Review
Addiction
Culture
Feminism
Music
5 min read

The idolatry of Beyoncé: her tour hits town with eight golden calves in tow

We all desire to be perceived as more talented, confident and beautiful.

Lauren Windle is an author, journalist, presenter and public speaker.

Beyonce marches along a stage catwalk as photographers stare from below.
Taking to the stage.
Beyoncé.com.

I suspect if you asked British millennial women to name their queen, more would say Beyoncé than Camilla Parker Bowles. Such is the allure and popularity of the woman who commands legions of fans, ‘the BeyHive’, and has been dubbed ‘Queen B’. Now this pop monarch is on the move and she’s brought her royal tour to London.  

Last night the Cowboy Carter tour lit up Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in an ostentatious display of stars, stripes and glitter. I joined the throngs of fans who packed out the arena to hear the hits from Beyoncé’s first country album, protected from the rain by only their sequin-lined cowboy hats. 

A massive screen provided video entertainment during costume changes. It depicted her two settings; siren and saviour. In some of the imagery Beyoncé was veiled or illuminated by bright white lights, in modern iconography that would previously have been reserved for the Blessed Virgin Mary. During her song Daughter, with lyrics: ‘Cleanse me, Holy Trinity’, she was backdropped by stained-glass church windows. 

Beyoncé is hardly the first to draw from the style of religion in her work (see: Madonna). But, when I came back from the bathroom, the performer was midway through her song Tyrant, riding a gold mechanical bull while surrounded by eight double-headed golden calves. That’s when I realised, we’re not even pretending this isn’t idolatry anymore. 

As a recovering addict (arguably the most extreme expression of idolatry), I am interested in the processes behind idol worship. I have spent weeks studying Aaron’s ill-fated decision to melt down gold jewellery into a calf at the request of the Israelites who thought Moses, and God, were taking too long up Mount Sinai, followed by the disastrous repetition of history under King Jeroboam I.

We take these cautionary tales and usually apply them to the metaphorical calves in our own lives, but still the golden calf endures as the ultimate symbol of idol worship. Would Beyoncé have known this? Almost certainly, given the other Christian imagery sprinkled throughout the show. 

The Queen 

For those only vaguely aware of Beyoncé, I’ll explain how the global obsession came about. She was raised by parents who were committed to her success. Her mum made all her costumes while her dad formed and managed the girl band Destiny’s Child, of which Beyoncé was the lead singer. She famously grew up honing her singing talent while on a treadmill to ensure that she would maintain her voice during energetic dances on stage.  

Destiny’s Child enjoyed a huge amount of success, even if their message of female empowerment was confused. They started with the expectation that a partner would pay their ‘bills, bills, bills’, then sung of their desire to ‘cater’ to their men, before a violent U-turn declaring themselves to be ‘independent women’. The mixed messaging didn’t put off their fans, but it was when Beyoncé teamed up with her now husband, Jay-Z, that she experienced a meteoric rise to fame and became the breakout solo artist from the band. 

She has experienced some scandal over her career, most notably in 2014 when CCTV footage was leaked of her sister Solange attacking her husband Jay-Z in a lift. It was rumoured that this was in response to his infidelity but no formal statement was made. Beyoncé, like our former Queen, lives by the mantra ‘never complain, never explain’. 

Over the years, as the record sales have grown, so has her cult-like status. ‘You have the same number of hours in the day as Beyoncé’ is used as a motivational tool (although I can’t say it’s ever worked on me). Some have even hi-jacked and modified the French national motto to: Liberté, Égalité, Beyoncé. Her allure is increasingly less about her music and more about what she embodies; the ability to seemingly have everything – motherhood, a stratospheric career and the dream face and body. 

The problem 

To be clear; I don’t think admiring Beyoncé or enjoying her music is a bad thing. I am the one who paid more than £200 to go and do just that. But, with a few notable exceptions, almost everything we idolise fundamentally has the capacity to be a force for good in our lives, if it’s kept in its right place. It’s the classic Christian cliché; don’t let a good thing become a God thing. Take food, exercise and your phone, these can all do immeasurable good in enhancing your quality of life, but when they become an idol, they can also do immeasurable harm. 

It is often said that we become what we worship. Well in the context of idolising Beyoncé many people would say that’s a fate they would happily welcome. But the reality is darker than that. 

