Flawless

This entire album is all about women, their strengths, weaknesses, and everything in between. Beyonce represents herself as a feminist throughout this album. In the song Flawless we see the feminist in her come out the most. When the song starts out at approximately :22 we see her, all alone and also in a very powerful stance. This is representing how strong she has become on her own. She wants everyone to remember who she was before she had her baby. At around :44 she says “I took some time to live my life but don't think I'm just his little wife don't get it twisted, get it twisted this my shit, bow down bitches” there’s a lot of women who, once they have children they become the stay at home mom. She doesn’t want people to see her as “just his little wife” she wants them to remember it’s her “shit” too, her music career isn’t over just as Jay Z’s career isn’t over just because they had a kid. The most important part of the song to understand that she wants to put off this image of being a feminist is when she goes as far as to put a snippet from a TED Talk that well known French feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave at 1:26. She ends the snippet with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie giving the definition of a feminist “the person who believes in the social political, and economic equality of the sexes.” I believe she choose to add this to her song because she wants people to know that she can do everything Jay does, because they are equal and her being a new mom shouldn’t and wont stop her. 

The title of the song also has a much deeper meaning than what most people associate it with, usually when someone thinks flawless they think of looks, but Beyonce makes it clear that’s not necessarily what she means by it. When she first starts talking about flawless in this song it seems like she is just strictly talking about looks but to her its multiple things. Which she makes clear around 3:03 by saying “momma taught me good home training my daddy taught me how to love my haters my sister taught me I should speak my mind my man made me feel so God damn fine” flawless to her is about being a well rounded person. Which goes back to her showing her feminist side, she wants people to see that she was raised to believe she is just as good as men, and that makes her flawless.

Pretty Hurts

The first time I listened to the song Pretty Hurts on Beyonce’s new visual album I got chills. It is probably the most realistic song relating to how society’s view on how women should look, takes a tool on women. About 2:13 into the music video for this song and the actual beginning of the song itself Beyonce sings “Mama said, you’re a pretty girl. What’s in your head it doesn’t matter. Brush your hair, fix your teeth. What you wear is all that matters. Just another stage. Pageant the pain away. This time I’m gonna take the crown without falling down, down.” Watching the music video you will see the signifiers which are a disappointed and sad looking Beyonce. She is waxing, brushing her hair, and fixing her teeth. The people around her are doing the same thing. It is a very depressing looking environment. This is signifying to me that she just wants to be accepted but she isn’t happy with the way that society wants her to look it isn’t how she looks and it is clearly taking a tool on her. 

Doing a paradigmatic analysis the meaning of that part of the song to me would change completely if some of the signifiers were to change. For example When you just listen to the words “Mama said, you’re a pretty girl. What’s in your head it doesn’t matter. Brush your hair, fix your teeth. What you wear is all that matters. Just another stage. Pageant the pain away. This time I’m gonna take the crown without falling down, down.” it almost seems as if she is being confident and agreeing with what her mother said to her. If instead of a sad Beyonce we were to see her happy and getting ready for a pageant the whole meaning of the song would change for me. Instead of her challenging and not wanting to accept the worlds view on what beauty is, she would instead be going along with it. 

The syntagmatic analysis of this particular part of the song would be how the signifiers: Beyonce’s face’s, waxing, bushing her hair, fixing her teeth and the people around her all play off of each other. In the book it says “ In the context of a traffic light or warning sign, red conveys danger, but when used as the backdrop for footage of a couple gazing at one another, it may connote sexual desire.” This holds true for the signifiers in this music video. If you were to just see the parts of Beyonce getting ready and none of her looking sad you wouldn’t take it as her doing something that makes her unhappy. Especially when she says “This time I’m gonna take the crown” I would just automatically assume her getting ready meant she just wanted to be perfect for the pageant but, when you see how she looks while she is getting ready it shows that she is unhappy that she has to change how she looks to be considered pretty.

After analyzing this song I realize why she wanted everyone to see the music videos for her new songs right when they were released. She has a message to get across and without the music video we may get a different message than she intended.