Gender Stereotypes- P!nk Music Video

The first character we’re introduced to in the video is a little girl sat on her sofa watching tv and playing with her dolls. She has her hair in pigtails which is a style that you would generally see on sweet little girls, however, she is dressed in a baseball tshirt which is contradicting the hairstyle that I would presume her mum did for her as her mum probably thinks that her daughter should grow up to be a ‘normal little girl’. She has been forced to play with dolls as they are girl toys and they are probably the only choice that was given to her. Whilst playing with her dolls the girl looks uninterested and turns on the television maybe for some hope or inspiration. On the television she is presented with many different females who are all conforming to stereotypes, one of the programmes she watches is a female president who I think influences the girl in the best way. But the end of the video the little girl decides that the females who try and live up to expectations are foolish so she grabs her american football and decides it’s best to be herself.

Another of the characters is a lady who starts off in a tanning booth getting a spray tan, when she comes out she is extremely orange, not bronzed. When in the tanning booth she looks extremely uncomfortable and looks out of place and confused. She obviously felt that females are seen as more attractive with a tan so she wanted to fit in but as she isn’t used to doing that sort of thing she actually looked awful and over the top. As soon as she went back into the salon she started to compare herself to the other women in the salon to see if she looked better and maybe she was looking at them so she could copy their look in the future. Her comparisons in the salon show that girls may not do things because they want to do it for themselves but they purely just do it to look better and be more desirable to the point where they ruin themselves and lose a clear vision of who they really were originally.

The character of the girl driving posh sports her car has very foolish connotations. She is very unaware of her surrounds with her large designer sunglasses and is otherwise engaged on her mobile phone with another messaging device in her other hand as well as a cup of coffee. At one point, she even manages to apply her lipgloss in the mirror, all of the things she is holding along with the shopping bags in the front seat are stereotypically female because they are all very material things suggesting that females care more for material goods than their own and everyone else's well being. As she is trying to multitask whilst driving she foolishly knocks someone over because she isn’t concentrating, she is shocked for a moment but then carries on with her phone calls and makeup application. These actions continue the foolish and ditsy connotations as it makes her look forgetful and careless.

There is one character however who contradicts the rest of the overly feminine and foolish characters. This character is a female president who seems to be getting through to the young girl. She is dressed in a sophisticated skirt suit with well groomed hair and classy makeup. Despite having her body covered up and looking almost facially naked she still looks feminine but in a strong way, the way she looks gives professional connotations making her come across as wise. She is filmed at a low angle looking up at her which adds to her power as it makes her look big and important. Some of the other female characters are looked down on but this strong character is the opposite. I think the song is meant to sound like its being sung by the female president as she is addressing the females that have been saturated by media as ‘stupid girls’ and she is encouraging females to be themselves and not live up to unrealistic expectations.

The intertextuality between the clips of all of the different character work together to create a general perception of females who’re trying to alter themselves and ruin themselves just to live up to the females they see in the media. The smart women in the world like the female president in this video, are trying to share the message to young girls that you should just be yourself because the females that try and change become unhappy. The video makes parodies of different female stereotypes, I think that by making the video like a parody it makes it more fun to watch and when watching the video you may not automatically feel that you’re being told an important message but you may laugh at the characters and think that they’re ridiculous, so without realising the message is being enforced.