Beyoncé must have her feminist cake and eat it, too

Huffington Post, January 2014
by Ellie Slee

Much has been written lately about Beyonce bursting out of the feminist closet with her latest album. "Did a baby make a feminist of Beyonce?" wondered the Telegraph, and, in spite of her 2013 dig at other industry successes with the repeated command that those 'bitches' 'bow down', I wondered the same thing. Weeks later, her unarguably feminist essay for the Shriver report was revealed, and Bey's feminist babe status was cemented. Damn right, Beyonce! Gender equality is a myth - and you, the 3.6 octave spanning voice of your generation, might just grab that great big reality some much deserved airtime.

Nobody is perfect, but Beyonce's next public move was a bad one. She lost the feminist game she was playing in one fell swoop.

Beyonce and her husband, Jay-Z, performed their duet Drunk in Love at the Grammys on Sunday. When Beyonce released her new album in December last year, the song came under fire for Jay-Z's lyric "I'm Ike Turner, turn up/Baby know I don't play/Now eat the cake, Anna Mae", a reference to a moment of domestic abuse displayed in the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got To Do With It when Ike forced Tina (who was born Anna Mae) to eat cake by shoving it into her face, and proceeded to assault an employee who tried to help her.

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