My Week Of Channelling Beyonce

She’s a 21st-century icon, fierce fashionista and occasional vegan. So can seven days of Queen Bey-inspired activities transform Dolly Alderton’s life? Photo: marie claire

I’ll admit it: I haven’t always been a Beyoncé aficionado. As a teenager, I knew all the words to Destiny’s Child’s "Survivor" and as a uni student I enjoyed swaying my hands "to the left, to the left" in a sweaty bar.

I knew the basics: people call her "Bey", she has fabulous thighs and she has transcended regular, garden-variety celebrity to become some sort of 21st-century cultural deity.

But I also knew her awesome, self-assured brand of Beyoncé ferocity is so powerful that it even pierces the consciousness of non-fans. Do I want in on that? Of course I do.

I am a writer who spends her day anxiously drinking tea in front of a screen. I am someone who is quite apologetic about everything. Someone who has trouble speaking my mind when it comes to boys or misplaced orders in restaurants, or when people are rude to me on the bus. And it occurred to me recently, as I pondered another lacklustre meal eaten with a lacklustre boy who I had not had the heart to turn down: Beyoncé would not put up with this.

She not only gets the main course she ordered, she gets what she wants full stop. All the time. Hell, as the recently released biography, Becoming Beyoncé, sets out, she allegedly ditched Jay Z for an entire year because she had a hint of a suspicion that he and Rihanna were doing the dirty.

So, what happens if an everywoman (albeit a time-poor, uncoordinated journalist everywoman) lives à la Beyoncé for a week? Would being a wannabe Mrs Carter, by following the more easily assailable facets of her life like her (sometimes) vegan diet, and filtering dance into the every day, have profound consequences for me? Will steely determination and self-assuredness start to come more naturally? I know not. But God, I’ll miss cheese.

Beyonce on the red carpet at the 2015 MET gala. Photo: Getty Images

DAY ONE

I start day one as I meant to go on – with a thoroughly unappetising breakfast. No offence to vegans – I’m vegetarian, after all. But Beyoncé famously did 22 days of strict veganism recently, and so shall I. So a plate of figs and raspberries with nothing else it is. I pen an email to a friend who is a diehard, lifelong Beyoncé fan and ask for her advice.

"Being Beyoncé is more of a state of mind than a lifestyle," she replies in earnest. "It’s about channelling an inner belief in yourself – a calm, but strong serenity. Do something today that means people will stare at you – and don’t give a shit about it." Following her advice, I meet up for a drink with a friend and, for the first time in my life, decide not to wear a bra – something I have often wanted to do but have never been brave enough.

The first thing my friend shouts when she hugs me hello is: "ARE YOU NOT WEARING A BRA???!!!" and everyone in the pub turns around and stares. Girl, you’ve got a long way to go.

DAY TWO

If there’s one thing Beyoncé does better than pretty much anyone else, it’s achieving a nearly permanent state of glam. The woman gets off long-haul flights looking better than I do after hours slaving over a hot ghd. I’m going to have to make a conscious effort to be more overtly soignée. In fact, I will now wear the fact that I am a high-maintenance dame as a badge of honour.

First off, Bey has a penchant for the sort of crazy, totally impractical nails favoured by women who never, ever have to open their own tins of tuna. I head to my local nail bar, having warned my housemates that I’m temporarily exempt from washing up. Sadly, when I get there, the technician takes one look at my bitten-down, raggedy fingernails and tells me that they’re too short. I have to settle on a basic manicure and go for a bright red. Still, it’s a vivid, vibrant hue and every time I take a glance at my hands it gives me a perceptible jolt of bravura.

Buoyed, I reason why go out with just a smudge of concealer and maybe some mascara, when I could go the full Radiant Orchid pout? For those who don’t speak fluent Bey, let me translate: I’m referring to the purple-hued lipstick she wore in the “No Angel” video.

Sadly, as suspected, it makes me look like a trick-or-treating witch at Halloween. As soon as I get on to the train, a little boy points at me and shouts, "THAT LADY HAS A FUNNY MOUTH!" while his mother shushes him. I get off and immediately wipe off the lipstick.

Now, I love dancing. I’m known amongst my friends for my gusto. I do slut drops, shimmies, twirls, The Worm, Dirty Dancing lifts with my shortest friends (me as Patrick Swayze, obviously); but I’m no Beyoncé. To get up to speed, and with the promise of some prosecco, I rope my housemates, Belle and India, into trying to learn the "Single Ladies" dance routine with me from a YouTube tutorial. We crowd round my laptop, and an American woman with a nauseating voice is standing on her landing, telling us to "pop" our hips. We’re already four glasses down when we begin, so the first section of the dance goes quite well. It’s all pretty simple until we start banging into each other. After another glass of prosecco, Belle and I get the hang of the running in a circle thing, but India, the less natural dancer and slightly more drunk one, still struggles. She says this is humiliating. I wonder how Beyoncé deals with the potential ignominy inherent in having to learn incredibly complicated dance routines. I realise that she must work very, very hard and spend many, many days gamely striving to perfect this level of choreography. So we all have another glass of wine (which I’m sure is exactly what Bey would not do when faced with a challenge) before we slump off to bed, dreading our imminent hangovers.

