Culture: Analyzing "Queen Bey's" Fans' Rage in No Photoshop Beyonce Photos

Summary:

I found an article on HelloGiggles.com entitled, ‘Reactions to Queen Bey’s unretouched photos, were all kinds of wrong.’ The article describes how Beyoncé’s most loyal fans could not tolerate her natural feminine identity, or grasp that she too is human – like us, and not perfect. The article briefly discusses how the website named Beyoncé’s World had to issue an apology for leaking 220 unretouched pictures taken in 2013 of Beyoncé for a L’Oréal photo shoot, because it caused a disturbing emotional backlash from their followers. After apologizing they realized these ‘leaked’ unretouched photos had to be taken down permanently. Not only that but these photos also somehow managed to ‘break the internet’ by generating a culture shock to a subculture.

Application:

This article relates to the themes and concepts on culture in a few interesting ways that I managed to identify. In this article, I can see we have a subculture that identifies themselves with hip-hop, rap, and pop. I’m not sure what term would be used to name this subculture. In chapter two surfers were identified as the name of a certain type of subculture that was described. Unfortunately, I’m not up to date with what people call the subculture that identifies with wearing saggy or baggy pants, listening to hip hop, rap, and pop, and that likes to wear over excessive amounts of specific material objects, like thick gold watches, chains, etc.

Anyways, Beyoncé falls into this subculture’s identified values because she’s the category of music this subculture listens to on a day to day regular basis. Ultimately Beyoncé is a figure they idolize and some even want to look as beautiful as she does, or have a girlfriend that matches certain aspects of her appearance. Which is why Beyoncé is termed as Queen in this subculture.

What I can see is this subculture is greatly influenced by the values mass media has projected onto them while growing up, or merely by following this subcultures way of lifestyle choices, and preferences. It is a norm for this subculture to accept Photoshop, and welcome it as a standard form of judgment, and expectations to win approval. This group values Photoshop and especially photo editing. It was normal for them to have responded the way they did over those unretouched photos. I don’t necessarily think that it was wrong that this subculture reacted and responded the way they did. In fact, their reactions lived up to what I expected from them.

Also, mass media is a big part of American culture. It plays a role in why that subculture reacted the way they did. American culture is surrounded by the Internet and T.V. and it has become an interactive part of the everyday American life. Being a female or male in America consists of living up to the norms; the illusion magazine covers, beauty commercial advertisements, and music videos use to define what feminine or masculine beauty is. Even if it may be unrealistic. These expectations have been going on for a long time for both genders, so it’s natural that when these unretouched photos of Beyoncé surfaced they denied natural beauty, denied normal, and classified it as an outrage to look at. Despite the fact the Beyoncé looks more like you and me in those unretouched photos, but most importantly more like her followers, it still pissed this group off. It just simply emphasized how important and significant Photoshop means to this subculture. It is a big aspect of how they communicate and view their world, whether it is illusion or not Photoshop is a tool that shapes their reality. Once that reality is removed they are left with feeling uncomfortable, confused, and in utter noncompliance to the standard normal that life is: natural with all imperfections exposed.

Conclusion:

Could Photoshop be a digital gesture in this subculture’s world? There is so much emphasis that is put on the over sexualization and the need for perfection when defining femininity or masculinity to this group. It was so painful reading this article because it’s just shallow for beauty to be centered on unrealistic expectations. This subculture expects of me to Photoshop all my pictures for me to be defined as beautiful. If I am happy with the way I look I’m considered hideous just because I have a few pimples on my face. Fact of the matter is, I suffer from acne, and I am currently on prescription topical creams for it. I chose this method of treatment so my inner expectations of higher confidence can be achieved.

My question is how can this subculture know human interaction outside of the proximity of social media? Do they know compassion, kindness, respect, integrity, honesty when getting to know people in their natural state without tearing each other apart like they did with Beyoncé? After careful observation and analysis of the backlash this article brought the answer is no. This subculture does best interacting with cosmetically vain and artificial mediums such as Snapchat, Instagram, or Tinder. These mediums allow them to perform digital gestures and performances that translate weakly and poorly in real life amongst everyday people outside of this perceived norm.

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