“Check on It”: Beyoncé, Southern Booty, and Black Femininities in Music Video
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2012
Keywords
Beyoncé Knowles, music video, femininity, hip hop, gender stereotypes, iconicity
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2011.558346
Abstract
Beyoncé Knowles is a hip hop icon. She is known more for her voluptuous body than her body of work that crisscrosses multiple culture industries. Unlike her hip hop contemporaries, Beyoncé successfully performs a range of Black femininities, speaking at once to Black working and middle class sensibilities while fulfilling her dynamic roles as both a hip hop belle and a US exotic other globally. The music video emerges as the celebrity-making medium by which the form and function of the spectacular Black female body is rearticulated. It is the medium that thrusts Beyoncé from a girl group member to a supreme solo Diana Ross-like diva. By interrogating her performances of Black femininity that operate in her Hype Williams directed and MTV award winning video, Check On It, this essay explores the ways her Southern hip hop booty shapes how her iconic body is understood in contemporary popular culture.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Feminist Media Studies, v. 12, issue 1, p. 35-49
Scholar Commons Citation
Durham, Aisha, "“Check on It”: Beyoncé, Southern Booty, and Black Femininities in Music Video" (2012). Communication Faculty Publications. 315.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/spe_facpub/315
