Tina Knowles sets the record straight with the fierce protectiveness only a true matriarch can deliver. In People’s World’s Most Beautiful issue, the 71-year-old mother of Beyoncé and author of the memoir Matriarch opens up about the emotional toll of a wild rumor that clouded one of her family’s happiest moments.
While Beyoncé and Jay-Z were gearing up to welcome Blue Ivy in 2011, Knowles said the joy was nearly eclipsed by relentless speculation — calling it “one of the worst times of my life.”
During Beyoncé’s first pregnancy, the singer faced a storm of baseless rumors questioning whether she was truly expecting. The speculation was fueled by a viral video that appeared to show her baby bump folding awkwardly, leading many online to claim she had faked the pregnancy.
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The rumors persisted even after the birth of her daughter, Blue Ivy, on January 7, 2012.
It infuriated Knowles, who told PEOPLE: “My family is so precious to me and babies are so sacred. So to hear people say the most horrendous things and call my whole family a lie, because we would all have to be part of that conspiracy and lie about something so sacred.”
She added, “It was the worst because I couldn’t say anything. My daughter was saying, ‘No, you’re going to make the story bigger.’ But it didn’t go away for a long time. It’s one of the most painful things for me, that people could be that disgusting.”
For Knowles, the most difficult part of fame “is that people feel they can dog you out any kind of way and you’re not supposed to get upset,” she said, “but we’re still humans, and it hurts.”
She was unhappy about the fact that people fabricate lies without facing the consequences.
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That said, Knowles has had to get used to the spotlight and speculation, even if it still angers her. “I deal with lies all the time. I’m dealing with lies now, that I’m having, like, an invisible zipper at my mouth to talk about things now because there’s always these crazy rumors that are out there and, people just get to lie and they don’t have to suffer any consequences, you know, it is very sad.”
She indicated that, she decided to use the book to highlight the positive memories in their lives instead of dwelling on the negatives.
When it came to crafting her revealing new book, “It was very carefully written at first with,” she said. “But then it was like, this doesn’t even make sense because there’s only, you know, all the positive stuff. And there was a lot of positivity. But it’s my story. It’s just the truth.”
