First of all, let’s stop blaming Rachel Roy and ONLY Rachel Roy for Jay Z’s infidelity. I understand that as women, many of us are hesitant to blame men when they cheat– I get it; but what you all need to understand is that it takes two to tango! That was cliché, I know, but it’s true. You need two people to have sex and two people to cheat, that’s just the way it works.
We blame the “other woman” before we blame the man she cheated with. And in this case, we’re blaming her even more because she put herself out there. So what Rachel stepped into the situation on her own? That doesn’t make her anymore responsible than Jay! Personally, I would think that as women we would blame men who cheat first and foremost. Everybody has a choice and his choice was to cheat on his wife and Rachel’s was to sleep with a married man. We make our choices and then we live with them but what we shouldn’t do is allow ourselves to become subject to this internalized misogyny.
These ideas that are influenced by this deeply rooted misogyny don’t just end with how we look at cheaters either. They show up when a woman is raped and we blame her instead of her rapist. They show up when a woman is in an abusive relationship and we attack her for not leaving instead of her abuser for attacking her. They show up when we are accepting of a man talking about his sex life but not when a woman chooses to be open with hers. They show up when we preach modesty to women but are fine with men baring it all. These ideas go beyond Beyoncé, Jay, and Rachel Roy but since they decided to show up there too, it’s about time we started to recognize them for what they are.
If we’re going to talk about cheaters and try to figure out who we should blame and who we shouldn’t– we need to accept that for the most part cheating is a decision that two people make together. Jay Z and Rachel Roy were both well aware that he was married and it obviously didn’t make much of a difference. We need to be aware of the fact that Beyoncé is an artists as well as a woman and how she chooses to handle being cheated on is not our business. We don’t have the right to blame her if Jay cheats again no more than we have the right to only blame Jay, or any man, when he cheats. Leave your internalized misogyny at the door and be happy that Beyoncé and Jay are still together and that she gave us Lemonade to enjoy.
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