So, I may be proficient at blogging, but not so much at being HTML-savvy. So, if that video didn’t embed properly, here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKqIgqJEH-o&feature=player_embedded#at=139.
Can anybody say gender portrayal? I loved the first few shots- Beyoncé looking super-fly in men’s wear with flair while fixing up an old car. I can appreciate her motivations for sexing up each of these costumes, but I thought that the pin-up/house-wife costume was a little much.
I don’t necessarily agree with this comment, but definitely think it might be of interest to some of my readers. Ann, over at feministing.com, discussed not only the clear portrayal of “retro” housewives in Beyoncé and Sade’s new videos, but the racial connotations that come with them.
“At first both videos seemed pretty straightforward-retro to me. Some cute vintage styling choices, that’s all. But given that these are two women of color are playing roles commonly associated with upper-middle-class white women (Betty Draper being the most recent reference point), I wondered: What makes me call this “retro”? I know there were certainly upper-middle-class women of color in the ’50s and ’60s, but this image of the happy-but-secretly-unhappy housewife is stereotypically white. By virtue of race, Beyonce and Sade are twisting that stereotype. (Granted, Beyonce is a more pin-up than straightforward homemaker — but hey, that’s transgressive, too, as pin-up girls were almost all white.)”
To read more, visit http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=2&search=beyonce&limit=20
