Before Feminists go
screaming and shouting how Mrs. Carter plays a 1950’s “BB.Homemaker” who acts victimized and
distraught at the hand of a man who doesn’t love her.
One can see the influence of Bettie Page whom
she is channeling through this video. Though Beyonce is an object for the male
gaze while she wiggles her bottom in revealing clothes in the video, she however,
highlights the different era, which was once less about “all the ladies who are
independent”. Instead it was more about frustrated and
lonely housewives, whose only real purpose in life was to cook, clean, feed
the children and take care of the man once he came back from work. She is able to comically deconstruct this role
of the perfect housewife who has running makeup and domestic
misadventures of “B.B. Homemaker” setting a roasted chicken aflame,
overzealously scrubbing the floor and washing dishes in lingerie. She uses the
traditional notions of femininity by embodying them to the extreme, and so on
—cleverly turning a romanticized vision of 1950s domesticity on its head. One
could even argue that the whole concept of thinking of “why don’t you love me?”
is an old school way of thinking. When one feels sorry for Bey, she
belts out “There’s nothing not to love about me”, the girl power kicks in as
she makes a statement rather than a plea.
Available:http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/beyonceknowles/whydontyouloveme.html ( Accessed 16 March 2013)
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