The song I chose to describe is “Pretty Hurts” by Beyoncé. Beyoncé is a popular singer, songwriter, and actress. As a child, she participated in many singing and dancing competitions. Before becoming a solo artist in 2003, Beyoncé was part of a music group called Destiny’s Child featuring her cousin and two classmates. A lot of music created by Beyoncé comments on society especially regarding the role of women. An example of a song made by her that discusses gender roles is “Pretty Hurts.” This song describes women needing to only worry about their physical appearance because their personality doesn’t matter in society. She talks about society accepting this idea and media making physical beauty seem like something which every female should strive for.

In her song, Beyoncé rejects this gender role of women having to strive for physical beauty. She explains the struggles women go through to fit these standards. She also describes the emotional pain that it causes. This can be seen in the lyrics when she says, “It’s the soul that needs surgery.” She rejects the idea of women needing surgery to fix their bodies and succumb to the societal expectation of physical beauty, saying that they would just be hurting their own souls to accomplish this task. Beyoncé is able to further express her rejection of this idea through the music video that goes with the song. The video ends with a beauty pageant contestant standing in front a wall of trophies and destroying them. This shows her rejection of the gender role because she is destroying the “prizes” that society gives to women who accept the role of having to try to look pretty. A musical characteristic that Beyoncé uses is increasing the volume whenever she sings the chorus. She does this to show the pain caused by women feeling the need to fit the gender role placed on them by society. The pain can be felt by the increase in volume of her voice and increase in scale when singing the line with the lyrics “pretty hurts.”