What are we really saying when we idolise Beyoncé and bow down to her golden calves? I would suggest on the surface it’s a desire to be perceived as more talented, confident and beautiful. It’s the panic that we should be perfect, especially given that Beyoncé achieves that perfection in the same twenty-four daily hours that we have. It’s a deep longing to be desired as she is, to be popular as she is, to be regularly affirmed as she is. 

Let’s go deeper. Does God say that we need to have visible talent in order to be valuable? No. He says we are all a part of a body with our own unique skills that contribute to the entire organism. Some of those skills will be discrete and often overlooked by people, but that makes them no less valuable to God. Does God say we should be beautiful? No. Jesus wasn’t exceptionally physically attractive, as far as we know. If anything the Bible warns against putting stock in such a fleeting resource. Are we called to be confident in ourselves? No. But we are told that flourishing comes from a confidence in God. 

My fear is that if we chase visible talent, we will always feel that we are lacking and unrecognised. If we chase beauty, we will always feel ugly and if we chase Beyoncé-level confidence, we will always feel small. The idol that should theoretically inspire us to greater things, ends up leaving us feeling boxed in by unhelpful and unachievable goals. It leaves us caged by the comparison and always a step behind. 

Adding to the heartbreak, the thing that we’re emulating and idolising, is never as satiating as we believe it to be. Had I stormed the stage, I would have found those calves to be moulded from plastic and sprayed gold. Just as I would find the performer to be a bit tired and flawed like the rest of us. The reality is, even Beyoncé won’t live up to the idol of Beyoncé. While in contrast, the correct focus for our worship, Jesus, will only ever get better with closer inspection. 

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Article
Books
Culture
Original sin
Trust
6 min read

When the penny drops, on the Salt Path or a London street

Being taken in unleashes dark, unpalatable emotions

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

A painting show Adam and Eve wide-eyed after the fall.
Paradise Lost, Emil Nolde, 1921.
Nolde Foundation Seebüll.

Doubts about the honesty of The Salt Path, Raynor Winn’s memoir of walking the Southwest coastal path with her ill husband Moth, have raged in the past weeks. Investigations revealing the duo’s real names, financial history and the medical unlikelihood of the reversals in Moth’s degenerative condition, as presented in the book, provoked thousands of readers to express anger and disappointment at being duped. But being taken in and learning from it is part of being human: a lesson in how to trust more wisely, rather than not trusting at all 

Last summer I was scam mugged on my local high street. Passing a frail pensioner pulling loose notes from his pocket, I picked up his fallen tenners and returned them. Six steps later, a woman shrieking I’d thieved her “granddad’s” money grabbed my arm. Cue a few minutes of struggling and shouting, before I got away, bruised and humiliated, but still gripping my bag. Vowed afterwards to always walk on by if I saw someone needing help on London’s streets, as it could be a set up. 
But this detachment didn’t last. Being a goodish Samaritan is hardwired, even on the capital’s occasionally mean streets. We want to support and connect with our brothers and sisters. Withdrawal from our fellow citizens makes us more unsafe, not less. As Kaya Comer-Schwartz, London’s Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, said: “The safety of our town centres is more than just policing – it's about building stronger, more connected communities where everyone feels secure.” 

Certainly, a police officer would have been a welcome sight while tussling with my would-be conwoman. But I was grateful to the handful of people who stopped, as they would be my witnesses if the assailant went full mugger, in frustration that the ploy for me to open my bag had gone awry.  

Memoirs also entreat us to bear witness, explaining the betrayal felt by some of the Salt Path’s two million readers who invested emotion and empathy in its uplifting tale of a hard -done -by couple finding solace in nature. Identifying with the memoir’s midlife, everyman duo and believing a long trek through the Southwest is a silver bullet for homelessness, financial woes and degenerative medical conditions, does not make the Salt Path’s former fans saps, it makes them beautifully human.  

