Stupid Girls

"Outcasts and girls with ambition, that's what I want to see."

Pink, I love you.....but whenever I listen to this song, I kinda want to punch you in the face. With a chair. Preferably the stiletto chair that I got to take home from the last strip club I worked at. It's kinda awesome.

For an artist that had made so many amazing and empowering songs, I just can't get my head around "Stupid Girls", and not just because I can't imagine anyone wanting women to be outcasts. This is yet another slice of pop culture that hates on women who want to be sexy, and holds up smart women in direct opposition. Yet again, women who care about their looks are dumb sluts, and couldn't possibly be intelligent. But the song is also ridiculously hypocritical - bitching about not wanting to be "sexy" while simultaneously bitching about not getting a man.

In fact, the song and video are so completely offensive to Naked Nerds like myself (those that enjoy getting learned...and getting laid!) that I felt inspired to do a complete deconstruction, verse by verse, frame by frame. Enjoy.

The opening frame features a little girl who looks a little like a cute tomboy, but who is also holding a Barbie doll. Girly has an angel and a devil pop up on her shoulders - angel encourages the girl towards smarts, devil encourages her toward sexiness. Spoiler alert - but at the end of the video, the girl puts down the Barbie for a football, while the angel grins. Could this be any more blatant? I think not. Unless the entire video was a picture showing a mudflap girl with a big line through it.

Now that we have established the premise for the video (smart = good, sexy = bad, in case you weren't paying attention), lets move on.

Oh, wait, my mistake. Lets look at lots of clips of  women who are dressed sexily but walking into doors, spray-tanning while falling down in the tanning booth, driving a convertible while putting on lipgloss and hitting pedestrians, looking terrified and marked up to get full body plastic surgery, etc etc. Thor himself couldn't hammer the sexy = stupid point home any harder, so lets look at the clips that try to say a little bit more.

We see an old, black and white film of 50's girl at finishing school. I'm assuming that this was to suggest that being concerned about your looks is taking the women's movement several thousand steps backwards - to a time where women were not supposed to be smart or ambitious. Kind of ironic, when you consider that this had less to do with being "pretty" and more to do with a life goal of marriage and children, and only having sex with one man, ever. Personally, I'm inclined to think that the anti-slut movement is doing more to take us back to that point then any amount of spray tanning, but maybe I'm wrong. Curling your hair will make you oppressed ladies!! Societal pressure to sleep with as few men as possible is MUCH more liberating!!


Now comes the scene that shows the REAL point of the song. Apparently, we are supposed to be ambitious, smart, etc. But this little clip focuses on how much Pink wants to get the attention of a man. At a bowling alley, we see a gal pick up a ball who is dressed in a jean shirt and tank top (SLUT!! SLUT!!! Oh wait, that's actually pretty normal. But she has boobs - SLUT!) and then get excited and jump up and down when she scores as Pink shakes her head and looks disgusted. Given that this girl isn't actually dressed that terribly (she's not wearing a lycra mini, for god's sake), the disgust is either at the fact that she is attractive, or that she is enthusiastic and happy, and being a bit silly - enjoying the nice, wholesome game of bowling, in other words. What a terrible role model that is. MUCH better to be the miserable bitch on the sidelines judging other women - that's attractive. More so when she pulls a tag to inflate her chest to try to get her man's attention. REALLY? We are going to hate on the happy, confident girl playing in the next lane, but hold up the bitchy, bitter girl as a role model, when she changes her physical appearance to get her guy's attention?

And this isn't the only scene like that in the video. Later on, we see basically the same thing, when Pink is in the gym. Rather than focusing on her workout, she is casting around rather pathetically to try and get a personal trainer to look at her. When he ignores her, and goes to talk to another girl, she immediately takes off her top, and then turns to try and flaunt her chest at him....leading to her losing her pants on the treadmill while the other girls laughs. Much like the bowling alley scene, the "other woman" isn't even ridiculously sexy. She has boobs, but she is wearing fairly standard gym gear, isn't overly made up, and has her hair in pigtails. Again, I'm not really feeling any sympathy for Pink here. She's at the gym trying to hit on some guy, rather than focusing on...oh, I don't know....working out to be healthy and have a strong body? In fact, she is SO focused on catching the man that she hurts herself, and looks pretty darn stupid in the process. Out of the two, I'd pick the idiot flinging herself at a guys feet, stripping off and falling down as the "stupid girl"....and the girl who is focused on her workout until the moment someone comes over to talk as the smart one - and the least desperate.

Listen to the chorus, and it is more of the same - bitter rantings about wanting to get male attention! Rather than being about truly independent women who aren't too concerned about men, the song laments the fact that she feels like she should behave like a moron in order to get a man.
"Maybe if I act like that/That guy will call me back/Maybe if I act like that/Flipping my blonde hair back/Push up my bra like that/Pull my hair I'll suck it girl."
 How is this a song about being ambitious, intelligent or strong? This is a song about a bitter woman bitching that she can't get the men she is interested in without acting like a bimbo.

At this point, the song has gone far beyond just backing the idea that smart women aren't sexy and are ignored by men. Now we have moved on to the idea that male attention is the ultimate goal. And ladies, if the men you are interested in are only interested in thin women with big boobs, (and that isn't you) you shouldn't move on. You also shouldn't have surgery, or attempt to dress differently or tan. Rather, you should become bitter, angry and pathetic. You should beg for attention, look desperate, and look down on other women. In fact, other than the shot of the "girl president" who is standing on a podium wearing glasses (of COURSE she is wearing glasses! Smart people wear glasses!), and a girl playing football, we don't actually see any positive images of women, just nasty images of the women that she hates. No shots of a woman at school, at college, working at an office, working from home, with friends (female or male), in a happy relationship, with a happy family. Nope - just pathetically failing to get laid. 

Thanks, Pink. Still wondering what happened to the dream of the girl president? Maybe she got so caught up in looking for a man, that she stopped caring about a mandate.