I’LL NEVER BE BEYONCÉ… AND THAT’S OKAY!

An excerpt of an essay about the performance, I’ll Never Be Beyoncé, part of Stations of Black Loss.

Presented in the nonfiction writing area of the 2024 Popular Culture Association Conference

March, 2023. I am taking deep breaths as I stand backstage at Champaign, Illinois’ Virginia Theater, watching the final minute of a dance choreographed by one of my colleagues. I notice that small glimmers of gold are expanding and contracting on the stage and realize they’re my doing – the side lights are reflecting off of my long sleeved, high neck, mirror ball mosaic leotard. I wrap my cape, a black and gold brocade number that reaches my ankles, around myself and take a step back. I can feel the waistband of my bejeweled, café au lait colored, fishnet tights digging into my waist, and I rock back on my high heeled, knee-high boots, which have also been bedazzled with rhinestones. A honey blonde, center parted, lace front, water wave wig is secured to my own 4c coils that I braided down into cornrows only an hour earlier. I am taller and less voluptuous than Queen B but from certain angles, it is shocking how much I resemble her in this garb.

December, 1999. My older cousin asks me, “Ally, has anyone ever told you that you look like Beyoncé?” My response, “No. Who is that?” shocks me to this day, as I cannot fathom a reality in which Beyoncé is an unknown entity. My cousin tells me Bey belongs to Destiny’s Child and, “oh, yes,” I confirm, “I have seen the music video for Bills, Bills, Bills.” I’m not a superfan of theirs though. At 12-years old, I listen to Hip Hop and R&B in social settings and put some of those tracks on the mixed CDs I burn for my friends, but I am a white-pop-princess wannabe, memorizing the lyrics and choreography of Britney Spears and Christina Aguillera. My cousin undoubtedly considers the Beyoncé comparison a compliment, but I am disheartened. Like Pecola Breedlove of Toni Morrison’s the Bluest Eye, and Danielle Prescod in her memoir Token Black Girl, I was a young Black girl who believed that in order to truly be beautiful, I had to be white. I was a young Black girl who believed that one day, if I wished and worked hard enough, my Blackness would disappear.

Growing up, I never role-played Black characters because I never wanted to envision myself as what I actually was (a Black girl), nor what I was destined to, or as I felt, doomed to, become (a Black woman).  The release of Clueless the summer before I entered 3rd grade had me in plaid skirts, knee-high socks, and loafers correcting passersby who called me Dionne that I was actually channeling Cher. Two years later, when my (all-white, except for me) friend group adopted Spice Girls personas at recess, I fiercely clung to Sporty and refused to be Scary. I was embarrassed and distressed the entirety of my 10th grade Back-to-School dance, which was ‘80s themed, because my (all white) teacher chaperones mistook my Madonna Lucky Star get-up for Whitney Houston (just Whitney Houston, no music video was referenced). So, biting Beyoncé’s bling-ed bodysuit look for this performance was not only imperative to the work’s aesthetic and sense of humor, it was an opportunity for me to participate in a childhood pastime that I’d denied myself – proudly and excitedly role-playing someone of my race.

 March, 2023. Back in the Virginia Theater. A karaoke track of Get Me Bodied begins and I sashay onto the stage, wireless microphone in hand. I greet the audience and ask them to clap along to the beat of the song, which they do, then I perform eight 8-counts of choreography. A little bit of waacking, twerking, and vernacular jazz takes me from stage right to stage left, then I finish the section by removing the cape and tossing it off stage as the track ends, which receives a generous round of applause.

 I straddle a black cabaret chair that is center stage, my back towards the audience. I whip my head (and hair!) around to seductively gaze at them over my left shoulder as I explain why I titled this performance I’ll Never Be Beyoncé.

 February, 2014. My girlfriend at the time walked in on me sitting alone at the edge of our bed, silently sobbing. With a great deal of concern, she inquired if I was okay. I turned to her very slowly and with a lot of defeat in my voice said, “No… because I’ll never be Beyoncé.” I had been watching her Grammy’s performance of Drunk in Love, entranced by how sexy, talented, and powerful she was. Those were all things I had always wanted for myself. And I realized in that moment that each generation gets a handful of celebrities that stand the test of time, and of that handful, usually only one is Black. And since Beyoncé and I are both millennials, and both Black, well…

March, 2023. “The bitch took my spot,” I exclaim. The audience roars with laughter. This is my favorite line of the monologue. As I deliver it, my legs are crossed and propped over the back of the chair as my torso and head lean backwards off the seat. The “chairography” of this section directly references Bey’s live performances of Drunk in Lovebetween 2014 and 2015 – slowly drawing my fingertips down then up my legs as one is crossed over the other, uncrossing my legs and abruptly separating them so that I’m in a straddle position, suggestively tilting my head and rolling my shoulders backwards.

