Concert Review: Boyfriend Is Your Girlfriend At Rough Trade
There are moments when someone says to you, “You will never see a show like this!,” and you roll your eyes because hype is a dangerous thing. Is Hamilton as good as everyone says? Well, Boyfriend is not Hamilton. Instead, she feels like Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth, is having her “Gloria Gaynor” moment, and she will survive his cheating! At Rough Trade, she brought out every prop and verse to create a show that is one of a kind, and bashes the societal “norms” chaining women to “manhood.”
From “Toast” to “Wash That,” Boyfriend’s show feels like a cabaret from a housewife MAD with self-love. She is a benevolent Mommie Dearest; taking wire hangers to the times she broke her heart, her mind, her soul, and her body just to have male approval. It is insane what women do to be accepted/ “loved” by men, and from tossing away a wedding dress to booty popping in lingerie and rollers, Boyfriend’s show feels like femme liberation. If you want to clutch your pearls at the latter statement, that is not the half of what she does. Boyfriend has taken the machismo of society, and, instead, made it a female style of approach.
In Boyfriend’s show, women are the aggressive, bravado filled energy, and her rap flows/ singing are punched affronts to every social stigma against womanhood. Straight from NOLA, this “raptress” fuses pop, Hip Hop, Broadway, and humor as if they are spices being mixed together to make the ultimate Powerpuff Girl. The result are catchy beats ready for radio and filled with “meme-worthy” quotes for your Instagram. Yet, it is those affronts that obliterate notions of “lady-like” as definitive chains meant to cut women off from self-searching the meaning of pleasure to them. Thus, her fans look at her with wide-eyes and wry smirks as her costumes, choreography, demeanor, and witty lyrics, ultimately say, “FU, I love myself and I am figuring out how to please me in every way!”
To her fans, Boyfriend comes off heroic with her confident, “in your face” theatricality leading her to outrageous bodily positions and commentary. Yet, that is what the people/ women want from her; the opportunity to feel without being called hysterical, dance without being called slutty, and laugh without being called ridiculous. She achieves that with a personality that is both bold for and incredibly loving towards her audience. For More Information On Boyfriend Click Here.
