In the midst of Beyonce’s album release, through all of the fanatic and media frenzy, one thing stuck out to me in her visual album: Harassment.
It ranged from being followed or harassed by fans when trying to take a walk and clear her mind, as seen in “Jealous” to the more abrasive, familiar form of harassment in “Blow”: being pulled forcefully by a male aggressor when walking.
This is the form of harassment that I’m most familiar with. Catcalls are definitely one form, but I’m often grabbed and pulled off my path, whether I’m walking down the street, through the transit center, or in a hallway.
This scene, less than five seconds of the video, was left unaddressed and hardly served as a major plot point. So I couldn’t help but wonder why she included it. Was it real and unprompted? Or was it so commonplace to her, the way it is to me, that there was nothing to say about it. That’s it’s just what happens?
I then remembered her having her butt slapped by a male audience member recently during her world tour. I wondered if that was related.
While she received both praise and criticism for how she responded in the moment, I wondered if and how this affected her relationship with her fans. She has been known to create intimate venues, or to get close enough to shake hands, touch shoulders or share the microphone. Did being groped while trying to create intimate entertainment impact her willingness to do this?
Yes, five seconds in a video left me with all of these questions: questions about authenticity, harassment, and traumatic experiences. But that five seconds also left me with arguably the biggest question of all:
If someone of her status and power gets groped and harassed, is anyone safe?
Rickelle Mason was the Stop Street Harassment intern in fall 2013. She is an undergraduate senior at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. With a major in Psychology and a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies, she has a passion for feminist psychology, and using community-based participatory research to dismantle gender-based violence. She has worked for several years in the university’s Community Psychology Research Lab, which was recently the recipient of the “Outstanding Training in Community Psychology” International Award.