From the chair I sashay stage right towards a 10-foot tall ladder. In her 2018 Coachella performance, Beyoncé sings Drunk in Love atop a ladder that’s on a crane, hovering above the audience. What does it feel like to look down at your admirers?, I wondered. Not with the condescending manner that those words might suggest, but with curiosity about changing the typical spatial relationship between audience and performer. What does it feel like to be on top of your world – when your world is your fans, your followers, your viewers?  My answer is this: Fucking powerful.

 I climb the ladder’s steps as I ask the audience to sing my favorite line from the song Formation with me, call-and-response style. I sing, “I love my baby heir with baby hair and afros…” I extend the mic towards the house and hear a handful of folks who can complete this challenge sing, “I love my negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils.” Saying and hearing these words directed at me adds to the feeling of power that being atop the ladder brings.

1992 – 2001. His name was D***n R*****e. A white boy in my class from kindergarten through eighth grade. We had a push-pull, on-again-off-again friendship with each other. He was hyperactive, usually crude, and mostly obnoxious – the boy who made fart sounds at the back of the bus and who was always in trouble for talking too much and too loudly in class. But every now and then I mistook him for charming and tenderhearted. Sometime around third grade, he silently mouthed “I love you” at me from across the classroom. Desperate for romantic attention, my heart fluttered and I blushed. I mouthed “I love you too,” even though I found him really annoying. I was sickened when he told me later on at recess that he’d tricked me by actually mouthing “olive juice” and that he didn’t really love me. We had several encounters like this over the years.

By the time we reached middle school, AOL instant messenger was in its prime. One day after school, he and I were chatting about a new boy in our class - a guy who he’d become friends with and who I had a crush on. He told me that this new boy wasn’t interested in me… I wasn’t his type. And by that, I realized after a series of similar conversations in high school a few years later, he meant that his white friend would never find a Black girl attractive.  “I think you’re pretty, though,” D**** said. “Your nose is just a little big. If it were smaller, you’d look whiter. And if your hair was better. But otherwise, I think you’re pretty.” So, when Formation dropped, and I heard Beyoncé salute nappy hair and negro nostrils, my inner child stirred – simultaneously triggered and vindicated.

December, 2022. From the early 2000s hipster era through the 2012 death of indie sleaze, there had been a bar in my hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that hosted a weekly “ironic karaoke” night. My friends and I loved this scene, and were regulars for at least 4 years. The bar has since closed down, but its worshippers have mostly stayed in contact and host reunion “ironic karaoke” nights at new locations every so often. I attended one when I was visiting my family during winter break of 2022. The crowd sang their usual selections from our original time together – Toto by Africa, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, This Charming Man by the Smiths, to name a few.

One of my go-tos back then had been Love is a Battlefield by Pat Benetar, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it this year – to repeat something that my anti-Black self had carefully chosen and clung to, in an attempt to be tethered to (and to be seen as a part of) the white female rock aesthetic. I’m not saying that Black girls can’t sing “white” songs, but I am saying that in 2007, I wouldn’t have been caught dead singing a song by a Black person at these karaoke nights that were all white (except for me and occasionally one or two other Black Hipsters – aka Blipsters). So, this time around, I chose Formation. Singing the pro-Black lyrics of, arguably, the most powerful Black woman in the world, in front of people who had witnessed me attempt to conceal my own Blackness fifteen years earlier felt like an emancipation. I felt free and, maybe most importantly, proud, to be a Black woman, loudly championing the physical features that United States society and its media have disparaged for centuries.

March, 2023. Seated atop the ladder, I smirk as I recall the thrill of slaying Formation at karaoke a few months earlier. I tell the audience that D****’s comment left me daydreaming of getting a nose job; promising myself, though I didn’t follow through, that I’d save enough money to do so by the time I went to college. I deliver this memory with a lightheartedness that conflicts with the heartache I feel when I recall it.