviors and being encouraged to repeat them. This would affect Beyoncé later in life when she chose to stay with her husband who is also a cheater. Beyoncé is an example of many Black women who grew up in the south in “good” Christian households who were taught certain ideals about how to be a “good” woman. This mean sacrificing aspects of the self to appease the male counterpart. Furthermore, Beyoncé was in a girl group that was competing with the pop “blonde boom.” There was Britney, Christina, Jessica, and even Mandy. What exactly does this do to a fifteen-year-old in a girl group? A girl group that no one can deny is Black? How would audiences have reacted if Destiny’s Child was instead “Medusa’s Muse” or some other feminist group for teenage girls? We most likely would not know Beyoncé in the same way we do today or if she would even be the Beyoncé of today. She would not.

Although hooks uses the term terrorist as a metaphor, Black women are not afforded the luxury of metaphor in our society. We can see this clearly demonstrated years later in Beyoncé ’s Lemonade film. She quotes the poet Warsan Shire, stating, “I plugged my menses with the holy book.” “I levitated.” “I swallowed a sword.” Many listeners took those lines literally, gaining the accusations of “witch” and “devil worshiper.” So, when hooks called Beyoncé a terrorist, many viewers did not realize the metaphor or the point of the statement but instead agreed without context because they heard criticism of a Black woman they disapprove of from a “smart” Black woman. Many of these people who agreed do not agree with the idea of feminism but more so the idea to discredit and criticize Beyoncé without substantial claims. 

Ironically, it’s these polarizing and controversial figures who have contributed to my ideas of Black womanhood and feminism. To call Beyoncé a terrorist is, in my opinion, an extreme comparison in the literal sense of the word. To critique her feminist stance is fair because after all she is a billionaire who’s married to a billionaire who endorses the very foundations of capitalism. We cannot have capitalism without capital, even if that means we make ourselves the capital—which most of us do in some way.

I am not going to say that Beyoncé is without reproach, but neither is bell hooks. I do believe Beyoncé can and should be criticized. There should be a discussion of her relationship to money and product as well as making use of the cultural zeitgeist or as one Tiktoker, Ratchet Intellectual, referred to it as, “the aesthetic” of the moment. In 2014, there could have been discussions about the superficial use of the word feminist in her song, “Flawless.” We could also have discussions about the lyrics of the song, “Drunk in Love,” in which her husband proudly boasts:

Beat the box up, like Mike in ‘97, I bite
I’m Ike Turner, turn up baby, no, I don’t play
Now eat the cake, Anna Mae
Said, Eat the cake, Anna Mae

However, her attire of her Time Magazine cover was the matter at hand and later, hooks wrote about Lemonade. She went on to say: “…simply showcasing beautiful black bodies does not create a just culture of optimal wellbeing where black females can become fully self-actualized and truly respected…” and “in her fictive world, Beyoncé can name black female pain…It can be given voice: this is a vital and essential stage of freedom struggle, but it does not bring exploitation and domination to an end” (hooks).

But Lemonade was the representation I needed and was very much a product of its time and a response to culture of the time. However, in engaging with both Beyoncé and bell hooks, I find myself troubled and caught between being a Black girl who saw herself in Beyoncé with the brown lip liner and shimmering lip-gloss and now a Black academic, willfully soiled by the realities of the cultures I exist within. Cultures being Black, American, queer, femme, young millennial and so on. I am also troubled by the idea of being “the right kind of feminist” or not being able to grow in ideology and execution. For example, in Feminism is for Everybody,  hooks says, “feminist are made, not born.” I was a feminist who was made, and I had to learn and grow into certain ideals, so much so I abandoned the title feminist, taking on womanism because of the white centered undertones of mainstream feminism. I take hooks’ quote with liberty to take advantage of the opportunities for continuous development and advocacy for Black women, even rich Black women like Beyoncé. I will stream “Renaissance” while continuing to read All About Love because when you are a Black woman, you are constantly caught in a paradox of existence. As a Black woman who enjoys popular culture and critical theory, I appreciate bell hooks’ work and critique as well as Beyoncé ’s contribution to the culture and my culture. Through the discussion of the curated image, I was able to discover the importance of discussing art and society with nuance. To conclude, I think bell hooks said it best, when she said, “feminist politics aims to end domination to free us to be who we are—to live lives where we love justice, where we can live in peace. Feminism is for everybody” (118). 

Works Cited

“Are You Still a Slave? by the New School.” Livestream, 6 May 2014, https://livestream.com/accounts/1369487/events/2940187. 

“Black Women & The Pay Gap.” AAUW, 20 Sept. 2022, https://www.aauw.org/resources/article/black-women-and-the-pay-gap/. 

Blaec, Jagger. “Miley Cyrus’ Makeover Shows Why Black People Fight for Their Culture.” Medium, The Establishment, 29 Jan. 2018, https://medium.com/the-establishment/miley-cyrus-image-makeover-shows-why-black-people-fight-for-their-culture-ada67f9749b5. 

Coker, Hillary Crosley. “What bell hooks Really Means When She Calls Beyoncé a ‘Terrorist’.” Jezebel, Jezebel, 9 May 2014, https://jezebel.com/what-bell-hooks-really-means-when-she-calls-Beyoncé -a-t-1573991834. 

Greenaway, Naomi. “Twitter Uproar over Beyoncé ‘s Time Magazine Cover.” Daily Mail Online, Associated Newspapers, 29 Apr. 2014, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2614857/Twitter-uproar-Beyoncé s-Time-Magazine-cover.html. 

hooks, bell. “bell hooks Books.” Https://Bellhooksbooks.com, https://bellhooksbooks.com/moving-beyond-pain/. 

hooks, bell. Feminist is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. South End P, 2000.

Khal. “A Timeline of Miley Cyrus Appropriating Hip-Hop Culture.” Complex, Complex, 30 Jan. 2020, https://www.complex.com/music/2017/05/miley-cyrus-appropriating-hip-hop-culture. 

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. “Until Black Women Are Free, None of Us Will Be Free.” The New Yorker, 20 July 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/until-black-women-are-free-none-of-us-will-be-free. 

Thompson, Sophie. “Miley Cyrus Was a Badass Feminist in Her Bangerz Era – so Why Did We Bash Her for It Then but Celebrate It Now?” Glamour UK, 10 July 2019, https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/miley-cyrus-feminist-bangerz-mothers-daughter.