The Beyoncé Debate: Can Traditionally Minded Women Be Sexy?
Yesterday, we ran a wonderful piece by Ashley McGuire on Beyoncé’’s Soulful Feminism. Ashley looked at Beyoncé’s superbowl performance and saw a strong woman who is beautiful, sexy, incredibly successful, and–perhaps most interesting of all–traditionally minded when it comes to sex, relationships, and family. Just recently, she slammed the idea of surrogates, saying “I respect mothers and women so much. To be able to experience bringing a child into this world, if you’re lucky and fortunate enough to experience that, I would never ever take that for granted.” And, on top of her defense of motherhood, she is an incredibly hard worker. What’s not to like?
Some of our readers, however, took issue with Ashley’s analysis. There were two criticisms. First, readers seem to think that a woman who dresses provocatively cannot serve as a traditional role model for women. A second criticism I heard, and which is suggested in the comments, is that a sexy woman inspires lascivious thoughts in men, so women need to take that into account and dress appropriately. This is a complaint I’ve heard before, especially from middle-aged conservative men, so it might be good to address the issue head on.
These criticisms beg two types of questions. First, can a woman be sexy and still hold traditional values? Can a woman be sexy and, to be more explicit, also be conservative? Second, should women be responsible for controlling natural male urges? One problem with these criticisms is that they fail to make important distinctions, which I will try to make below.
To the first point, I think the answer is an obvious yes. I know many traditionally minded women who do not dress like nuns. And thank goodness. What a grim world that would be. These women, and there are many others out there, do an excellent job of harnessing their sexuality in a classy way. And here is where distinctions matter: being sexy in a classy way is different than being sexy in a nonclassy way. I don’t even think that the latter counts as being sexy–it’s just trashy.
Of course, traditional and nontraditional women can be classy or trashy. Sexiness is not a matter of politics–rather, it is a matter of taste. For instance, here is tip from one of my closest friends, who is liberal, on how to dress classily at a fancy event: Rather than opting for a dress that shows off a lot of cleavage, opt for a dress with a plunging back line. Both dresses will reveal the same amount of skin, but the one with the plunging back line is sexier. That’s because what makes a sexy woman sexy is that it leaves something to the imagination.
On this front, I think Beyoncé falls into the sexy, not trashy, category. My favorite point from Ashley’s post was about Beyoncé’s womanly legs: “Many criticize Beyoncé for her skimpy attire, and this is fair. But I would suggest that she is soulful. She typically reveals her thunder thighs rather than her breasts, and her legs are something to behold when she dances.”
On to the second point, about whether women are responsible for male urges. What strikes me about this line of reasoning is that it is employed by Islamists and defenders of the burqa. If women are responsible for natural male urges, then we should cover female beauty and sexuality up–which is exactly what the Islamist societies of Saudi Arabia and Iran have done. As I have written elsewhere, this attitude to female beauty and sexuality is rooted in fear–fear of the physical feelings and emotions that female sexuality inspire in men. Yes, those feelings and emotions are strong and powerful, but the mark of a civilized person is the ability to control those urges. The way men sexually respond to Beyoncé is not Beyoncé’s problem–it’s their, the men’s, problem.
Of course, there is a line between healthy expressions of female sexuality and unhealthy expressions of it.The role of cultural criticism is to tease out such distinctions. I would argue that someone like Beyoncé, who celebrates motherhood and a womanly conception of beauty, falls into the former category. The latter category belongs to porn stars, Carrie Bradshaw, Eve Ensler, Naomi Wolf, and the like.
Female beauty is a wonderful thing–and healthy expressions of it, in women like Beyoncé, should be celebrated.
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Bravo!
Excellent article! Though I am not thouroughly convinced of some of your arguments particularly about whose resposibility it is for eliciting sexual thoughts in men. Very easily the comparison to Islamic oppression of women is brought up when women are asked to “cover up”. This is an extreme example, and is of course wrong. There is a time when attitudes toward “female beauty” become fearful which is damaging, but there are men who are asking for modesty because they want respect. Respect for the very fact that they too struggle with sexual urges, and physically dominating and sexual images make that struggle difficult for even the most “civilized” men– i.e. Augustine.
