I know this close to the election, I probably should be writing about electoral politics, but I have to take some posting time to register my annoyance at Beyoncé's first single released as her unwitting drag queen persona, Sasha Fierce. The ladies at Broadsheet tackled the single "If I Were A Boy", so I won't bother with that. Plus, as annoying as that song is, it didn't get on my nerves in nearly the same way that the other song they linked did. This is not the official video, which has embedding disabled, but you can hear it:
The first verse is pretty funny.
Now put your hands up
Up in the club, we just broke up
I’m doing my own little thing
Decided to dip but now you wanna trip
Cuz another brother noticed me
I’m up on him, he up on me
dont pay him any attention
cried my tears, for three good years
Ya can’t be mad at me
Okay, I am a fan of going out and having exactly this kind of fun as a way to get over being strung along for years by someone who slowly but surely dismantled your self-esteem. (Best pop song describing that? "You Keep Me Hanging On" by the Supremes. Best song describing it from the point of view of the sadistic asshole getting his kicks by rejecting someone enough to make her feel bad, but not enough that she leaves him? "Under My Thumb" by the Rolling Stones.) So I can see that this verse feels empowering, in that way a strong fuck you can. But then it goes off the rails.
Cuz if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it
Don’t be mad once you see that want it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it
Oh no, you have got to be fucking kidding me. My first thought, upon listening to this chorus is, "Didn't know you could put a ring on pussy," since I can understanding calling your vagina "it". I fail to see how, "If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it" isn't pure objectification, though I suppose there's a refreshing honesty in this lyric's description of our engagement traditions, which do indeed seem to resemble marking your property with a diamond. Perhaps the narrator hasn't faced up entirely to how much this SOB has dismantled her self-esteem, and the reference to herself as "it" reflects this. Which is a fairly sophisticated lyric-writing trick for a pop song, but far from unknown. ("Polly" by Nirvana comes to mind as a song that had an unreliable narrator that was unfortunately taken on face value by asswipes who liked to listen to Nirvana because it was hard, and never realized how feminist and anti-violence the lyrics were.)
It would certainly explain why the narrator would have accepted an offer of marriage from such a motherfucker as the sort she describes here. Because that's the other thing that bothers me about this. I understand that a lot of women are frustrated by guys who hold out on the ring, happy to have the relationship and the sex while keeping their options open, while said women are expected to already be in deep enough to say yes when the proposal is offered. But I don't see the ultimatum strategy celebrated here as an answer. Because isn't that the implicit idea? To get women together to say, "Ring or door, your choice," without asking why on earth you'd want to marry someone who puts you in that spot because he enjoys the sadistic pleasure of seeing how far along he can string you before you break.
The driving beat of the song and the ballsy singing is clearly supposed to signal feminist anthem, but I'm sorry, it's not only not transgressive, but it reinscribes the idea that women are basically passive, and we don't have control over who we choose to be with or even to question why we should want the ring so badly (so badly that a ring should erase bad treatment at someone's hands), but that our only power is to use sex as a bargaining chip to get the only thing we're supposed to really want. So, as a feminist anthem, I call it a failure. Actually, the "If I Were A Boy" song gets a couple of points for at least questioning male dominance.
Once again, I feel that the music industry is cleverly positioning songs that kind of sort of sound powerful but reinscribe traditional female passivity as a substitute for songs that might actually give women ideas. (Which is one reason I'm tickled by Rock Band 2, which has included truly transgressive songs like "Rebel Girl" and "Bad Reputation" right there where people who wouldn't otherwise hear those songs will be exposed to them.) There's just too long a line of faux feminist singers out there singing songs that sound kind of tough but are fundamentally about reveling in cattiness or victimhood---Alanis Morrisette, Avril Lavigne, now this Kate Perry annoyance, and at least on this song, Beyoncé.
