The 56th grammy awards ceremony held on Sunday and the night was launched with a great performance from Beyoncé and Jay Z.
It seems like the very sexual performance from the power couples ruffled some feathers. Naomi Schaefer Riley, a new york post writer, wrote the piece below slamming the couple's performance.
What
do you call a man who stands there smiling and singing as his scantily
clad wife straddles a chair and shakes her rear end for other men’s
titillation?
I’m certain if I look
through enough Jay Z song titles, I’ll come up with the right name for
his role in Beyoncé’s performance at the Grammy Awards Sunday night.
Rhymes with Goodyear. . . ? Well, how about I just call him a poor excuse for a husband.
For
years, these award ceremonies have pushed the envelope; Beyoncé’s
booty-shaking was certainly no worse than Miley Cyrus’s twerking or any
number of other performances by Madonna, for instance. But there’s
something particularly icky about doing it while your husband looks on
approvingly.
“Honestly, I didn’t
want to watch Jay Z and Beyoncé’s foreplay,” says Charlotte Hays, author
of 'When Did White Trash Become the New Normal?' Indeed, the happy
couple seems to have completely blurred the line between what goes on in
their bedroom and what happens on national TV. So much for the woman
that Michelle Obama has called a role model who kids everywhere can look
up to. It wasn’t surprising to see Jay Z, looking pleased at his wife’s
hyper-sexualized exhibition on stage. After all, he’s made a living
singing lyrics that call women ‘bitches’ and ‘hos,’ so we shouldn’t be
surprised that he objectified his own wife on stage.”
It
is a little bit surprising, though, coming so soon after Beyoncé
contributed to the recent feminist manifesto, the Shriver Report. When
she complains that “gender equality is a myth,” one wonders to what
extent her consent to sell sexuality has contributed to the problem.
The
sophisticates will say that what we saw Sunday were just the
long-established stage personas of Beyoncé and Jay Z; why should their
marriage change that?
Well, for one
thing, the happy couple have invited audiences to admire their adorable
family, with dad even joking about his daughter’s sippy cups when he
accepted an award on Sunday. So they’re suggesting to audiences that
this kind of public sexual behavior is compatible with a loving modern
marriage.
Feminists will argue that
Beyoncé had a career before she got married; why should marriage change
how she performs? It’s a good question. How does being married change a
relationship? Or, in Beyoncé’s terms, if he likes it, why should he put a
ring on it?
It’s a question that
François Hollande asked and answered easily: There’s not much reason for
men to put a ring on it at all, as far as the French president is
concerned.
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