I’d had a rather intense blog post outlined for Friday, but I couldn’t even dive into it because I awoke to a thousand e-mails from y’all about how Beyonce surprised the world with a new CD, yadda yadda yadda, [insert praise], [insert YAAAAAAS].
That’s not what y’all gave a damn about, though – some of you did, and ain’t nothing wrong with that! I used to love my Dangerously in Love Bey, too…I just haven’t seen that Bey in years. The CD, a bundle pack that comes with 14 songs and 17 music videos, one for each song plus a few extras, apparently leads off with a beautiful song titled “Pretty Hurts.”
Can we talk about the lyrics and the imagery, #bgg2wlarmy? They’re both kind of a big deal:
Mama said, “You’re a pretty girl,
what’s in your head, it doesn’t matter.
Brush your hair, fix your teeth,
What you wear is all that matters”
Just another stage,
Pageant the pain away
This time I’m gonna take the crown
Without falling down down down
Pretty hurts
We shine a light on whatever’s worst
Perfection is a disease of a nation
Pretty hurts, pretty hurts
Pretty hurts
We shine a light on whatever’s worst
We try to fix something, but you can’t fix what you can’t see
It’s the soul that needs surgery
Blonder hair, flat chest
TV says, “Bigger is better,”
South Beach, sugar-free
Vogue says, “Thinner is better”
Just another stage,
Pageant the pain away
This time I’m gonna take the crown
Without falling down down down
Pretty hurts
We shine a light on whatever’s worst
Perfection is a disease of a nation
Pretty hurts, pretty hurts
Pretty hurts
We shine a light on whatever’s worst
We try to fix something, but you can’t fix what you can’t see
It’s the soul that needs surgery
Ain’t got no doctor or pill that can take the pain away
The pain’s inside and nobody frees you from your body
It’s my soul, it’s my soul that needs surgery
It’s my soul that needs surgery
Plastic smiles and denials can only take you so far
Then you break when the fake facade leaves you in the dark
Left with shattered mirrors and the shards of a beautiful past
Pretty hurts
We shine a light on whatever’s worst
Perfection is a disease of a nation
Pretty hurts, pretty hurts
Pretty hurts
We shine a light on whatever’s worst
We try to fix something, but you can’t fix what you can’t see
It’s the soul that needs surgery
Now.
I think there’s a lot to this song and, while there’s a lot of contradictions – as in, Bey has covered Vogue before, she currently rocks blonde hair, she made the Master Cleanse the pop culture nightmare that it is today – there’s something to be said for the way she chose to shoot this video and what she chose to highlight:
1) I think it’s important to notice the neighborhoods on the girls’ sashes – Inglewood, Oak Cliff, 3rd Ward, Shaolin, South Bronx, Bankhead, College Park – because many of these (all? I’ve only been to a few) are major minority communities. Much of the imagery surrounding the video has to do with diet culture, body shaming, and eating disorders (there’s a very graphic moment where Bey kneels before a toilet, a precursor to an earlier scene where she walks out of the bathroom stall, wiping her mouth; another girl is seen partaking of the cotton ball and orange juice diet.) So much of this tells me that the goal is to highlight how local the issue of poor body image and low self-esteem are among women just like us, in communities that aren’t the wealthy, upper class communities we generally tend to think of when it comes to these issues. It’s 2013: it’s downright deadly and dangerous to think of eating disorders and poor body image as “rich women’s” and “white women’s” diseases.
2) What’s more, I think it’s interesting that, with lyrics that decry TV and Vogue saying “thinner is better,” with pageant contestants who are from – for lack of a better term – the ‘hood, I think helps to drive home the point that yes, we’re still negatively affected by these images and messages even if the message isn’t directed at us.
3) The segment in the middle, where Harvey Keitel asks Beyonce what her aspirations are, and the only answer she can come up with is “to be happy,” made me terribly sad. It made me think of me. For a brief part of my own weight loss journey, I thought that shrinking down and “finally being able to fit into that Bebe skirt” would make me happy, but sooooo much changed over the course of even a year that I never expected. When you spend so much time focusing on fitting into what the outside world wants you to be, self-development and self-exploration go out the window. If your happiness becomes hinged on fitting into the mold, you never think about what happens when you fit the mold and are still unhappy. Of course you’re unhappy. You have very little idea who you are and what thrills you. It gives her singing at the end, repeating over and over “Are you happy with yourself?” a little more meaning.
4) I think it’s challenging for someone like Bey to criticize the same system that she’s profited from so greatly. Is this her way of sharing her resentment of everything she’s had to go through in order to succeed? In the video, she’s also positioned in front of all of her old trophies and eventually smashes them all. I wonder if that was cathartic for her, as if she was admitting “Look, this is hard for me too.” (Although, she’s paid far better than most – all? – of us to pull it off and make it look effortless.)
5) There’s been a rash of videos lately that purport themselves to be some kind of critique on society, but the artist never puts themselves in the middle of it — oftentimes, they’re alongside the action, narrating it with their song. I think its interesting that Bey put herself in the middle of it all, suffering right along with the other contestants and their anxiety, fear, worry, and frustrations.
6) I think it’s telling, also, that in the end she still lost to someone who was “blonder” and “lighter” than her. I get the feeling that that wasn’t on accident, either.
You can check out BEYONCÉ – Beyoncé yourself on iTunes and preview every song and video, right now.
What do you think?