DAY THREE

I wake up feeling pretty awful. I usually feed my hangover with haloumi and ice-cream, so my heart sinks when I remember that I’m going to have to get through the day with vegetables and tofu alone. I descend on a vegan cafe I have discovered via much Googling, where I order a "raw lasagne" made with vegan cheese and find myself pleasantly surprised. I ask the manager for the vegan cheese recipe for my cravings, and she notes it down for me.

DAY FOUR

I make a batch of vegan cheese for the rest of the week. It tastes, to my shock, quite nice. I put it on a sweet potato for lunch at home and eat it in my underwear, for added Beyoncé sensuality. Being Queen Of The Beyhive means maintaining a significant and highly committed relationship with Instagram. The holidays. The private planes. The yachts ... ah, yachts.

Beyoncé followers will know that for a portion of the year, Bey can be found bobbing around on a boat that would make a medium-sized navy jealous. There she enjoys sharing snaps of her days of kaftans and champagne, in between reminding Jay Z to reapply sunscreen (or so I imagine).

Unfortunately, I don’t have a yacht at my disposal. The closest I can muster is a small ferry full of grumpy commuters.

Beyonce on on a yacht. Photo: Instagram

To re-create a Beyoncé moment for the purposes of Instagram, I put on some leather trousers, huge heels and a faux-fur coat and head to said boat. But I miss the boat, as I’m so not used to wearing 12cm heels, which means the walk to the bus takes twice as long as usual. When I get on the next ferry full of professionals in suits and ties, they stare in unabashed curiosity and horror for the 25-minute journey. It’s a Friday, so time for a night on the tiles. I wear a gold sequined dress – unbelievably over-the-top for our local dive bar, but my most "showgirl" outfit. Midway through the night I gingerly invoke my "Beyoncé On A Night Out" vibe by climbing onto a table to dance, but a bouncer hauls me down and gives me a telling off about health and safety.

DAY FIVE

Again, I wake up feeling ropey. There is also a trail of gold sequins all over the unit, which is going to take ages to vacuum up. However, I have one more task for my housemate. I make her a vegan breakfast, then drag her out on to the street to take a photo of me posing by an amazing car in my gold dress.

But, typically, there are no amazing cars.

Just Nissan Micras and some tradies’ vans. And it’s raining. And I have a headache. And we look ridiculous. The predominant take-home of the Beyoncé experiment so far is that it’s impossible to channel her while hungover. I am not reaching my full Beyoncé capacity.

Cashew cheese alone won’t cut it.

I also realise that I have to do the weekly shop at the fruit market and take a load of washing to the laundromat, so set off in my glam gear. Not surprisingly, pics of Bey performing such domestic chores are absent from her Instagram account. I make a to-do list for the next two days that says: Be. More. Fierce.

DAY SIX

Fierce as in ditching any semblance of vanity. It’s time for a "Woke Up Like This" selfie.

Out of curiosity, I search for the hashtag and plunge into a sea of some of the most embarrassing, humourless vanity I’ve ever seen. That night, I’ve got a date. I order a vegan burger, but when it arrives, it’s covered with melted cheese and mayo. When I ask if they can bring me another one sans offending dairy/ egg products, the waitress claims I never said I was vegan. I look to my date to back me up, but he just stares at the floor.

Later, I ask the guy why he didn’t support me. He said he found my complaining "unnecessary and embarrassing".

Bey would throw a drink in his face. Instead, I make my excuses after dinner and leave.

DAY SEVEN

The experiment calls for a night at the local karaoke bar to belt out some Queen Bey classics, and my housemate urges me to wear my "hot red dress". "No. I can only wear that when I’m about five kilos lighter than I am now," I point out. "That is the dress Beyoncé would wear, Dolly," she retorts.

So, I put aside all self-consciousness and squeeze myself into the tightest thing I own. And when I get up to sing along with the opening horns of "Crazy In Love", strangely I forget that I think I’m not supposed to be wearing it. With friends cheering me on, I have so much fun I get up later to sing "Love On Top".

I may still have the boring, bitten-down nails, but I have the chutzpah to wear bodycon a size too small. And that’s not my only takeaway from Project Becoming Bey.

My muscles hurt from all the dancing and my Instagram followers are bored of my face. But this experience has made me realise how often I apologise – for my face, my dancing, my body.

I’ve seen for the first time how foreign the notion of genuine confidence is to me. I’d like to be someone who can present themselves with belief – and without a constant stream of self-deprecating jokes. Most importantly, I hope some of that famous Beyoncé ferocity sticks with me – at least for a while, anyway.