Music Video Analysis 2 (Pink - Stupid Girls)

The controversial music video for Pink’s ‘Stupid Girls’ was directed by Dave Meyers in 2006. The song was a big success but was overshadowed by the actual music video which had been downloaded 8.6million times as soon as it was made available on the Internet. Pink, being such a successful and outrageous artist we have seen her star development change on so many occasions, as well as her music genres. The genre for this video was pop which the most popular style of music is. Pink portrays many characters in the video to make a statement about how young girls aspire to the hypersexual personae of female celebrities rather than for their careers or talents. In the beginning we see how a young girl is put into a dilemma of whether as a angel and devil appear who are trying to persuade her to either be who she wants or a ‘stupid girl.’


At the beginning of the video (0:30) pink talks about how girls have lost their ambitions and now are focusing on living the high life. The characters in the video are parodies of young female celebrities such as Mary Kate Olsen (0:35), who provides the basis for the Bohemian-chic dressing style of the girl who visits a Fred Segal clothing store and goes to the pet shop to buy a dog “With their itsy bitsy doggies and their teeny-weeny tees” this demonstrates the typical ‘stupid girl’ who wears all the designer labels and buys a little dog which is quite popular with young female celebrities of today (Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie and Britney Spears.)





Pink goes into deeper issues when she talks about health and how a girl with purging disorder who considers calories "so not sexy" makes herself sick. “Oh my god you guys, I totally had more than 300 calories. That was so not sexy, no” Yet Pink makes this into a joke with her costume and blonde hair even the way she was speaking shows how she wanted to show how unserious this issue is.

The visuals have continuously backed the music as Pink had tackled every topic that she had sang to really get the point across about girls who act in an immature like way. The video has been carefully thought out as the pace of the song really flows well with the video. As the video is solely focused on the inter-textual references, the instrumentals are not especially taken into account. At one point in the video the pace slightly increases (1.07) as the song leads back to the second verse we get a recap of the beginning as it is a different shot per second.

As the video is so notorious the record company was planning on to get the song as much recognition as possible with giving it mainstream airplay on all radio stations. This will automatically get the song some acknowledgement before the video was released and will get people to buy the single. Pink has always maintained this image of being quite boyish and tough throughout her career. She has always been an idol to many young people as she has maintained her image and showing that you should be proud of who you are and to not care about what other people think. Even her clothing she has worn has been quite laddish, wearing quite dark colours and make-up. The video is typical of Pink as she is always had this attitude even from the beginning of her career when she was an R’n’B. In her video “So what” really shows Pink’s attitude and the song was positively received. The video really displays the change that Pink had gone from a rock to pop. From the beginning of her career her songs had more of a soul feel to it such as “There you go” to rock “Just like a pill” and the pop like “Stupid girls”.

Looking into the account of Pink’s previous videos, even though there are some explicit seems which do demonstrate sexual references in there which could easily be scrutinized by the media, Pink has cleverly made it into a joking way. The scene with her in the bed as she was being videoed which could be seen as participating in a Celebrity sex tape (2:35) she is simply poking fun at other celebrities participating in such activities. The varieties of shots used in the video have really displayed the fun that Pink would have wanted for the video. There is part where Pink is trying to be seductive when she is washing a car but once again its Pink making it a joke as she slips and falls on the car as well as trying to be sexy and provocative.

The video shows inter-textual references of Pink as an angel and a demon who try to influence the future of a young girl. The angel shows her a series of images demonstrating the stupidity of current trends in female celebrity.

Some of the negatively portrayed characters in the video are parodies of young female celebrities such as redheaded girl who accidentally hits pedestrians with her car is a parody of Lindsay Lohan. This suggests the idea of how negatively young female celebrities are shown in the media, as they are literally on every magazine and on top news for the imprudent behaviour.The scene in which Pink washes a car in a bikini is a parody of similar scenes in the music video for Jessica Simpson's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" (2005) where this once again demonstrates what Pink thinks of young female celebrities and how they are not taking seriously in their careers as the world clearly have an interest in their image and in this case Jessica Simpson’s blonde hair and tight shorts.

Near to the beginning of the video (0:31) Pink is dancing next to a 50 cent impersonator as she is trying to show how woman are not being taken serious in society as well as not taking themselves seriously.

The video is manly concept based as Pink is looking into a strong topic. While the video is parodies of many young female celebrities and is showing how Pink is poking fun at this idea of what a stupid girl is we really get the sense that Pink is conveying a serious message to the wider audience about these issues which are not really taken into account. Pink’s message was clearly stated in the song how she feels about today’s world and the lack of ambition and drive. She feels that everyone should be who they want to be and not what do what everyone is doing.