Everyone wants the best for their children, of course. It's why parents pay top dollar for exclusive schools, the best healthcare, and safe neighbourhoods. But, when I watching Beyoncé parade her kids around her Cowboy Carter concert to shoehorn them into a future of unearned nepotistic fame, my skin crawled.
Videos by Wide Open Country
My issues run deeper than simply the fact that, no matter their actual talent, they will be regaled by fans and media alike as celebrities. It's the theft of innocence, independence, and volition that it kick starts in their lives.
Beyoncé pulling her incredibly young kids around the Cowboy Carter stage, in front of thousands, is a glaring example of how she sees her family as a business. Their familial life is not something to be privately cherished. She's going to make as much from them as she can, and the sooner the better, their childhoods be darned.
The Pressure Of Greatness
There are many famous people who are determined not to let their fame be the scaffold for their children. They have often made their way from their own merit, and expect their offspring to do the same. It's tricky for the rich and the famous to keep their heirs from the spotlight, but it's not impossible.
These kids are brought up with wealth and provided for well. But, if they want to make something of themselves beyond the reach of their trust fund, they better create something original. It's not a common occurrence, but it is an admirable one.
What Beyoncé is doing by parading her kids around on stage during her international Cowboy Carter tour is forcing them into her limelight. She isn't giving Blue Ivy and Rumi the space to create for themselves. They are immediately on her stage, with her crowd, her media, and her fame. This is a disgusting thing to force on two children ages 7 and 13.
How does she expect them to develop as independent women with the pressure of an international spotlight the size of Beyoncés? She has taken away their opportunity to be anything but media stars. They have lost the chance to be someone who exists as a private individual. They are now as much in the public eye as she is.
Nurturing Nepotism
As I mentioned before, everyone wants something great for their children. We give them everything we have in order to ensure they live the richest lives possible. For many of the rich and famous that comes as wanting their spawn to follow in their footsteps. If it worked for them, it'll work for their kids.
But, as many parents often forget, kids are their own people. Sure, a life of banking, performance, or pig farming may have worked for the parent. But, as a child grows, it doesn't mean it'll work for them too. Riches, fame, and notoriety aren't for everyone. Some of us are happy simply existing among the cracks in the floorboards of greatness.
But people like are determined to force their children into the same path they walked. Beyoncé dragged them into the Cowboy Carter tour, to parade them around like some kind of salesman, advertising her kids as the next generation of her brand. She's giving the teaser of what Jay Z and Beyoncé will manufacture next for the pop masses .
Watching a 13-year-old self consciously trip her adolescent way around the stage and a child barely out of kindergarten nervously shadow her mother's hot pants was painful. I have never had a maternal instinct. But something inside me died as those the spotlights of the Beyoncé Cowboy Carter tour burned any chance of a vaguely private and normal childhood out for her publicized kids.
"And I will lead you down that road if you lose your way/ Born to be a protector. Even though I know, someday, you're gonna shine on your own / I will be your projector." Truer words have rarely been spoken.
