Beyoncé is the perfect archetype of the earth mother. As defined in the dictionary, an earth mother is “an embodiment of the female principle of fertility; a nurturing maternal woman.”
How can you doubt that?
If that’s still a hard thing to grasp, consider her baby-making abilities and not only that but the stylish way she makes and carries her babies. You already know how she makes them, surfbort’n perhaps? And you know how graciously and effervescently Queen carries her kids.
But what makes it even more impressive is the fact she’s ridiculously rich. According to Forbes she’s got a net worth of about a quarter of a billion dollars. This month the magazine ranked the highest-paid celebrities and Beyoncé trailed P. Diddy’s 12-month cash haul of $130 million by $25 million.
Her maternity leave break might have her off TV and the performing stage for a little while, but her earth mother vibe will keep radiating. There’s almost no one Beyoncé doesn’t touch in some way. From rappers to New Orleans sissy bounce artists.
“She’s so amazing, she’s so sweet and so humble. I just love her spirit and her energy,” says Big Freedia, the Queen of Bounce, who appeared on “Formation,” which was on the groundbreaking Lemonade album.
“I was very excited and very humbled to be a part of her album, and she influences a lot of people around the world to be themselves to do what they want to do, without any apologies,” Freedia says.
Freedia told Houston Press that Beyoncé is so down to earth that she had no qualms about hitting the bounce clubs in New Orleans. “She came to see me at one of my little hood clubs, and they came to hang out with me and I was just blown away that her and her people came out to see me. It was just totally amazing; I was just very much in shock that she even came and knew my music. She’s not this bourgie person that some people might think she is.”
But the influence doesn’t stop there, for the true earth mother; Beyoncé inspires everyone, across the globe, even. University professor Kevin Allred created a course called Politicizing Beyoncé and has a blog called Bey-ond Pop Culture. He’s a tremendous JuJu fan and knows her influence on the world all too well.
“A lot of people claim she copies ideas, like the Messy Mya copyright claim, but she knows what she's doing and she always gives the credit where it's due, in my opinion,” he shared. “For instance, there's a scene in her documentary showing how she saw some choreography she liked on YouTube, and so she flew the boys in the video in from Mozambique to teach her dancers, and then featured them in her video.”
Allred goes on to break down further how Bey’s earth mother nature inspires people and culture, especially during the course of her pregnancy when she released images from a pregnancy photo shoot in February.
“She uses Madonna and Venue imagery, classical art inspiration where white men are typically celebrated as artists, to rewrite some of those stories from a black woman's perspective — as both a celebration of black women and also an indictment of the original racist and sexist assumptions about art,” Allred explains.
And in these heady political times, Allred says Beyoncé is all the more ready to nurture us some more. “It's also the progression of any artist working in a corporate medium to know what she can and can't do and how to reach the most people,” he explains. “She goes to some of the whitest spaces, the Super Bowl in terms of audience, and the [Country Music Awards], and creates these huge political moments. I think it was her plan all along.”