Beyonce empowering women?

All it does is help buff the reputation and self esteem of the stars performing. That smug self satisfied feeling you get when you donate to the Salvation Army but ignore the Big Issue seller outside the station.

How can someone who is a slave to fashion, extensive pampering, being waited on hand and foot, and having her skin and hair manipulated until she looks nothing like the women she purports to want to empower, be a role model for them?

I am reminded of a (I think) Buddy Holly song (maybe not, but I am sure someone will put me right) "That'll be The Day"

Flickety is there something wrong with the Salvation Army? I'm a bit puzzled by your remark

I saw them on the Andrew Marr show. It would be nicer if they would just donate a million or two to some good causes than try to pretend that their brand of feminism- scanty clothes and long (false?) hair is going to help many women.

Bit like the not lamented Spice Girls and their "girl power". Retires making sick noises...

If that performance on BGT the other night is in any way empowering women, I'll go to our front gate (an expression my mother used to say)

Why does someone who makes (a great deal of) money out of performing - singing, dancing /wriggling, etc - feel the need to claim a political purpose to her actions? It's certainly got nothing to do with the content of her songs as far as I can recall although I must admit I don't voluntarily listen to any of them.

The little girls in my part of the world are not allowed to watch her on video clips. Their mothers don't want them copying her gyrating on stage. So in fact she is considered a bad role model and she is not at all about empowering women.

Beyonce is a living role model and I'll try to explain: she proves that women can build their business being a loving and caring wives/mothers, at the same time looking beautiful, healthy. Women are same sexual creatures as men are, that's why she demonstrates her sexuality in public. She teaches girls to be independent, hard working, attractive (healthy, non-skinny), family loving persons.

I assume that you are a man, DanielLee555, so your attitude is probably coloured by your hormones. Men have always regarded women's sexuality as their most important quality.

Her public image is a role model which encourages girls to prefer exploiting their physical attractions in sleazy exhibitionism to using the other abilities they are endowed with. She does it well, but role model?

There are millions of mothers who have built businesses, raised loved familes and had fulfilling sexual relationships without making a profitable career out of titillating performances.

Nothing wrong with "looking beautiful, healthy" and being "independent, hard working, attractive (healthy, non-skinny), family loving persons." but she is not the only example of these qualities. She does not need to claim to be empowering women. Women need to be empowered to be MORE than sex objects.

Well said Elegran. Another of Beyonce and her husband's more unpleasant qualities is their liking for fur and the skins of endangered species to be worn as fashion items. I find them both to be very poor role models for young people in general.

I don't think Beyonce is a good role model at all, she's a talented singer and performer as is Rhianna and Jennifer Lopez. In spite of that talent, it's a shame they have to spend so much time projecting, in particular, their backsides, sorry we are human beings not primates. I hate all that "bootyliscious" crap that has become so omnipresent in the entertainment industry, that we now just have the cult of the arse, without the talent in the form of the the vacuous Kim Kardashian. Sorry these people aren't good role models for young and impressionable women. As if breast implants aren't bad enough we now have women taking their life in their hands getting their backsides enhanced

I'll spell it out for any men reading this who think that glamorous temptresses are what women should be aiming at as an ambition. It is very easy to be a sex symbol, because 50% of the population are male and are turned on by the sight of an attractive female. Nothing wrong with men finding women attractive - it ensures the continuation of the species, and without that there would be no more humans.

But imagine a world in which the main and only ambition of most men is to be considered a sexy pin-up by women, to the extent that when asked what they want to be when they grow up, little boys say "a model" and they neglect their abilities in any other field.

No interest in cars, planes or motor-bikes, no engineering, medecine, financial advising, law, retail management for them. Just a pole to dance around, a bucket of oil to rub on their muscles, a supply of socks to stuff down their underpants, a library of bump and grind music and an agent to get them gigs and put out soundbites about "empowering men to be independent, hard working, attractive (healthy, non-skinny), family loving persons"

Men would need role models to encourage them to do all the other things that they do now without even having to think about it, not ones that make just one feature of their biology into the height of their ambition.

Hear, hear Elegran! Very well put indeed.

The trouble is, men do think it would be marvelous to be considered a sexy stud by women, so they extrapolate that women being sexy for men is marvelous too.

Well, yes, that is one aspect of their lives (great fun too) , but there are other aspects as well. Being a stud isn't a career, is it? It's a part-time leisure activity. For women, being sexy as a career is just servicing men's fantasies.

well said Elegran why can't these vacuous celebrities just be what they are? They are entertaining ( to some people), just get on with it and collect the pay cheque, don't pretend to be any more than that. Terribull do you think these celebrities may need donors? I have got a bit of buttock cheek going spare if they need it.

Well said Elegran.

I think that Beyonce and her ilk do a great disservice to women.