




Beyonce’s “Pretty Hurts” music video depicts the colors blue, yellow, green, and sparkles to criticize society for the pressure it puts on women to look beautiful. Media photo-shops models to look unobtainably beautiful causing women to constantly compare themselves and never feeling pretty enough. The video sends the message to find beauty in imperfection. 

The blue coloring displays the desperate and sad feelings of the pageant models that do not think they are pretty or worthy enough. These models represent all the women in modern society who feel pressured to look prettier using makeup, plastic surgery, fake hair, and fake nails to cover up their “flaws”. At the beginning of the video, Beyonce stands in front of three older male judges at a pageant and sings the first few lines of the song Pretty Hurts. She says, “Pretty hurts, Shine the light on whatever's worse, Perfection is the disease of a nation, Pretty hurts, Shine the light on whatever's worse, Tryna fix something, But you can't fix what you can't see, It's the soul that needs the surgery.” In this scene, the whole screen is tinted blue and the background curtains are a piercing dark blue. The blue is used to evoke a melancholy feeling depicting an inner struggle of never being beautiful enough. The same blue coloring reoccurs throughout the video. Beyonce is in a blue sterile examination room while a male doctor draws on her face and gives her shots where she has imperfections, attempting to fix facial flaws. In another scene, Beyonce is in a room full of other models as a man weighs and measures her, comparing her to the other models. Similarly, the curtains and room are tinted blue while Beyonce wears a dark blue outfit. Beyonce also wears a deep blue dress to a pageant. On stage, a man asks her, “What is your aspiration in life?” and she replies, “ Well, my aspiration in life would be to be happy.” The music video proceeds to show a scene of Beyonce drowning in her pageant dress. This all blue scene depicts how women feel extremely pressured to be pretty but are always being compared, feeling like they will never be happy with the way they look. The color blue reoccurs to give a gloomy heartbroken tone that the struggle to be pretty hurts physically and mentally. 

In contrast to the color blue, yellow also reoccurs in the music video. Yellow is commonly contrasted with blue in many scenes because it is a hopeful happier color. In the video, all the pageant girls are on stage in yellow outfits waiting to see who will be crowned winner. They are standing in front a blue curtain, which symbolizes all the pain, metal suffering, and sacrifice they’ve had to endure to get to this stage. The yellow outfits stand out gleaming like their smiles symbolizing how hopeful each one is to win. The model that ends up winning is an albino African American. Beyonce breaks social norms sending the message that she is not perfect but still beautiful, suggesting to viewers that everyone should love the way they are. 

Furthermore, the color green frequently appears in the music video. Green is a mix of the colors blue and yellow. It is used to represent sickness and eating disorders. When Beyonce is sick, the bathroom walls and lighting are all green. The lyrics say, “Perfection is the disease of disease of a nation.” The green in the video not only represents sickness from eating disorders but the sickness of society. Beyonce uses the color green to show her disgust for the way society makes women feel about their bodies, degrading women with any body fat to the point where they feel the need to either fast or make themselves vomit after they eat. The color green is also very prominent in the scenes where Beyonce is smashing her beauty pageant crowns and trophies. The color green is also a symbol for jealousy and greed. Beyonce wears green jewels on her top as she crushes the awards and crushes the feeling of wanting to win. This scene shows her breaking through and realizing that all the sacrifice, work, and greed just to win first wasn’t worth it. None of those material awards ever truly made her happy. Beyonce conveys she was only happy when she was content with who she was and the way she looked. All the pageants just forced her to compare herself and teach her that she had to get plastic surgery, not eat, and get fake tans, hair, nails to look pretty, which is not the case. 

Likewise to the colors, sparkles of gold and silver are very prevalent in the music video. Shinny glistening jewelry is associated with wealth. The stereotypical image is a wealthy man buying his wife expensive necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and rings and then showing her off along with the jewelry. In today’s society, it’s a competition of who can have the prettiest women, give her the most presents, or be the wealthiest. Other than the models, the rest of the people in the music video are men. The person measuring Beyonce’s waist is a man. The person interviewing and questioning her intellect on stage is a man. The panel of judges is also made up of men. The music video is trying to convey that women think they have to be a beautiful, ideal, picture-perfect woman for a man to like them. Women constantly put pressure on themselves to regularly look pretty because they are in a completion for a man. Overall men are the reason women want to look more beautiful. The alluring jewelry in the video gets the viewers attention, displaying an example of how the models would look with wealthy jewelry bought by wealthy men. 

In contrast to the gold and silver, there is a lot of glitter, sewn on sparkles, and plastic gems. The reason for these sparkles is to try to conceal any flaws and cover up the fact that the models might not be wealthy. Like the gold and silver jewelry, the sparkles’ purpose is also to get the men’s attention in hopes one of them will love them and accept them for who they are. The fake gems give a pessimistic, gloomy tone to the video. In the scenes where the models are in smaller less important competitions, the models are wearing fake jewelry and excessive sparkles. By the end of the video and at the important pageant, all the models display real gold and silver. The models’ smiles and eyes look desperate to win and have almost seemed to have lost their sparkle by the end of the video too. Beyonce is sending the message that girls work so hard to constantly try to look beautiful but if girls are constantly comparing themselves, they will never be truly happy. Another underlying point she makes is that money and winning cannot buy or create instant happiness. The next scene shows Beyonce in a plastic jewel top crushing all her pageant trophies. Again emphasizing Beyonce’s distaste with pageants and the way they judge and critique women. Beyonce has personal experience with modeling and in her music video she associates sparkles and jewelry with the pressure women put on themselves to look beautiful. These feelings typically arise from competing for a man’s attention. 

The colors blue, yellow, and green are used in Beyonce’s “Pretty Hurts” music video to point out the pressures women feel to be beautiful and the way society defines the word “pretty”. Blue represents sadness and desperation. Along with Beyonce’s lyrics to the song, the blue coloring portrays the somber feeling of the models, feeling as though they will never be pretty enough. The color blue represents the models heavyhearted attitudes. The yellow coloring shows the hopefulness of the models that they will win. The green colors typically appear when the models have eating disorders, using unhealthy and painful methods to make themselves skinnier or “prettier”. The sparkles display women’s longing for a man to accept them and love their beauty. Society defines “pretty” with a set of characteristics and if you do not fit those criteria you are supposedly not beautiful. The music video uses the colors, lyrics, and scenes to tell viewers that imperfection is beautiful and being pretty shouldn’t have to hurt.