Updated with video link (released 4.27.11).
This is great news.
According to our friends over at Necolebitchie.com, Beyonce has released a remake of her Get ’em bodied video in support of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Campaign. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of celebrity to deliver health messages, particularly messages that counter cultural and social norms or those that require a significant behavior change. Don’t agree? Let me give you an example:
Do you remember the incident that happened last November in Atlanta, GA when rapper, celebrity T.I. (Read: Clifford Harris) talked a young man off of the roof of a building? (link) This story received so much attention locally and nationally – According to Atlanta WSB-TV, T.I. reportedly heard the incident on the radio and made his way to the Colony Square building, where he offered to contact the man and talk him off the ledge. Police said the man agreed to come down from the building in exchange for a few minutes face-to-face with T.I. In the end, the young man admitted to being overwhelmed with some of his life situations and felt hopeless and depressed. T.I. delivered the inspirational message that “life ain’t that bad”. After T.I. spoke with the him, the young man was taken to a local hospital where he received an appropriate medical evaluation and treatment support. Although T.I. received a lot of criticism and skeptics that claimed that he used the incident to gain positive publicity in the wake of his entrance into prison, he was instrumental in starting a conversation about mental health in the black community. T.I.’s heroics efforts came shortly after he was arrested on drug charges last month, when he was pulled over with his wife in Hollywood driving a car that smelled of marijuana and supposedly contained ecstasy. He is now serving an 11 month prison sentence for violating his probation.
Although T.I. is not perfect by far, he is respected by many and has amassed a position of powerful influence, particularly among young black men. Despite his critics, his efforts prompted a discussion about mental health in the black community – a discussion that wasn’t new (I agree), but it’s an issue that isn’t dealt with on a national platform in the African-American community. Period. In a few hours, the black community began talking. No matter what you say, celebrity has power – especially when it comes to hard conversations about our health.
Beyonce’s endorsement of the ‘Let’s Move!” Campaign will indeed cause more people to pay attention to the messages of the campaign. The track, entitled “Let’s Move! Flash Workout” is hot (as is most of her work) – and who doesn’t love the original track, “Get Me Bodied”?!? Hotness. It’s a hot high-energy cardio mix. On May 3rd, ‘Move Your Body’ will be played at all Middle schools and High schools that have chosen to participate in the campaign. This strategy will indeed get older youth and teens engaged in the “Let’s Move!” message.
Loving it. A lot. Kudos.
More from NecoleBitchie.com:
Beyonce recently revealed that she has teamed up with Michelle Obama to promote healthy eating and exercise, especially among children struggling with obesity. Beyonce re-wrote and re-recorded ‘Get Me Bodied’ and renamed it ‘Move Your Body’ for their campaign which is called “Lets Move! Flash Workout.”
I am excited to be part of this effort that addresses a public health crisis. First Lady Michelle Obama deserves credit for tackling this issue directly, and I applaud the NAB Education Foundation for trying to make a positive difference in the lives of our school children.
In the video, Beyonce gives us a snippet of the “Let’s Move! Flash Workout” campaign: Beyonce Move Your Body
This is so on time. Free Condoms and Lollipops.com has partnered with Mighty Jumps Party and Play Center of Buckhead to bring First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Campaign to Atlanta. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed a proclamation declaring May as National Physical Fitness and Sports Month – so, what better way to commemorate both initiatives than by sponsoring Atlanta’s very first Family Fitness Challenge! Special guests include Big Brothers Big Sisters of Atlanta and the event will offer family-friendly competitions, such as jump rope, 3-legged race, sack race, and hula hoop contests, fun music, OMG Photo Booth, nutrition and health information resources, and provide healthy snacks for all participants. The event is free for parents and/or guardians and entrance fees for children will be offered at a special rate. And…you never know, we may even have to do a Flashdance performance to Beyonce’s new track: Let’s Move! Flash Workout” 🙂
Details on the event are below. Good stuff all around.
We’ll be there!
I think what’s going on there is a little bit more cemtlicapod than mere ignorance (not that most of the people he shows us aren’t generally pretty ignorant about their neighbors to the north). I think what’s going on is this guy is performing a roaming variation of stage hypnotism. Which works even more effectively when his volunteers’ don’t know that they are volunteering to be hypnotized. He is using his camera and sound guy, and his official looking jacket and lapel badge and microphone and haircut -along with his subjects’ genuine (and admirable) native desire to be polite to strangers, plus a worrying deference to anyone who is on TV’- to basically do the same thing a hypnotist does, which is shut down the brain’s critical faculty. It’s a hellava lot easier trick to play on most people than most people realize. We think we are always, at least while awake, acutely conscious, but all of neuroscience has and is every day proving even more confidently that consciousness itself is often merely an illusion.It’s the rhino hunt that gives it away. Most of those people, if they were asked in a situation without the carefully constructed stress and distraction, would know very well there are no rhinos in Canada. Same goes for the coastline. Americans may not know their geography all that well, but they aren’t that ignorant. They really aren’t. This guy is clever, he doesn’t tell them they are chickens and get them to flap their wings, as a hypnotist might do, but it’s the same trick. Or most of the time it is. And I’m sure he only manages to pull it off on a minority of his victims, too. He only gave us a glimpse of I think three people who didn’t fall for it, and even they seemed to be struggling with a fair amount of cognitive dissonance. That said, it’s all in good fun. But not quite as strong evidence of the end of civilization as it seems. But now I have to go answer the door there’s a guy coming round to sell me shares in a seriously important New York bridge. That is complete with rhino grates, to stop them wandering across into Manhattan in the early hours of the morning, when they tend to migrate between their nests and their feeding grounds. 2
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