Beyonce's Music Video Analysis: Pretty Hurts

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Beyonce’s music video, Pretty Hurts, uses a montage of disturbing clips, story 
 progression, references to beauty pageants, and gender stereotypes to portray how women are pushed to adopt a certain standard of perfection.
The video contains shots of model-like women behind the scenes of a beauty pageant. The presented clips include a fast-paced presentation of close-ups and long shots that expose the hardships the women endure in order to maintain the beauty standards society places on them.  The first scene shows behind the scene type images of the beautiful women getting ready for the pageant. This sets the tone of realism for the entire video. The music video also has a storyline that pauses the music for dialogue. One of these story pauses include Beyonce answering what her aspiration in life is.  Immediately after that question is asked, quick paced shots of Beyonce submerged in water, and suffering through beauty pageants is shown. The water Beyonce is drowning in demonstrates the amount of stress and pressure she is under. When Beyonce finally answers, To be happy, the images of Beyonce smashing her beauty pageant medals are placed.  These scenes demonstrate her breaking free of the standards. The finals scene includes a small video clip of young Beyonce winning a medal at a beauty contest. This film placement technique is used to show that this particular story of the harsh conditions women face in the beauty industry is a personal one for Beyonce.  

Beauty standards are the main theme this music video covers. Clips that are shown  include women aiding each other to fit into clothes that are relatively small, rubbing vaseline on their teeth to force them to keep smiling while the competition is taking place, and eating cotton balls to suppress their appetite. These clips clearly show the struggle of keeping up with the standards to qualify as a beauty queen. Sexisim plays a momentous role in the music video; men are portrayed as having the upper hand and are granted the power to judge women and set standards for them, whereas women are shown as weak beings who suffer. There are also recurring images that take place in the opening and the closing scenes. Both scenes show a beauty pageant sash draped over a chair that says “pretty hurts.” This suggests that women go through various forms of pain in order to conform to what society views as a perfect woman. The traditional view of a woman in society is to be perfect the whole time, intelligent, and constantly taking care of her appearance. This video was created to inform society as a whole that women are still viewed as products that buyers judge based on how they look. This idea is supported by the scene where the pageant contestants are all lined up on the stage waiting for the judge’s results. These results are based on how beautiful each woman and her body are.

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