Loose Women star Sophie Morgan has hit out at pop superstar Beyoncé for including a 'deeply offensive' lyric in one of the songs from her new album.
Following its release on Friday (29 July), Queen Bey's album Renaissance achieved critical acclaim in record time. But after taking a closer look at some of the lyrics, fans were unimpressed.
Among them was TV star Sophie Morgan, who has been paralysed from the chest down since she was 18, and says she was 'heartbroken' when she caught the ableist term in Beyoncé's new song 'Heated'.
While the word in question has been used in the past as a slang term, meaning to 'freak out' or 'go wild', it is also a derogatory term that can be used to demean a person with cerebral palsy
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Since facing backlash for including the slur in her song, Beyoncé has apologised through her publicist for any offence caused, and promised that the word would be replaced.
In a statement, they insisted that the lyric was 'not used intentionally in a harmful way'.
The controversy came just weeks after singer Lizzo was forced to apologise, when her new song 'GRRRLS' included the same offensive term.
Sophie Morgan, who now relies on a wheelchair after being paralysed in a car crash, was particularly upset by the blunder.
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Speaking on the Loose Women panel of Ruth Langsford, Coleen Nolan, and Gloria Hunniford on Tuesday, 2 August, Sophie explained: "The word is a medical phrase but it basically got turned into an offensive term and so disabled people said we want to stop using it.
“So, the word is now what we call an ableist slur. It's something that we fight very hard to have removed from everyday lexicon."
She continued: "When we see pop stars like Beyoncé using [the word], it is heart-breaking for lots of different reasons.
“But one of the reasons it’s particularly frustrating is that only six weeks ago another popstar, Lizzo, used the same term and it had a huge backlash.
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"She very gracefully just said ‘right I get it sorry I didn’t realise I caused offence – I don’t want to offend anybody’ and she changed it.
“So all the disability advocates and the campaigners were like ‘thank you’, ‘we don’t need to cancel anybody, there's no need for that, this is about learning and education’.
“We all hoped that this would be an example of a way in which somebody can taught the ways in which they offended someone and that they could learn from it and globally we can have a conversation that will enable us to therefore say look what Lizzo did, it won’t happen again.
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“We all thought there was change made and now less than two months later we’ve got Beyoncé, who is so influential, doing exactly the same thing.”
The disappointed panellist later added: "It almost feels like we have a step forward with Lizzo and five steps back or ten steps back with Beyoncé and it’s just a little bit demoralising."
Featured Image Credit: ITV/Instagram/@beyonceTopics: Celebrity, Loose Women, TV And Film, Beyonce, Music