Monica Lewinsky Asked Beyoncé for Another Lyric Change

Monica Lewinsky has a small request for Beyoncé. Replying to a tweet from Variety about the singer’s decision to remove an ableist slur from her new album, Renaissance, the 49-year-old activist asked for another edit to the artist’s oeuvre. 

“Uhmm, while we’re at it…,” she wrote on Twitter on Monday night. She added the hashtag “#Partition,” referring to Beyoncé’s 2013 song from her self-titled album which features a lyric about Lewinksy. 

In case you missed it, on Monday, August 1, Beyoncé agreed to remove a lyric from her song “Heated,” which appears on her latest album, Renaissance. Lizzo removed the same slur from her own song “Grrrls’ after backlash earlier the same month. 

In “Partition,” Beyoncé sings, “He bucked all my buttons, he ripped my blouse / He Monica Lewinski’d all on my gown,” using the former White House intern’s name as a euphemistic verb for a sex act. 

When one user asked why Lewinsky listed “rap song muse” in her Twitter bio—an apparent reference to “Partition,” as well as other songs like Eminem's “Rap God”—she replied, “because learning to laugh about things which hurt or humiliated me is how I survived.” 

Another user asked if she’d reached out to Beyoncé herself to resolve the issue. Lewinksy said that while she did address the song publicly in a 2014 essay for Vanity Fair, she had not contacted Bey’s team directly. 

“No, I haven’t,” she replied. “But you make an interesting/fair point…” 

In her Vanity Fair essay, Lewinsky poked fun at Beyoncé’s use of her name as a verb while listing the many ways she’d been referenced in pop culture in the years since the White House scandal. “Thanks, Beyoncé, but if we’re verbing, I think you meant ‘Bill Clinton’d all on my gown,’ not ‘Monica Lewinsky’d.’” (I’m inclined to agree.)  

Beyoncé the album was released nine years ago, so chances of an edit are probably slim, but not impossible. Better late than never?