Stupid Girls? More Like Glass Ceiling Smashers: A Music Video and Society Commentary

I remember being in middle school when I first received boy advice from my friend. I liked this boy, but he didn’t act like I existed. She suggested that I stop answering questions in class, wear a low-cut top, and giggle when he talked. She said that guys hated when girls were smarter than them. I was very confused and incredibly conflicted. Why should I act dumb and dress differently to make someone like me? But I decided to give it a try. The next day at school, I arrived and acted exactly as my friend (I use that term loosely) said I should. Sure enough, the boy noticed me. He even seemed interested in me. However, I still felt conflicted. I mean, sure, he paid attention to me. But was it really me? I got home from school and turned on the radio. It was almost like divine intervention when I heard the first lines of the song that played. “Maybe if I act like that/that guy will call me back/Porno paparazzi girls/I don’t wanna be a stupid girl.” Yes. That Pink song from seven years ago, Stupid Girls, hit me like a bus. It was then I realized I was becoming yet another victim in a phenomenon Susan Douglas calls enlightened sexism.

According to Susan Douglas, enlightened sexism is

A response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime. It insists that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism, indeed, full equality, has allegedly been achieved. So now it’s okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women (Douglas, 2010).

Long gone are the days of fighting for equal pay and reproductive care rights. Now, we’re fighting over the best labels on our clothing and the hot guy in our math class. Much like Douglas, Pink decided she had enough of the enlightened sexism surrounding her when she wrote the song “Stupid Girls.” Picking celebrities such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan as her inspiration, Pink took a look at today’s modern woman and challenged the ideals of sexiness and designer clothing being more important than intelligence and independence.

The video shows Pink struggling for male approval by acting like the other females around her. By pretending to be obsessed with her looks, she’s providing a social commentary and discussion point of the exact thing Douglas wants to end. In one scene of the video, Pink’s date starts to pay excessive amounts of attention to another female wearing a low-cut top and a mini skirt bouncing up and down. To make her date pay attention to her again, Pink pulls her “In Case of Emergency” cord to inflate her breasts excessively. The trick works and the date continues.

Later, Pink asks “What happened to the dream of the next girl president?” She answered her own question with “She’s dancing in the video next to 50 Cent.”  Here, she is giving examples of how girl power has changed with the times. Where we once burned out bras to fight the societal oppression, women have now turned on each other and are more concerned with male affection and how attractive you are. Douglas also gave sources of this problem in her book, including the Pussycat Dolls, The Bachelor, and the television show Are You Hot?

Pink and Douglas alike urge girls to ignore the media influence and to have ambitions and goals. They are trying to convince women that there is so much more to them than just how a man feels about them. After reading excerpts from Douglas’s book and listening to Pink’s song, I agree.

I’m not sure where we went wrong, but we as females must have goals and ambitions to excel in the patriarchal society we live in. We have to band together to change the way we are treated today. Women comprise 46% of the American work force, yet they make only 77.5 cents for every dollar a man of equal occupation makes. The statistics are even worse for women of color. Worldwide, four out of every ten businesses have no women in senior management. 4 out of 5 victims of human trafficking are female (MAKERS Team, 2015).

So what’s a girl to do? Women must fight societal pressure to focus on our looks and the male gaze and use our minds to continue the fight for equal rights. Instead of designer labels, let us adorn ourselves with knowledge and courage to crush the glass ceiling. We must band together and smash the patriarchy because the approval of a man means nothing if you aren’t in the same playing field. We cannot forget our foremothers before us and what they were fighting for. If we do, all of their hard work was for naught. We as females can’t let that happen.

Oh, and if you’re curious, I left that boy alone the next day. If he couldn’t appreciate me for all I had to offer, he didn’t deserve my good looks.

Works Cited

Douglas, S. (2010). The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us From Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press.

MAKERS Team. (2015, March 07). http://www.makers.com/blog/21-facts-you-never-knew-about-international-gender-inequality. Retrieved from URL.

Pink. [PinkVEVO]. (2009, October 24). Stupid Girls. [https://youtu.be/BR4yQFZK9YM]. Retrieved from URL.