I love this post about Beyonce’s new video so much that I wish I’d written it. The only other thing I wonder about in the video is the smoking. It’s weird to me how absolutely delightfully transgressive her smoking is. But I also think that, in going along with what Silvana is saying, that the smoking is about the performance of femininity, because, in one way, smoking for women was/is about appetite suppression, about having something to do other than eating. It is literally “I compromise my health in order to transform myself into the right kind of woman.”
Anyway, I still think her smoking looks shockingly bad ass but I don’t really have anything more substantial to say about it.
Tiny Cat Pants 
And yet she goes along with it, you know?
After watching it, I’d almost hazard a guess that it might have come down to a simple period piece decision (and quite possibly mainly on the director’s part, whoever directed it), given the visual environment overall – the Bettie Page homage and all the other vignettes – and most especially the fact that most of the smoking is while in some pretty righteous dominatrix gear.
If not for the dance music, it’d remind me of a John Michael McCarthy film, if you’re familiar with that particular Memphis legend…