Lemonade

: Being Visibly Black and Female in America

Kelty Edraney

In Beyonces visual album, Lemonade

, a task is undertaken that no iconic cultural figure

has done in quite the same way before: exulting not only her womanhood, but her
African-American Heritage as well; Her blackness. Male pattern infidelity, Feminine
resilience and self reflection in the face of disrespect and change is celebrated throughout. The
camera pans to various scenes of Ms. Knowles joyously (and sometimes ragefully) destroys an
entire lot of cars, and bashes in various windows. Her album artfully combines both high and low
art, culturally advanced and refined motifs throughout, as well as the cliche trope of a woman
avenging her cheating husband. Many iconic black women (such as Serena Williams) also make
appearances. All in all, her creation makes for a powerful and progressive statement on race and
gender in America, under the guise of pop culture.
The album opens with a powerful image of Ms. Knowles standing in tall grass in a field.
Her hair is in cornrows, she is wearing no visible makeup and a black hoodie. This in itself
makes for an incredibly strong image, utilizing styling (cornrows, black hoodie) traditionally
associated with the African American community. The real power of this image is not sourced
from its own merit, but rather from the striking absence of similar images in our media. To see a
woman, with genuinely dark skin, no makeup, a wide, not slimmed, clearly un-white nose, being
portrayed still in a light of beauty, is a gaping hole in the landscape of our culture. This absence
is apparent in advertising- look at any image advertising makeup to even skin tone, and often the
darkest model is still, in reality, very light skinned compared to the average woman of color. And
so begins the album's long series of visual affirmations of the existence of the beautiful, black,
and powerful woman.
Furthermore, the choice to explore vulnerable emotions as a black woman is a
revolutionary act in and of itself. The album moves through about 7 different chapters, each
named after various emotional states (intuition, denial, rage, etc.). In fact, the entire album
plunges directly into the deep and painful wound of the Black Woman. Beyonce layers spoken
word over a traditional hip-hop beat.
Bathed in bleach. I can wear her skin over mine. Her hair, over mine. Black woman wearing
hands as gloves. White.
We can pose for a photograph...all three of us
While the meaning of much of the spoken word is not immediately clear, some
consideration reveals a deep reflection on the denial of self that many young black women are up
against in a world in which dark is bad and light is good. This sense of inadequacy, this
feeling of competition with the other woman is also touched upon throughout. A particularly
noteworthy lyric in her album, amidst a song telling of her partners habitual running to different

women, makes a reference to Becky with the good hair. This is a loaded statement. Becky is
a word that, in African American culture, particularly the hip hop scene, refers to a white
woman. The good hair part refers to the cultural beauty standard that regards white hair as
more desirable than the natural curls and volume of other kinds of hair. This sentence is again
telling of something much larger than contempt for another woman; it points to the societal
preference for an aesthetic of whiteness.
The final,

and perhaps most telling aspect of Lemonade, is not its content, but rather
the media and cultural response that occurred after the video was made public. Many higher
profile, high society art review journals or music magazines may have had a positive response,
and that positive reaction extends into the laymans world of social media. #Lemonade became
a trending topic on all major social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) within 24 hours of the
video being published. This positive response acts as a personal milestone in the socio-political
history of our relatively new country. To have a widespread public approval of a black woman
being herself, being openly feminist and vulnerable, is growth.