Image Credit: Beyonce/HBO via Vox
Poor Rachael Ray. There she was on Saturday night, minding her own business, maybe making up a batch of her hot fudge sundae cake as a treat, when suddenly — the BeyHive was after her! Rachael — or whoever mans her social media on weekends — was stunned, wondering what she had done to make Beyonce’s followers simultaneously hate her person but love her “good hair.” And why were they calling her Becky?
Queen Bey’s followers made a little error when they went after poor Rachael Ray, though. See, here’s what happened: Beyonce blew the world wide open on Saturday night with the premier of LEMONADE, her hour long “visual album.” I watched it and I can’t even fully describe what I saw. It was capital-A Art (Read this NYT review for a full breakdown of why it’s so great). Just gorgeous. It explores themes of Blackness, womanhood, anger, joy, love, and sex with visuals that are truly stunning and music that begs you to listen to it. The underlying plot of the whole piece is a woman’s reaction to her lover’s infidelity. Whether that woman is Beyonce herself or a fictional character is a question for a later time. The BeyHive assumed it was the Queen, and that’s what matters here.
In the song “Sorry,” Beyonce tells her lover — presumably husband JayZ — to call “Becky with the good hair.” Before speculation even had time to come to a simmer, fashion designer and rumored JayZ sidechick Rachel Roy hit up Instagram with a selfie captioned, “Good hair don’t care, but we will take good lighting, for selfies, or self truths, always. live in the light #nodramaqueens.”
Big mistake. HUGE.
The BeyHive assumed Roy was confessing to sleeping with Beyonce’s man and reacted accordingly. They bombed Roy’s social media feeds, prompting her to take down the photo and make her Instagram private. She later made some statement on Twitter about respecting marriages but it may be too little, too late.
In the midst of this firestorm was poor Rachael Ray, who has never been linked to JayZ in any way. The only thing she did was have a name similar to Rachel Roy, so she’s feeling the sting. Lemons and bees keep appearing in her comments sections. Hopefully, her signature humor will rule the day and she’ll invent a lemon-honey dessert called Becky Bars to show us she’s not mad.
Rachel Roy, though? She better just stay home for a while.
