cognitive dissonance of a self proclaimed progressive and pop culture aficionado

this is gonna be just another rambling/stream of consciousness type post because this has been on my mind for awhile now and I need to compile these thoughts somewhere.

I’m a pop culture kid. in between my episodes of Degrassi or That’s So Raven, I’d be watching E! News, the I Love The… Series and other similar shows. I was on tumblr, the gossip blogs and checking Just Jared for new pap pictures of my favs pretty much daily. I also had/have acting aspirations so looking up to entertainers has been something I’ve been doing since I was a sentient human being.

one of those entertainers I was enamored with as soon as I saw her was Beyoncé. I started out as most people who are a part of #HagHive do, as a fan of Destiny’s Child. as soon as I would see the Survivor or Independent Woman Part 1 music video on somebody’s video countdown show, I’d be glued to the television. then Crazy in Love came out and you could not stop me from uh oh-ing throughout the house + after that, the Destiny Fulfilled album…to this day, there is something uncontrollable that happens to me when I hear miss Kelendria Rowland say HIT ME and that drumline ass beat comes in. all this and then her continuing to outdo herself in her subsequent solo releases cemented my parasocial love and admiration for miss Yonka.

As a Black kid that went to school in cawkasian suburbia for most of my schooling, I was subjected to white brainwashing that activated the coon chip in my brain¹. because of this I hadn’t really started to deconstruct my internalized racism (as well as my internalized misogyny) until 2012, the year the brutal murder of Trayvon Martin took place, and continued on toward the end of my high school career so by the time Lemonade came out in 2016 and I graduated, I was eager to celebrate my negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils. and from then on, my older sibling was teaching me things, both directly and indirectly, that further radicalized me and before I knew it, my dad started, jokingly, calling me Sista Soulja because I had a bone to pick with pretty much everything society had to offer. I was ranting and raving about anti-Blackness, misogynoir, xenophobia, queerphobia, white supremacy and, of course, capitalism. But a common thread from my childhood into my radicalization as an adult was that…I still loved checking in on celeb gossip and mess. and I loved cheering on my favorite performers and actors and entertainers in all their endeavors while also using their success stories as inspiration that I could make a career out of what I love to do and me being Black and a woman wouldn’t stop me no matter how sexist and racist the world may be.

I went to a Beyoncé concert for the first time in 2018, for her and her nasty husband’s On The Run II tour. My mother took me which is the only reason I’d be able to afford to go as a broke ass sophomore/junior in college and it was incredible. even with her husband in attendance². Chloe and Halle opened for her and she performed all the classics as well as some of my fav songs off Everything Is Love, her and her husband’s joint album. It was a 10/10 experience and I spent the day with my mommy and everything really was love. I also went to the highly acclaimed and talked about Renaissance tour with my sibling and their boyfriend (basically my brother in law without the white man paperwork). And once again, it was an amazing time and probably even more magical than the first time. I was OBSESSED with Renee, as was most of the world, so I could hardly contain myself the entire time.

However, something keeps coming back around when it comes to Yonka and it has only gotten more and more prevalent as the years go on, her and her husband are like the spokespeople for Black capitalism. No matter how much you wanna ignore it or frame it a certain way, that’s just the black ass bottom line. They both believe that the ultimate success for Black people is upward mobility and our ability to access to that lifestyle and that is simply not liberation, no matter how you slice it. Beyoncé is also an entertainer in a massive industry and while she may have it better than so many of us that live in the regular world, I’m sure in her world, she feels she’s fighting an uphill battle because although lightskinned and rich, she’s still a Black woman at the end of the day and society still has its biases and prejudices, even all the way at the top. so after the recording academy and people in the industry have paid her dust and played in her face for so many years, she comes out with Cowboy Carter which, as an album, is a love letter to the origins of country music which is, of course, started with Black people. But the marketing and subsequent Christmas performance had people scratching their heads, bringing out their pitchforks or blindly defending Bey. However, all the discourse aside…it finally won her AOTY.

Can I see the argument that maybe she trojan horsed this album? that she covered it in classic americana imagery to try and use optics to deliver the message, covertly, that Black people made this genre and get her album the notoriety that her artistry deserves? yeah, I could. however, does that stop the fact that to the naked eye, it simply just looks like she’s leaning in and pandering to conservative american imagery? no, it doesn’t, especially right after a massively polarizing election in which the main point of contention with voters was the US aiding and abetting genocide. does it also negate the fact that she has been shilling her wears to the people via alcohol and hair care while most of us that she’s selling it to are going through a financial crisis? or the fact that while we are still going through said financial crisis, she’s announces a tour in which the lowest VIP ticket was like $700?

but the true fact of the matter is…because I’m signed up to Beyonce’s website as a BeyHive member, I got a VIP pre-sale access code to the CC tour and I did log on to ticketmaster yesterday at 12pm just to see what the prices were giving. I also own 3 Cecred products³ and if someone wanted to gift me or go half on a bottle of Sir Davis with me, I probably would give it a go. I listened to Cowboy Carter as soon as it dropped and I cried multiple times and will still cry if I hear Protector or My Rose on a vulnerable day. in fact, I switched from Tidal to Apple Music in the middle of the year and the album was in my yearly wrapped on both platforms. and if I check back on ticketmaster again, closer to the Chicago dates on the tour and I see some cheap, “not quite nosebleeds but close enough” tickets…I just might go ahead and click purchase and take my ass down to the Solider Field to see/hear this woman I’ve had a one sided affection for for most of my life.

and while my investment in celebrity has gotten less intense over the years, I still get an indescribable giddy feeling when I hear the Freakum Dress bridge or I think too much about a specific Beyoncé performance. and I feel the same way about other celebrities and performers! anytime I see a picture or video of my girl, miss Megan Pete, I start smiling and kicking my feet as if she was standing right in front of me⁴ and Doechii winning a Grammy after it feels like just yesterday that her song Girls came up in a spotify playlist and I was like “who is this girl?!”…her victory means more to me than it probably should and I know that.

and that’s what I struggle with. I know, as far as what my core beliefs are, these people should mean absolutely nothing to me. I probably shouldn’t even want to be an entertainer with some of the beliefs I have. and even though I’ve maintained for years, I’d probably kms before I ever got to Beyoncé or Megan level fame and how I would just like to be able to make a living and provide my basic necessities by doing what I love, maybe my want to be in the industry in any capacity goes against everything I say I stand for.

once again, I leave you all with minimal answers and probably a lot more questions. I know I have an unhealthy relationship when it comes to certain entertainers and I’m learning what it means to draw the line between being in love with the art versus being in love with the idea of the person. and please know, when it comes to miss Yonka being a capitalist and her probable bird tendencies when it comes to men and any other critique in that vain, I’m not coming to her defense because well…there validity to it. however, if someone comes in my face trying to discredit her artistry or her impact, that is when the parasocial come OUT and the #HagHive stan card gets PLAYED and I’m not sure if that is something that will ever change…maybe these next four years under the dictatorship of the reality tv show felon and the apartheid funded white south african will further radicalize me until that is not my knee-jerk reaction anymore…I guess we’ll see.