Beyonce's 'Ban Bossy' Campaign Misses the Point

Talk about hypocrisy and double standards!

Pop diva Beyonce has joined the campaign to ban the word “bossy.”

Why?

According to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Girls Scouts of the USA CEO Anna Maria Chávez who launched the campaign, the word “bossy” holds girls back from their true potential.

The campaign called “Ban Bossy,” aims to address the issue of girls not seeking leadership roles because they are afraid of being called “bossy.”

I have no problem with the goals of the campaign. My issue is with the group’s concern of girls being called “bossy” and the long time silence of such women over girls being called and referred to with the other “b” word and the “h” word “ho” in many rap and hip hop lyrics.

This especially is true of Beyonce.

She joins the “Ban Bossy” campaign because the word has negative connotations for girls and women. Yet, she has no problem displaying herself in a video dressed like a high-class hooker in the back of a limo preparing for sex.

Some message to girls!

And then there are the lyrics in some of her songs. In her opening song at the Grammy Awards she and her hubby rapper Jay Z performed suggestively “Drunk in Love.” Some of the printable lyrics:

“I’ve been drinking, I’ve been drinking . . . I get filthy when that liquor get into me . . . Last thing I remember is our beautiful bodies grinding off in that club."

In her crusade to help girls, I guess she has no problem with the image she presents in that song as to proper behavior. She also might take a look at her hubby’s use of words in some of his songs describing women in terms much more derogatory than bossy such as “Is That Yo B*tch” and “Money, Cash, H**s”

But, it is probably difficult for Beyonce to criticize her husband for using such demeaning words regarding women when she is pretty adept at it herself. Just listen to her song “Bow Down” which is replete with filthy words or look at her sexual message-filled videos.

One could assume that Beyonce thinks it’s bad to call a girl bossy, but OK to tell her to “bow down.”

When asked by Fox host Bill O’Reilly if Beyonce was doing more harm than good for the kids, black Attorney Eboni K. Williams said “right now she is, but we as a society could demand more from her.”

Perhaps the women leading the ban bossy effort were not aware of Beyonce and her husband’s disrespectful portrayals and characterizations of girls and women. If they did, it didn’t seem to make a difference in recruiting her for their campaign. They sure aren’t demanding more from her now that she is part of their effort.

The late C. DeLores Tucker, a longtime NAACP board member, Pennyslvania’s first black secretary of state and chair of the National Political Congress of Black Women, Inc., led a relentless campaign against sexist and degrading lyrics in the music industry.

Unfortunately, today’s black leadership shows little if any condemnation of such lyrics and portrayals.

Guess what the reaction would be if Beyonce, Jay Z and others in the entertainment industry put out a video that featured gay bashing or anti-Semitism.

You can bet there would be a huge backlash.

Not so when the negative portrayals are by black artists talking about black women, or at least perceived to be. This is just another type of black on black crime where black liberal elites remain strangely silent when such characterization carnage is by and against their own.

If Beyonce, Ms. Sandberg and the other women can undertake a campaign against the word bossy, why can’t they add the other “b” word as well?

The word “bossy” is not the problem. The problem is the image of women — particularly black women — portrayed by Beyonce and her cohorts in the entertainment industry.