Beyonce has announced something pretty cool about her online store

Beyonce has announced something quite game-changing about her online store.

Fronting a new campaign for Beyonce’s online store, which sells her merchandise, is a model with muscular dystrophy.

Jillian Mercado, a blogger and model, said she was “BEYond excited” to feature in the campaign.

Posting a photograph on various social media channels, Mercado wrote: “OK LADIES now let’s get in FORMATION!”

“So BEYond excited to finally announce that I’m on the official @beyonce website!!!”

In her wheelchair, Mercado is featured in images along with two other models.

She wears a cap with the words “hot sauce” on, and a jumper reading “I twirl on them haters”, both from the lyrics to the song ‘Formation’.

Mercado was signed by IMG Models last year, and the 28-year-old has interned at various fashion publications.

“At first I was very hesitant,” she told Vogue in August.

“I wasn’t sure about showing everyone my world because I didn’t know if there would be an audience. We’ve been brainwashed [as a society] not to care about someone who has a disability, or their world.”

“I was shocked that I didn’t see anyone in the industry who was like me,” she told Vogue.

“So when people — girls especially — tell me that I’m their role model, I am taken aback. I love it and it is flattering but it affects me on a very personal level because I remember growing up without having a person I could look to.”

Mercado said realising the images had gone up on Beyonce.com was “truly surreal”, and later tweeted about the term “wheelchair-bound”, saying she wanted to change it, as some find the term offensive.

A group earlier this year said it was planning to protest against Beyonce’s Superbowl half time performance.

The performance, which paid tribute to victims of Hurricain Katrina and Michael Jackson, and which commended the BlackLivesMatter campaign, has been branded “racist” and “hate speech” by the protest’s organisers.

Meanwhile, a police officer from Detroit is to be investigated for comparing Beyoncé’s Superbowl halftime dancers to the Ku Klux Klan, and a police union in Miami voted to boycott her concerts.

• Nov 29 2023

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