Pretty Hurts

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

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

Well doesn't Beyoncé know how to tell the truth of what most of us women focus on and how badly it hurts. This song is a frank and very personal take on what beauty is. Perfection and the impossible standard of beauty set in society is corrupting the nation. We all try so hard to reach that singular, narrow-minded idea of “perfection” despite the fact that beauty itself is subjective. The things us women do to ourselves to reach that perfection we are all striving for hurts. She's saying that everything we do for beauty to make ourselves feel beautiful, hurts. The constant struggle to reach perfection is painful and distracts from what really matters in life. 

Beyoncé explained in a video the message she is communicating. "My message behind this album was finding the beauty in imperfection. I had this image of a trophy and me accepting these awards, and kinda training myself to be this champion and at the end of the day when you go through all of these things, is it worth it?" she said. "You get this trophy, and you're like, 'I basically starved. I have neglected all of the people I love, I conformed to what everybody else thinks I should be. And I have this trophy. What does that mean?' The trophy represents all of the sacrifices that I made as a kid," she continued. "All of the time that I lost being on the road and in the studios as a child and I just wanna blow that s--- up." 

There are women who put themselves through that pain for a trophy, but many just to it to look good in the eyes of others. So many women starve themselves to look skinny, get implants to make their boobs or butt look bigger, and get plastic surgery again to look good. But is it really worth it? Us women put ourselves through so much extra pain just because we have gotten it in our heads that our looks are more important than our other amazing qualities.