Karla's Media Review Post

"If I Were A Boy" Beyonce

In the song, “If I Were A Boy”, Beyonce sings about the things she would do on a daily

basis if she were a guy instead of a girl. It becomes clear after a few lines that she is trying to

point out the unfair double standards for men and women. This is connected to my group’s

topic of gender identity, as Beyonce uses many examples which inadvertently support my

argument that we allow gender identity to mold the standards to which we are held to. For a

song written in 2008, Beyonce really was very aware of the gender biases in society and

illustrates how unfair these biases can be.

Beyonce begins the song talking about the double standards in daily life and in relationships. She says that if she were a boy, she would “kick it with who [she] wanted” and “never get confronted for it” despite already being in a relationship. This implies the opposite is

true for women, as she feels that she can’t already do that in her everyday life. Not only does

gender identity affect relationships, but it also affects the standards to which an individual is

held. For example, Beyonce says that if she were a boy, she would be able to do something as simple as “[rolling] out of bed in the morning and [throwing] on what [she] wanted. This speaks to how women are expected to always look “presentable”, because if they don’t then they usually aren’t even given a chance. I definitely agree with this point, as I see that women are expected to look much better than men usually are.

While Beyonce very explicitly points out the surface level effects of these double standards, she is more implicit when touching on how these perceptions affect one internally. However, she does so slightly when she talks about how she would “put [herself] first” if she were a boy. I know that I wish she would have gone more into depth on this aspect of gender identity, as I believe that how we treat ourselves is a reflection of how we have been taught to treat ourselves. We cannot begin to work on our biases if we don’t first identify them within

ourselves. As I said, Beyonce was very ahead of her time in terms of gender identity and how it affects our lives. Although 2008 wasn’t that long ago, many of the discrepancies that Beyonce points out between the way that the binary genders are treated seem to just now be coming to light. Beyonce’s song “If I Were A Boy” is not only very eye-opening, but it is also really enjoyable and a great song to sing along to.

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