THE HUNT FOR BECKY WITH THE GOOD HAIR

Beyoncé’s newest visual album, Lemonade, dropped on April 23 and the Beyhive went insane. But the insanity was not limited to the musical and visual feat that shot to number one on the Billboard 200. No, Beyoncé fans everywhere directed their fervor at “Becky with the good hair.”

Lemonade alluded to the possibility of Jay Z cheating on Beyoncé and listeners everywhere lapped it up. Subsequently, the celebrity rumor mill began churning out possible Beckys and Beyoncé fans jumped to the singer’s “defense.” They flooded the Instagram accounts of fashion designer Rachel Roy and singer Rita Ora with bee emojis and hateful comments.

These alleged Other Women may have done something wrong by getting involved with a married man, but Jay Z has remained relatively unscathed by the possible affair (aside from the Solange elevator incident). Yes, both “Becky with the good hair” and Jay Z may have had an affair, but Jay Z was the one breaking his commitment to his partner. No one likes a homewrecker, but it often seems that the “Other Woman” faces the bullying and “slut-shaming,” while the man actually being unfaithful is above the fray.

Through this lens, the hunt for Becky is incredibly sexist. Jumping to the defense of your idol is one thing, but cyberbullying other women isn’t conducive to anything. A woman having an affair with a man in a monogamous relationship is clearly wrong, but men are just as capable as women of making decisions about sex and relationships.

This issue sounds oddly familiar: does the tendency of schools to implement strict dress codes on girls to avoid “distracting boys” ring a bell? The common trope is that women ought to carefully monitor what they wear and how they act so they don’t distract the boys or entice men into affairs. But the thing is...that isn’t a woman’s responsibility.

Girls should be able to wear whatever they want without fear of being body-shamed by their school administrators and women, even if they do partake in an affair, shouldn’t be slut-shamed by strangers who don’t really know what happened in a celebrity marriage. If you want to blame “Becky” for the alleged rift in Beyoncé and Jay Z’s marriage, go right ahead, but is “Becky” really to blame?