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Beyonce Metaphors

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In the song lyrics’ Pretty Hurts’ by Beyonce, The writer uses repetition and metaphors to show us how society has expectations of females. Some of the expectations and stereotypes are females must be thin, have a big butt and big breasts, long hair, etc. We learn that these expectations put a lot of pressures on females. How females buy into the ideas they must be beautiful and care about their looks over anything else and these expectations formed from society shape our definition of ‘feminism’ today. Finally, we learn physical appearance/body image is everything, and the media and society make a big deal of it when it should not be. At the beginning of the song, Beyonce shows us how she used her mother as an example of society suggesting …show more content…

We see the idea is developed when she says, ‘Just another stage, pageant the pain away, this time, I’m going to take the crown without falling down”. This stresses how being “pretty hurts”. The pressure put on girls for them to be beautiful gets to them. They want to be the first one to get to the crown for being the most beautiful. There should not be a competition for who is the most beautiful, everyone should be able to accept and love themselves without having the pressure of having to meet the ideal image of females we observe in the media today. Most are photoshopped or have had plastic surgery to look like the ideal female we identify as ‘perfect’ when in fact they aren't that …show more content…

This extended metaphor refers to the wanted feeling to be as beautiful as the ‘ideal’ women they compare to in the media, to an illness that has been caused by society. We see this when Beyonce suggest “perfection is a disease of a nation.” This highlights how girls treat their imperfections and physical flaws as if there is something wrong with them, they need to be seen by a doctor to fix their imperfections to become perfections. That way they can be happier with how they look and feel about themselves. This can affect their mental and emotional health. Their habits of wanting to be perfect can lead to eating disorders which are also harming girls physical well- being. This is further reinforced when she says, “It’s the soul that needs the

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Everyone has their flaws as no human being is perfect nor will one ever be perfect either. “There are plenty of beautiful women that do not fit the projected form of beauty that we have been taught to idolize. Still, women constantly attempt to change the way their bodies are meant to be, in order to look like the edited models and airbrushed actresses we see in our favorite shows, movies and magazines.” (Curly) Women working behind magazine companies are playing apart in the downgrading of women as well and some don’t even know it. An average magazine cover is either a woman known to society as a very pretty or attractive woman, with a face full of makeup and on the side bringing attention to the main article of something like “find out the simple way to get this amazing body or how to lose weight in 10 days.”

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She wears heavy makeup, has her hair done, and is wearing tight and revealing clothes, appealing to Beyonce’s male audience through Mulvey’s male gaze theory, where women are presented as sexual objects for the heterosexual male's pleasure. As the music video progresses, we see her step onto a stage where there are judges and camera watching her, a symbol for society and the societal pressure women are placed under to always look presentable and attractive to those around them. The audience also watches Beyonce undergo several cosmetic activities, such as applying heavy makeup, working out intensely and wearing restrictive and revealing clothes, all of which also represent the societal expectations that women should be ‘perfect’. We also see her exiting a bathroom, which is a reference to bulimia, an eating disorder that affects 4% of teenage girls in the USA. All of these examples stem from the ideology that women should always be pretty if they want to be liked, and that ugly girls are unlikeable and unfulfilled with their lives and should always try to appeal to men, which is also one of the ideologies

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