Omise’eke Tinsley - Beyoncé in Formation: Remixing Black Feminism

Beyonc in Formation

Remining Black Feminism

Omiseeke Natasha Tinsley

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

AUSTIN

Copyright 2018 by the University of Texas Press

All rights reserved

First edition, 2018

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Names: Tinsley, Omiseeke Natasha, 1971- author.

Title: Beyonc in formation : remixing black feminism / Omiseeke Natasha Tinsley.

Description: Austin : University of Texas, 2018. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018014320

ISBN 978-1-4773-1839-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4773-1771-6 (library e-book)

ISBN 978-1-4773-1772-3 (non-library e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Beyonc, 1981- | African American women singers. African American feminists. | Feminism and music.

Classification: LCC ML420.K675 T56 2018 | DDC 782.42164092--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014320

doi:10.7560/318393

For my Queen Bee, Baa

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

FOR THE TEXAS BAMA FEMME

On April 4, 2008, while spring pushed into full blossom, Beyonc Knowles and Jay Z Carter wed in a private ceremony at the grooms light-bathed, 8,309-square-foot Tribeca penthouse. One hundred thousand white orchids were flown in from Thailand, forty guests driven to the penthouse by private chauffeurs, and a large rooftop tent decked in royal-themed decorations for the occasion. Beyoncs mother Tina and Jay Zs grandmother Hattie home-cooked a Southern feast, and Tina designed the brides strapless, floor-length white gown. As Knowles family pastor Rudy Rasmus led the couple in their vows, Jay Z slipped a $5 million, 18-carat Lorraine Schwartz diamond ring on the brides finger. The newlyweds waited six months to speak to the press about their wedding but when they did, Beyonc described married life in superlatives as brilliantly glowing as her ring. People feel like they lose something when they get married, but it doesnt have to be that way. Theres nothing more exciting than having a witness to your life, she said, smiling. When you find the person that you trust and you love and you feel is going to respect you and take all the shit that you have and turn it around and bring out the best in you, it feeds you. It is the most powerful thing you can ever feel in your life.

My life isnt very much like Beyoncs; my wedding wasnt, either. On the icy morning of November 20, 2011, Matt Richardson and I were joined in legal matrimony at Hennepin County Court in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I walked down the aisle in a blue sweater dress and stiletto heels that, together, cost as much as five orchids at Beyoncs wedding. Our two-year-old daughter Baa, in Afro-puffs and a pink ruffled sweater dress, served as ring bearer; my ring was a $275 Go ahead, baby, tell the truth and shame the devil.

So why did Matt and I marry? We both still believe idealizing matrimony does violence to the many creative ways black people love each other and make families. And were under no illusion our ability to marry proves theres hope or acceptance for black queers like us. Honestly, if Baa hadnt graced my life, I dont think I wouldve felt the need to marry. But praise my guardian angels, she did. And praise my guardian angels, in fall 2011when I was offered a professorship in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where Matt had lived and worked since 2006I was the mother of a two-year-old girl I was about to move from her native blue state, across the Mason-Dixon line my grandparents so eagerly left in the dust, to blood-red Texas. I didnt know what living in the South would be like, really, but maybe a marriage license would help Baa grow up with another inch of safety around her. Maybe a marriage license beside her birth certificate would send teachers and doctors and child welfare workers a message that this is a child whos loved, whos cared for, whose life matters. A few nights after my job interview, my great-grandmother Arties came to me in a dream. Before I crossed state lines to follow anyone, she told me without mincing words, I needed to marry them. She moved from Goodwater, Alabama, to Birmingham to marry, just to make sure shed never end up a farmers wife; and (she pointed out) I wasnt too smart or too cute to need the security marriage could bring a black woman, either. If I wanted to join Matt in Texas, well, I needed to put a ring on it.

So I arrived in a sunny Texas winter as a madly-in-love, hopeful newlywed who never imagined shed be anyones wife and had no idea how to be one. Now, folks around me seemed to have ideas about what my wedding ring meant. People hailed me as Mrs. Richardson or called Matt Mr. Tinsley, repairmen addressed me as the lady of the house before asking to speak to my husband, straight black couples smiled in recognition on the street, and Baas friends mothers talked to me about kitchen cleaning, kid-friendly recipes, and bathing suits husbands will go crazy for. One afternoon coming back from Baas ballet class, we passed a billboard that shouted in large block letters TEXAS MOMSand this Bay Areaborn, radical black queer feminist suddenly realized, thats me.

So its no coincidence that shortly after I moved to Austin, I fell into a deep, longing, starry-eyed fascination with another Texas mom: Houston native Beyonc Knowles-Carter, whose daughter Blue was born the winter I moved to her home state. Laced into a gold corset and gold hoop sans skirt, dripping with chains and jewels, brandishing a scepter and balancing a crown on her curls, Beyonc emerges from behind double doors and glides into the halls of a Versailles-like palace where she reigns as Sun Queen. No place in the real world, this is the jewel-laden, spectacularly abundant fantasy of a black feminist imagination: an alternative (un)reality where black women are our own wealth, where our sexuality can glitter as openly as an unskirted gold hoop and the corset designed to rein in our womanness transforms into a display of powerful self-creation. I watched this promo and videos from the self-titled album Beyonc performed on the tour so often that one day Baa threw out in exasperation: You just want to marry Beyonc but you cant, because shes already married! Not because same-sex marriage was illegal in Texas, mind you, or because Id never met the woman, but because Jay Z got there first. Well.

My years as a new wife were also my years as a new professor at UT Austin. Teaching black studies and womens and gender studies there, it quickly became apparent how eager students were for entry-level classes to black feminism. So I put my mind to developing one. After offering a black women writers course that enrolled only a few students, I dusted myself off and tried again. For spring 2015, I listed a course titled Beyonc Feminism, Rihanna Womanism. Here students were promised a chance to engage the music of Beyonc and Rihanna as popular, accessible expressions of black feminisms, texts that offer opportunities to reflect on what black womanness means in our own lives. And students showed up, over-enrolling the class until we found a larger lecture hall we also filled to capacity. On the first day of lecture, lines of black women and queers approached me to express excitement that they were in a class that took Beyoncs music