Beyoncé, Kesha, Lily Allen - The Struggle of female Pop Stars

The trend in society currently is to teach women that in order to gain power and authority, they have to be sexually attractive. It is not enough for a woman, to simply be intelligent, or very good in their field, they also have to be attractive to a certain extent in order for this to be recognized. This is why I find it so problematic, when pop culture names Beyoncé a strong and independent woman, because I feel that it will reinforce this trend. Her fans often consider her to be so great, because she is considered good-looking and attractive. Of course it's okay for a woman to be both, authoritative/powerful and attractive. I think what I struggle with mostly is that there is such a double standard between female and male pop stars/musicians. This picture of Beyoncé and Jay Z at the Grammys 2014 illustrates this quite well:

Beyoncé and Jay Z, Grammys 2014

Both Jay Z and Beyoncé are globally famous and successful musicians, and belong to the top of their field. So why is it, that Beyoncé has to basically wear lingerie, but Jay Z wears a suit, when they are performing together? Beyoncé is a great singer, I totally agree with that, but I also feel like she is (maybe unknowingly) reinforcing the trend that for women, sexual attractiveness and intelligence or power go hand in hand (patriarchy's response to the sexual liberation of women).

Beyoncé GQ Cover shoot February 2013

In this GQ Interview, Beyoncé does address equality issues, that would be quite interesting to explore, however most of the article focuses on either her clothes, her make up or her body. Why does it have to be that way? Shouldn't an interview be more about what she said, not how she looked? It might be that Beyoncé sees herself as an emancipated woman, and wants to come across that way. But the way people react to her is to objectify and reduce her to her looks only.

Kesha, I fear, might be facing a similar issue. She, too, is a sexually liberated woman but the response of the media is to objectify her, and call her a "slut" for talking about her sex life in her songs. Kesha imitates the way men talk about women in pop music, but inverts it. For a while I struggled with seeing a way that feminism, or gender-equality, can be successfully talked about in pop music. However, I feel that Lily Allen has found a good way to do so in her video "Hard Out Here", and I hope it will start a new phase of feminism in pop culture.

Lily Allen - Hard Out Here (Official Video) from Sammy Neal - Video Editor on Vimeo.

The lyrics are sarcastic and funny, and the video makes Lily Allen's message more obvious. Her background dancers do provocative dance moves, but they are almost grotesque and not very "sexy" due to the slow motion at some parts. It also makes it seem weird that these kind of dance moves are most commonly the way that female dancers dance in pop culture.

Some other videos of Kesha and Beyoncé:

Timber - Kesha ft Pitbull, Warrior Interrogation, Die Young - Kesha, Take It Off - Kesha, Partition (Explicit) - Beyoncé Drunk in Love (Explicit) - Beyonce ft Jay Z Pepsi Beyoncé "Mirrors" - Official 2013 video

Charlie Crxsh

P.S.: Could you imagine a man dressed like (e.g.) Beyoncé in the Partition music video in this scene? He would look ridiculous, people wouldn't take him seriously - and just because it's a female body, not a male one, it makes it look desirable....