"If I were a boy" by Beyonce

“If I were a boy” by Beyonce
In the song called “If I were a boy”, Beyonce makes a clear thesis. She is speaking as if she was a boy. She speaks as if she was in a relationship, everything she would do. Beyonce constantly repeats “If I were a Boy” all throughout out her song that way the audience keeps in mind that everything she says, a boy does. Doing so draws her audience in to listen more carefully to the words and lets them get a feeling of what it would be like to be a boy for just one day. The words that she says, explains what a man would do on a daily basis or how women see their other half doing on a daily basis. Most women who go through a relationship who their man follows many steps as in the song, they feel like their relationship is the only relationship like that. So this song goes to show that for the girls who feel that their relationship is the only relationship like that, it really isn’t. It is like Beyonce is following all the footsteps that maybe her ex boyfriend followed when they were together and she is trying to put herself in his shoes to see what it really is like to do what he did. When she says “I’d kick it with who I wanted and never get confronted for it ‘cause the stick up for me”, this only goes to show that men who are in these kinds of relationships have their friends cover up for them because they don’t want to confess for the mistakes that they make. She also says that “If I were a boy I think I could understand how it feels to love a girl I swear I’d be a better man”. Being a girl and seeing what it feels like to be cheated on and seeing how u get treated, makes you feel that, If you were a boy you would not treat the girl the same way you are being treated because you already know how it feels and you don’t want to put someone else through the same pain and heartache that you went through. There is a part in the song when she says “I’d listen to her ‘cause I know how it hurts when you lose the one you wanted ‘cause he’s taking you for granted and everything you had got destroyed”. Girls who are put in this situation know how it feels to get hurt, and know how it hurts when they lose the one they wanted just because they took her for granted. In this song, Beyonce is not referring to all men, she is only referring to the men who follow the same steps in this song as if it is their whole life story and they don’t realize it. Some men don’t know how much pain they put women through. When she says “if I were a boy I would turn off my phone tell everyone it’s broken so they’d think I was sleeping alone”. Some guys in relationships do so. They will turn their phone off that way, when their girlfriend calls them they don’t have t answer and they won’t know where he actually is even though she is being cheated on. She says “I’d put myself first and make the rules as I go ‘cause I know that she’d be faithful waiting for me to come home, to come home”. Men know that most girls don’t know what they are doing behind their back and know that their girl will not cheat on them and be faithful to them. Towards the end of the song is when Beyonce talks about how she realizes how she was taken for granted. She says “It’s a little too late for you to come back say it’s just a mistake think I’d forgive you like that If you thought I would wait for you, you thought wrong” Most men when they get caught in such a situation they just say “oh it was a mistake” when really the girl knows that it really wasn’t and that he knew all along what he was doing wrong. Then for the rest of the song it just explains how men don’t understand what it’s like to be a girl and what it’s like in a girl viewpoint. As far as the movie, it is in black and white and it starts off like an ordinary day. It starts when they are eating breakfast and then Beyonce is in a police uniform and she goes on with her day. While Beyonce is at work, it shows her boyfriend at work and a girl walks over to his computer and he is looking up earrings for her. Then the video continues to show Beyonce doing her daily work routine in the police force. While Beyonce is dancing intimately when her guy friend, her man sees her and that’s when Beyonce walks over to him and they leave to go home. When they arrive home Beyonce asks him why he was jealous and says “It’s not like I was sleeping with him”. As soon as she says this, her boyfriend asks her what and that is when he says “it’s not like I was sleeping with her”. That is when the video starts over and shows the same things again but Beyonce’s boyfriend as the cop. So all in all Beyonce was just acting him out the whole time to prove the point that men don’t realize that girls really know when something is up and it’s not just a mistake. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVTyLqkez6A
By: Brandy Laughman