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Beyonce's Performance At The Grammy's- Review, Thoughts on Criticism

Today I woke up on the wrong side of the bed... which means I basically woke up and the news was on and I don't like what's going on in the world that much... anyway I also have been seeing a lot of criticism of Beyonce's Grammy performance... and I get that people don't like it... but I feel like people aren't understanding how art works... so I'm going to explain that a little bit too as why I'm a little angry at the controversy surrounding it.

I thought the performance was really good! The song was good, I like Beyonce's music. I thought the idea of looking like your mother is something pretty powerful that women can relate to. Blu Ivy looks a lot like Jay Z more than Beyonce. Beyonce's father has very dark skin and her mother has lighter skin... that's probably hard to deal with growing up... and not even speculating or anything...  but looking like your parents is something people talk about. I thought the imagery was really pretty. There were religious imagery in the live performance and the pre-recorded portion... different religions too I thought... I'm guessing that was intentional. The thing with the chair tipping was kind of cool. I don't remember the song all that much... but I remember the performance and the imagery.

Now it wasn't like a "Wow! That was an incredible performance for a pregnant woman to do." It was a performance that was catered to a woman that is pregnant with twins. It couldn't all be live, so parts of it were pre-recorded. She didn't sing as much as the pre recorded talking portion... because she's pregnant! She did what she could in the best way she could... not the best performance... but she's pregnant!

And at no point during the night was she like "Wow! I'm so much better than you because I'm pregnant with twins and I'm performing." I don't really get where people are getting that. Maybe because of the imagery or the fact that she had an acceptance speech? That is something every single performer would do. Except Adele apparently, who thanked Beyonce because she liked Beyonce's album better than her own... which was classy... anyway yeah people were just mad because they think Beyonce thinks she's the only person that's ever been pregnant with twins... and she's not... but that's not what Beyonce was saying with her performance.

Beyonce's Lemonade was her using her art to tell a story about her life... right now in her life... she's pregnant with twins, so she's catering her performance to make it the best she possibly can while being pregnant with twins. She's mentioning she's pregnant with twins a lot because she isn't always pregnant with twins. She isn't saying that she is the only person in the world pregnant with twins... She is just catering her performance because she's pregnant. It won't be as high energy as it usually is and it wasn't that good... if she wasn't pregnant with twins I probably would have thought the performance sucked because it was only really half performed live... but this is what she can do and I thought it was great for that. It was a very creative way to still give a memorable performance while pregnant... with twins.

I don't really think this is a sexist thing... but it does bring up a lot of woman's issues... so I figured it would be fitting on this blog. It's the same as me getting annoyed at Tom Brady for being happy that he won the Super Bowl again, or for the Bachelor contestants talking about how great they are... it's part of the job. It's a little annoying... but that is what they do and I think we can all just accept that and move past it. It is what it is.

Byeee!
-Shannon

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