Empowerment or subjugation - How gender is encoded in the red costume dance routine shot in Formation

• Beyonce is encoded as confident and powerful. Her costume is vintage and period appropriate, yet has clearly been tailored to suit the themes and ideologies of the music . 
• The costume is low cut, which emphasises her breasts and her legs, and is clearly highly sexualised. However, rather than solely appealing to the male (and lesbian) gaze, the preferred reading is that this costume is empowering. Here, the MES of her short short and fishnet stocking encode confidence in her own body and herself. 
• However, Beyonce is clearly hegemonically attractive, and has a very specific body type that will be unattainable for many audience members

For bell hooks, Beyonce is a problematic figure, and she even referred to her as a “terrorist” in a recorded debate. This provocative language is designed to provoke discussion

• Here, hooks argues that women are subjectified by images that are played to us every day. These images that we grow up watching cultivate a simple and straightforward ideology, that to be powerful, women need to sexualise themselves. For bell hooks, self-sexualisation is not wrong, but it presents just a single way that power is viewed. 
• Other ways in which women can be powerful include being intelligent, being funny, being physically strong, or having a particular talent, or simply being nice. 
• We see this ideology being reflected in much media, for example through the ‘glow up’ trope in American teen dramas. To see a character adopt hegemonic beauty standards is to see them become powerful within the narrative!
• Beyonce’s outfit in the ‘red dress master shot’ is striking through being very revealing. For example, the entirety of her legs are revealed through her skin tight bodysuit and fishnet stockings. This costume encodes confidence and power, through the revealing nature of the costume. This indicates that Beyonce is confident about her own body.
• In this sense Beyonce has become empowered through her choice of costume. However, we can problematise this ideology. By showing off her body, arguably Beyonce is living up to patriarchal hegemonic ideological assumptions. 
• However, Beyonce is the producer of this product, and has made choices as to how she dresses, and is therefore subverting the male gaze by appealing to a female heterosexual audience

bell hooks argues ‘Feminism is for everybody’, for all genders, ethnicities, bodies and cultures. She advocates intersectional feminism, as in a feminism that takes everybody's experience into account

• bell hooks argues that the feminist emancipation that Beyonce presents is a simple and straightforward one that does nothing to challenge the patriarchy
• Additionally, bell hooks also challenges the ideology that the only way to be powerful is to be hegemonically attractive, which reinforces unrealistic beauty standards

Alternatives to ‘visual terrorism’ 

• Political power and women in politics
• Wealth and financial power
• Doing something new and exciting
• Charisma, personality, being nice 
• Physical power and athleticism 
• Intelligence encoded through complex lyrics and hidden meanings 
• Embracing disability and diversity