ABSTRACT
Using Beyoncé’s Lemonade as a lens, this essay offers readers a language through which to engage clothing as a medium in order to understand how black women’s bodies in particular are read as deviant, transgressive, stylish, and so forth. Focusing my analysis on “Formation”—the song/video that introduces listeners/viewers to Lemonade but doesn’t actually appear in the body of the visual album—I demonstrate that clothing is a skin of sorts that communicates something about the wearer, and the meaning of this clothing is (mis)interpreted by the wearer.
