Beyoncé is hitting headlines again but for once, it’s not the pop star’s face that is being spread across the internet. Last week, street photographer Brandon Stanton interviewed a young girl for his blog Humans of New York and now her thoughts on what it’s like to share a household name have gone viral.
Humans of New York is a collection of photographs and short interviews from everyday people that Stanton meets – as he says, it’s “New York City, one story at a time”. The blog, which began in 2010, has more than 12.5m likes on Facebook and more than 2.8 million followers on Instagram. In February, another HoNY interview with 13-year-old high-school student Vidal Chastanet about the person who inspired him the most (his teacher, Nadia Lopez) made headlines when Chastanet, Lopez and Stanton were invited to meet Barack Obama in the White House.
In this week’s interview, the young Beyoncé says: “Sometimes I hate my name because it always draws attention to me, and I’m not a very social person. I was so scared the first day of school that someone would notice me. I wouldn’t even adjust my seat because I thought it would make a noise. One time I really had to cough, but I held it in. When the teacher started calling attendance, I got really nervous, because every time people learn my name is Beyoncé, somebody starts singing Single Ladies. And some did, of course. But the second day of school wasn’t too bad. Because everyone knew my name.”
The Facebook post was filled with solidarity from other celebrity name doubles: Kaity Perry (“I know this feeling”), Victoria Elizabeth Beckham (“Just posh here”), Kelly Rowland (“I feel you honey!!”) all sympathised with the teenage Beyoncé, while Mary Kate Olsen said she faces Olsen twin jokes (“Believe me, I understand”), Bridgett Jones (“If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me about my diary …”) and Julie Andrews, who hates hearing “The Hills are Alive EVERY SINGLE TIME I meet someone new”.
Others didn’t have celebrity names but still understood Beyoncé’s predicament: Abeer Khan (“A Beer Can”), Mayo Naise (“Try being named after a condiment”), Jim Socks, Isis d’Ascoli and Jack Haas (“Hey my name pretty much sucks too”) all weighed in.
