Danielle Cannova's List: Beyonce

• A lot of the hullabaloo has to do with how Beyoncé has taken the very same categories other female celebrities have rescued from stereotype -- the glammed-up girl-next-door, the sultry songstress, the sex goddess, the demure stand-by-your-man "good wife" -- and catapulted off the trail as though running through her own Hunger Games edition of America's Next Top Model.
• Not since Oprah's talk-show hegemony has an African-American female celebrity appeared so powerful, so ubiquitous, and yet insistent on announcing their down-home humility. Not since Angelina Jolie's first forays as a special envoy and U.N. ambassador has a female celebrity combined pure star wattage with not-so-subtle nudges of interest in engaging in -- or at least circling the periphery of -- America's political scene. She's taken Halle Berry's sex-kitten image -- itself an embroidering of Dorothy Dandridge and Eartha Kitt's smoldering sexuality from a time when whites preferred to think of black women as Amos 'n Andy's Sapphire or Gone With the Wind mammies -- and one-upped it, taking a page out of J.Lo's brown skin -- blonde locks combo, then stamping her own "bootylicious" label upon it, then continuing on to eventually triumph over J.Lo for "best derrière" assignation (no pun intended) -- all while racking up hit after hit of billboard-topping singles.
• In short, Beyoncé is a chameleon, a master of the quick change, noted for a record number of costume changes at the Oscars, as if some creature during molting season -- but also in the sense of reconfiguring America's ideas of blackness and black female identity. Most black women orbiting within the satellite of rappers rarely become their wives the way Beyoncé has become "Mrs. Carter" as she did after marrying Jay-Z, a.k.a. Sean Carter. Nor do they -- after delivering several multiplatinum albums -- not to mention a baby named Blue Ivy -- tumble with their status as feminist icons by naming their next tour (which sold out in mere minutes) The Mrs. Carter World Tour.
• "She very much desires to be an actress, but she is such a fantastic concert performer that she knows that performing, rather than acting, is her forté," says Dixson. Beyoncé herself affirms the superiority of her ability as a performer. At her post-inauguration press conference, after singing the national anthem to prove she could sing it without lip-syncing, she defended her life as a singer-entertainer, "This was what I was born to do."
• But Dixson goes on to say, "She also understands that her connection to her fans is through being vulnerable and accessible, and by allowing them to vicariously experience what it's like to grow up in the music business. And the financial reality of the music business right now is that you must be an entertainer -- not only a musician."
• "It's hard for lightning to strike twice in the same family at the same time," then hesitates to add, "Beyoncé is perhaps more beautiful?" Before settling on this: "Beyoncé had something that made it click. Millions and millions of people became fans of hers. There's an extraordinary amount of work that goes into award performances, the shows, the tracks, the music, the production … there's the dance aspect, there's the singing aspect, there's the writing aspect. It's a five- or six-skill game -- and not everyone is working as hard as Beyoncé. You put musicians out on a tour, and some of them lose it. They're on five nights a week. The rigor of it is physically as challenging as being an athlete, and you'll hear of people breaking down. But I've heard of people who've toured with Beyoncé say that she'll say, "Nothing breaks me down.' Other people have success and it went away: but they did a whole season, and they think, Ahh, I'll do it on the other album. But you gotta give it to her; Beyoncé really wanted it more."
• "She lives the life that she promotes, and promotes the life she lives," Dixson says. "Beyoncé seems to clarify how she can be all of those things. Mother, wife, CEO. Madonna, on the other hand, sings about sexual revolution but has her English manor out in the British countryside."
• "I think she's the biggest pop star of today," Touré says, "partly because she is nonthreatening. She's sort of this Motown ideal in the modern era; beautiful in a way that both black and white women can get behind -- singing and dancing and acting and modeling -- she can do it all. She can do the inauguration, she can do the first dance, there's this sort of niceness to her, there's no edge to her that would turn anybody off -- and yet she's not saccharine."
• Deborah Santana agrees that when it comes to "having it all" Beyoncé seems the closest contemporary approximation of a seemingly unattainable goal. "Although I know it is impossible to "have it all,' " Santana says, "and that it takes hundreds of moving parts and a vast support team, I love that Beyoncé walks with grace and ease. She represents freedom -- an authoritative feminism."
• When asked in what way Beyoncé enacts feminism, Santana replied, "Her lyrics scream of women's strength, influence, and muscle in the world." She obviously controls her music career, and how she moves in the world. She has a love relationship that seems to be of equals, is a mother, and is an icon in the sense that her music speaks to millions of people in celebration of power; her talent and energy seem boundless."

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