By Manasi Nene
Hailee Steinfeld’s music video ‘Most Girls’ starts off with a man telling a woman, he’s glad she isn’t like most girls. We’ve all been there. If you’re “not like most girls”, that’s supposed to be a compliment. Except, it’s really not, because what’s wrong with most girls?
Not that much, is what Hailee Steinfeld is trying to say. Whatever the “normal” version of girlhood is – and I’m not even sure what that is, because the notion just sounds so ridiculous – is never actually described in the video, through its visuals or its lyrics. Instead, there are vague references to all women being empowered, and Steinfeld being happy as one of the girls, instead of one girl who is not like the others.
Which is empowering in a way, I guess?
But the video fails to make any deeper point than a vague pastel admission of some vague dissatisfaction with the ‘mostgirls’/’somegirls’ construct. Steinfeld, for one, is conventionally beautiful, and most of the video focuses on just that — no hate towards her — but that really isn’t how most of us will always portray ourselves. The whole song is a glorious defense of our right to portray ourselves the way we want, be as sexual (or asexual) as we want, be as nerdy, or tough, or whatever, without having to compare ourselves with some strange, inferior brand or womanhood, without the somegirls/mostgirls dichotomy being invoked to defend our virtue.
Except it fails a little bit, because of how much the video plays into the idea of the male gaze, and the way it pushes a very patriarchal notion of the boundaries of somegirls/mostgirls. “I want to be like most girls”, Steinfeld sings, very sweetly, her director of photography very conveniently forgetting that most girls don’t work out in perfectly lit gyms, or hang around in big fancy cars, or have perfect clothes and hair all the time.
TL;DR – the message is cool, but the video is misguided.
This isn’t the first or last time that pop music has stumbled while trying to deal with feminist themes, but at least it’s a reminder that something good is in the pipelines. This isn’t how it always needs to be though – check out the videos for Typical Girls by The Slits, or Cherry Bomb by The Runaways. While still playing with the ‘somegirls’/’mostgirls’ dichotomy, these songs are a far more powerful call-to-action – I don’t think I’m wrong in assuming that Steinfeld’s ultimate aim is to destroy the dichotomy, and create a field where what we do with our minds and bodies isn’t really connected to our gender. Below by White Lung and Modern Girl by Sleater-Kinney, two much more recent songs, also stand up to unrealistic expectations on our bodies, minds and lives, with far more bite than Steinfeld. In fact, why travel so far – Item Song by Ganesh Talkies in a way plays with the same dichotomy, albeit in a far more fun way.
Not all music made by women must have some larger underlying feminist message – that is simply Artistic Freedom 101. However, Steinfeld’s attempts to carve out a larger space in the discourse backfire because the music video cannot simply be a pretty girl doing typically badass things like boxing or even partying. Instead, the ‘somegirls’/’mostgirls’ dichotomy can be destroyed only by doing what all girls can do best – doing whatever they feel like doing, without worrying about the ‘mostgirls’/’somegirls’ nonsense.