Raynor and Moth’s unmasking as Sally and, still remarkably healthy, Tim Walker, who lost their Welsh farmhouse following accusations of embezzlement against Sally and owned a property in France when claiming to be homeless, has lifted the lid on the publishing industry’s hunger for real life stories, with morally simple, feelgood narrative arcs. Bonus points if the tale includes a “nature cure”, where nature is not just a balm for grief and pain, but somehow vanquishes it altogether. Fact checking takes a lower priority than shaping a story into a series of emotional hot button scenes, with a neat, satisfying ending. And publishers may be guilty of their own sleight-of-hand by incentivising booksellers to personally recommend to customers a list of predetermined titles, creating the aura of ‘word of mouth’ hits. 

Mean Girls’ great line “Jealous much?” captures journalists’ enthusiasm, mine included, for the Salt Path scandal. How can bestseller success pass over writers with have spent decades crafting phrases like popular orange vegetable to avoid writing carrot twice, yet shine on Raynor/ Sally’s repetitive, clunky prose? ”We lost. Lost the case. Lost the house.” Her dizzying ascent from unknown debut non-fiction author, with only a piece in the Big Issue to her name, to a book deal with Penguin, seems to other writers a mystery as great as anything in her trekking tale. 

Feeling deceived unleashes these dark, unpalatable emotions such as envy and desire for revenge. I long nourished fantasies of catching the scammers in action and deflecting their next victim by shouting “Look! Granddad’s dropping his money again,” before handily nearby forces of law and order brought them to book. Even if you lose little materially from a con, the loss of dignity and sense of agency from becoming a mark, a manipulated, dehumanised bit player in another’s exploitive narrative, takes time to get over.  

Popular accounts of online romance fraud feel designed to give audiences a sense of superiority, ‘I’d see that coming a mile off’, over the victims, reinforcing their sense of shame. Yet evidently with many thousands being lured by romance fraud, the perpetrators use effective psychological coercion techniques. Omniscient superiority needs to be replaced with empathy and support for fleeced, broken-hearted victims. 

Grifters are part of life, but their reductive, empathy-free, world view does not have to be. As singer Nick Cave’s counsels, cynicism is not the answer: "Cynicism is not a neutral position — and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils.”  

Religious origin stories, including the Garden of Eden, contain an element of falling for a trick. Eve does the serpent’s bidding, and she and Adam are banished from paradise. “So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” Emil Nolde’s painting Paradise Lost, 1921, catches perfectly the moment the penny drops with Adam and Eve on the consequences of falling for the serpent. Yet by the following chapter of Genesis they start a family, moving on with life with new insight. 

To never confront disappointment would be to remain as an infant, without the opportunities to grow and develop as adults. 

In the Good Samaritan, one of the best-known parables, Jesus transforms the categorising question ‘who is my neighbour?’ into the universal quest of ‘how can I be a better neighbour’? Our bonds with our communities, a sense of shared humanity are the best, possibly the only defence, against those who would mislead us or do us harm. 

Celebrated American journalist Ira Glass said: “Great stories happen to those who can tell them.” Published in 2018, The Salt Path’s direct, film-like scenes of survival against the odds and against the elements, would have resonated with all the people who saw their security and lifestyle nosedive after the 2008 financial crash, never to recover. Suspending disbelief, Raynor and Moth’s 620-mile wild camping trek, represented a symbolic railing against a heartless economic system. 

My experience of the penny dropping a fraction too late to escape the scammers, has made me revise my self image as a streetwise Londoner. On my way to pick up holiday money that afternoon, my head was full of travel plans rather than focused on the here and now, a tendency I must curb.  

If my assailant was writing her memoir I like to think our scrap would be the opening chapter, where she is at a crossroads of having to mug somebody in broad daylight, with a small, attentive audience, or rethink her street hustling career. Dressed in a fake leather biker jacket on a hot summer day - the smell lingers in my olfactory memory - her outfit was possibly an homage to Catherine Zeta Jones’ catsuit in Entrapment. As we know from all the TV series on con artists, looking the part is key. 

 Finding out the reality of her life since I broke free of her grip 11 months ago would not be hard, as she is now stationed outside Premier Foods by the tube station, in much scruffier clothes, asking for a pound for water. This sideways, or probably downwards move, in the street economy appears to be working out for her, and the peace of the neighbourhood. 

Despite having lived in small rural communities for decades, throughout all The Salt Path controversy, nobody has come forward to say the Winns / Walkers were good neighbours. Setting this right could be their next adventure and next bestseller. 

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Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free. 
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
 
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

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