Hey y'all, can we talk about that time that bell hooks said (in conversation with the illuminating and radiant goddess that is Janet Mock) that Beyoncé was terrorist to young Black girls? https://www.colorlines.com/articles/beyonce-terrorist-black-feminist-scholars-debate-bell-hooks

I remember at the time feeling very complexly about it but not having the words nor being in the place in my gender journey to understand why bell's assertion both resonated with me and also alienated me deeply.

To start, no Beyoncé is not anti-feminist.

But, I want to tell a story that always makes me think critically about how we have objectified Beyoncé, dehumanizing her and commodifying her as a collection of parts (a voice, legs, ass, breasts, face, etc.)

When I was 16 years old, I worked at the Gap in Oakland. I helped open the capstone millennium store on Lakeshore by Lake Merritt.

I was young, queer, closeted, 6'4, and athletic. While I used she/her pronouns, I wore Jordan's cornrows, and opted to shop in the men's section.

There was a light-skinned Black man who worked at the store with me. I don't remember his name but I remember him disliking me, viscerally. He made fun of me constantly. My looks, my laugh, my skin, it was a thing.

He was older than me, 21 or so. I was in high school applying to colleges. I remember feeling intimidated by him and also afraid to say anything back to him. He was my co-worker but he was also a grown man harassing me.

I'm taller than all my cousins and many of them are traditionally "pretty." He had a crush on one such cousin who also worked at the Gap. Another one of my cousins got a job there, all of us women.

He used to joke, "one of these things is not like the other" in reference to me.

His totem was Beyoncé. He was obsessed with her. He thought she was the perfect woman in every way. He'd often talk about her body (in parts, of course). He never talked about her as a person but he really believed that she had to be the perfect girl. Period.

One day, in the breakroom, in one of our many arguments that he started with me (a 16yo girl), he said loudly "You could NEVER look as good as Beyoncé."

The other guys around laughed. And kept laughing.

My first feeling was a deep sense of betrayal. He wasn't saying I couldn't look like Beyoncé. What he was really saying was that there was a sort of womanhood that Beyoncé had access to that I would never be able to access. He knew that my body would not bend into Beyoncé.

Having no desire to be Beyoncé nor to appeal to his gaze, I replied, "yes, I could. I could look like Beyoncé."

He laughed, "no you couldn't."

Again, I said, "Yes, I could."

"Yeah, with surgery or whatever but that's not the point," he said.

But, that was the point.

At 16 years old, I had already come to terms with the fact that my body was queer and awkward and broke the traditional rules of femininity. I already understood that my orientation to the word "woman" would always be fraught. I had already accepted the disconnect.

He was weaponizing ideal Black womanhood, embodied by what he thought he knew of Beyoncé, against me. He had objectified her, commodified her pieces, and repackaged back against me. That's terror.

bell hooks took away Beyoncé's agency when she asserted that Bey's existence in her skin was inherently terrorizing to Black girls. She disappointed so many of us after years of challenging us to expand our imaginations of what Black womanhood can do and be.

The conversation I wish we had at the time though is what is it that makes people continue to deny Beyoncé (and all other Black women) access to the fullness of Black womanhood? Our womanhood is policed from within and without. Even our elders get in the way at times.

I wish we had talked about how so many young Black girls actually are trying to figure out what parts of femininity, girlhood, and, eventually, womanhood, will fit on them.

I wish we listened to what young Black girls thought abt how our bodies are often weaponized against us.

I know, for me, I didn't have language about what was happening with my gender presentation and how the terror of "ideal Black womanhood" was shaping my life until I was much much older.

I would have loved to have some language and direction about that in high school.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the only time this happened. Aaliyah, Mya, Kelly from "Family Matters" lol, all of them were used as exemplars of ideal Black woman/girlhood. They were the good girls with nice bodies and pretty faces. They weren't me and I was reminded every day.

The problem isn't Beyoncé. It's our failure to imagine a world where Beyoncé exists alongside queer androgynous Black women like me and we all have the same access to justice.

Cornel West said that justice is love in public but I want to add that it is love that does not do harm. Or at least sets out to reduce it.

Justice for Black women has to include harm reduction.

We have to acknowledge that, yes, Black girlhood is terrorized in unique and disgusting ways. It's not Bey's fault (or the fault of any one Black woman) but rooted in misogynoir that doesn't gaf abt our childhoods.

Also, bell hooks is not canceled. We have to learn how to disagree with people without throwing away the whole person (unless they trash trash lol).