Pretty Hurts

I am extremely passionate about music. In my opinion, it's the greatest art form in the world. I have spent many an hour in my life poring over song lyrics, looking for the deep meanings in my favorite artists' work and being left in awe at how much some of them affected me. In spite of (or perhaps because of) this, I seldom ever watch music videos. I feel that, more often than not, they bastardize the artistic integrity of the medium by shoehorning it into a format that it does not need and in which it does not thrive. 

Pop music is the worst offender of this, with performers who look like they showered in makeup singing AutoTuned songs of superficiality while other performers dance behind them for no reason. The video for Beyonce's "Pretty Hurts" does nothing to convince me otherwise. In fact, it's almost a perfect example of this. Directed by Melina Matsoukas, we are treated (and I use that word loosely) to a behind-the-scenes look at a beauty pageant and the agony its participants go through to prepare themselves for it.

I would like to preface the following thoughts by saying that one of my best friends is a model. A fairly successful model. She absolutely adores it. There's nothing in life she would rather be doing. Thus, there is certainly a possibility I could have some bias here. Also, my experience with beauty pageants themselves begins and ends with Miss Teen South Carolina's disastrous commentary on "U.S. Americans," so I won't pretend to have any actual idea of what goes on in them.

The message of the song is clear even from the title: beauty has consequences. Eating disorders and the like are well-publicized issues, and with the recent uptick in various body image movements, this video attempts to paint a very scathing picture of the value many people place on looks. It's a noble, idealistic cause, and I have no doubt in my mind that Beyonce and the crew of producers that created this video really did mean well. Unfortunately, something went very wrong, and the "Pretty Hurts" music video is more hypocritical than anything else.

For the purposes of this critique, I tried something a little unorthodox. I watched the video for the first time with the sound on mute, the idea in my head being that a successful music video would be able to communicate to me what its meaning was without need of the actual music. Otherwise, in my opinion, there would be no need for a music video.

The verdict? Utter failure.

By the end of the video, coming in with no prior experience with the song, it looked to me like Beyonce was the queen of all pageants, and that she had to fake being the gracious loser when she came up short when in reality she was so angry about her fading beauty that she destroyed all her prior trophies before falling into complete despair. Had I not known the title of the song, I would have been completely convinced of that interpretation. And even after watching with sound, I was confused. 

The entire video was an amalgamation of overproduced glamour shots that make the world it is trying to criticize look alluring and magnificent. The moments where she is clearly shooting for powerful imagery ring hollow when they are surrounded by times when nothing bad is really happening. Even while staggering out of a bathroom stall after vomiting into a toilet, Beyonce looks perfect. Not a hair out of place.

Maybe it is unrealistic of me to expect a mature directive of self-empowerment from someone like Beyonce. Honestly, I have little respect for her or her genre as a whole. But even with lowered standards, I cannot say that this video accomplishes its goal. In reality, it is, well, pretty hurtful.