14 DAY TRIAL // Today’s celebrity culture has taught us to be fascinated with stars, be they musicians, actors or even those people that don’t really have a particular set of skills, reality stars. Said fascination increases tenfold whenever there’s trouble in their personal or professional life because, we might as well admit it, we do love to build our idols up just to see them brought down to earth.
Ever since they got together in 2002 and until just recently, Beyonce and Jay Z seemed to be one of the few couples in showbiz able to keep a tight lid on all matters from their personal life: they dated in secret for a long time, they got married without anybody knowing, they became pregnant and had a child without too much media attention.
Ironically, while this happened, much to the tabloids’ open frustration, they were also very popular, the most powerful couple in music several years in a row.
Sure, rumors still got out every once in a while (that Jay was a cheater, that Beyonce was an insufferable princess, what not) but, most often than not, they were so ridiculous that I doubt anyone in their sane mind believed them.
Beyonce probably knew of all this: a GQ piece from 2013 revealed she had a room dedicated all to herself, in which she kept a record of all things written about her, good and bad, music critiques and tabloid gossip. So, she deliberately chose, month after month and year after year, to ignore the rumor mill and continue to live her life, a strategy similar to the one employed by Angelina Jolie, considered a mastermind manipulator of the press.
Then the elevator footage showing Beyonce’s sister Solange put on a major beatdown on Jay Z, while Beyonce looked impassively on, dropped. Since then, there’s been non-stop talk about how bad things are in their marriage and how they’re this close to getting a divorce and, for once, it all seems more real than before.
And that’s because, for the first time ever, Beyonce had to issue a statement on a very personal topic: the reason for the beatdown. While she didn’t actually reveal it (the reason), the very fact that she said anything has made all ears prick up and all eyes turn to her. She’s kept her silence since but it doesn’t even matter anymore: on the contrary, the more she refuses to say anything else, the more the world seems to care what’s going on.
Basic human nature: that which is forbidden, off limits, is the most appealing. Just ask Eve, I’m sure she knows a lot about that.
So, the rumor mill has gone into overdrive. So far, we’ve heard that Jay is a serial cheater, sleeping with different women on a regular basis, from fashion designers, fellow singers and random girls / groupies. The moment he leaves Bey at home with daughter Blue Ivy, he acts like a single man, not even bothering to put up a façade, just in case someone from his entourage takes the word back to his wife.
She’s plagued by cheating allegations as well, though, apparently, she’s able to exercise a bit more self-control because she’s only been sleeping with a bodyguard she has in her employment for several years now.
They’re fighting, yelling at each other, and threatening the other with financial ruin, their business empire is about to crumble to dust in the upcoming nasty divorce battle, but she’s determined to soldier on for a while longer, through all this marital hell because she has come to believe the fairytale lie she’s been selling to fans. All this – and so much more – has been written about the “divorce.”
Officially, Beyonce and Jay are as happy as on day 1, when they shared their first kiss. They’re not bothered by all this brouhaha around the status of their marriage, and they continue to live as before. Off the record, tensions run so high that many fans have come to expect all hell to break loose soon.
So far, Beyonce has found her strategy of ignoring the rumors a good one but, as rumors pick up and people start paying more attention the more she keeps mum, she might consider a different approach, because this isn’t going away. Unless, of course, there is some truth to the reports, which would be a shame.