With some exceptions, physically sexual desire is the urge men deal with. Again with some exceptions, women deal with emotional sexual urges. For a man to exploit this, by gaining the trust of a woman for his own gains, physically or socially, would be disrespectful, and even abusive, to women. The argument that women must control these urges in order for them to be “civilized” is neglecting very real problems. In both cases, deception is employed. Women “decieve” men with their physically suggestive beauty, and men decieve with emotionally suggestive security.
It seems you understand this, but perhaps the line has been drawn in different places. Not that I believe Beyonce neccessarily crossed a line. By the way, love what you guys are doing here at Acculturated. Keep it up!
I completely agree, both sexes are equally guilty
While I think the writer here did well to facilitate general discussion, I did disagree with her opinions. I didn’t quite know how I would phrase my objections, but Andrew said mostly what I would have said, so I will second him.
I disagree with this article because of its premise that sexy is visual. To me and a host of others, sexy is more a state of mind than appearance. My basic problem with Beyonce is this – while I give her all the credit in the world for her traditional views on marriage and motherhood, her music and performances of it contradict what she proports to believe.
I am so grateful for a forum that discusses this apparent dichotomy of traditional values in a modern world. I tend to agree with Sharon Myers that what you see, especially on Beyonce’s recent album cover and GQ cover, is not necessarilly reflective of traditional views. It would be so nice if you didn’t have to be scantily dressed to be considered sexy.
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Whoa, hold on. The comments on the other article were mainly criticisms of Beyonce’s performance at the Superbowl. Where she danced around in something straight off the racks of a fetish store, flipped her hair and gave “come hither” looks to the camera, licked her finger and ran it down her cleavage and then hip thrusted in nearly every way imaginable. THAT WAS SEXY! Furthermore, she intended it to be sexy.
She was engaging in performance art – art as defined as eliciting an emotional response – that unapologetically capitalized on her sex appeal. It wasn’t an accident, it was planned that way, they projected multiple images of her and had a florescent light in the shape of her silhouette. The line of classy vs trashy is going to be different for every person, but that performance was aimed squarely at a the base instincts of males.
I personally thought her performance was incredibly sexy, A+ on that count. But when she flipped her hair in the air I wasn’t thinking how soulful she was. Seeing her “thunder thighs” as opposed to her cleavage had a zero net effect. And when she was stomping around in her stilettoes(super impressive feat btw) I was not thinking how fearless she was or how much she loves babies, and I was not meant to. I’m sorry, she was engaging her sex appeal and I was turned on.
Any guy who watched that will admit that it was a turn on(or he will lie). How guys react when they are turned on is their own business and also their own responsibility. If a guy is particularly susceptible that that kind of vice, then he should change the damn channel. And he should not be criticized for taking that action. She is responsible for her actions, he is responsible for his reactions. Saying “I don’t want my entertainment to always be awash in sex appeal” (and by extension Beyonce who frequently engages that way) is not the same as saying women should wear a burka.
Now the argument over whether conservatives can BE sexy, is missing the point. Classy vs trashy gets closer to it, but the real divide is vice vs virtue. Conservatives in general are usually wary of vice for it’s own sake, especially in a world that is determined to present vice as virtue. And a subset of Conservatives, Christians, spend a lot of time and effort to ensure that they control their emotions and vices as opposed to the opposite.
There is a huge difference in thinking someone is sexy and being entertained by someone’s sexiness. Also there is a huge difference in dressing sexily(or doing anything to appear sexy) and using sex appeal in a performance to entertain or entice
Conservative women can absolutely be sexy! Some cannot help it. But you can’t actually be surprised at the push back you got people who don’t go for overt sexuality in their entertainment when Ashley McGuire started touting Beyonce’s traditional values right after that particular performance.
You make some fair points.