In any case, I find that this is a piece promoting female arrogance. There portions of the song such as "All my ladies do the pretty girl rock rock rock / Get along with your pretty girl rock rock rock / Still show me your pretty girl rock rock rock / All my ladies do the pretty girl rock rock rock", "Sing it with me now", and "And if you know it too then ladies sing it with me" that do adhere to the anthem tone. The use of "[a]ll my ladies" and "[s]ing it with me" is inclusive, suggesting that all women are a part of this pretty girl rock or that all women should partake in it. A female anthem should certainly be all inclusive and promote that all females are strong and beautiful, no matter what. That's all fine and dandy, until we come to lines that completely negate this inclusiveness, in particular "I’m cuter than the girl that's with ya". This line here is the one that really brands this as arrogance for me; if all girls are beautiful and should be doing this pretty girl rock, then there should be no competition among them, which is exactly what this line suggests. It's segregating in that it's saying, 'yeah, all us ladies are beautiful, but some of us are still prettier than others', which in turn suggests that these 'prettier' women are the ones that should receive all the attention. Shouldn't a female anthem about beauty be more about "beauty in the eye of the beholder" and therefore no one can truly say what beauty is? I think so, but whoever (I'm unable to find a name) the lyricist for this song is apparently still stuck in the world of competition among everyone.
Interestingly, the lyricist seems to try and deflect this notion of arrogance within the lyrics: "Girls think I’m conceited 'cause I know I’m attractive". Knowing you're attractive is one thing, going around saying you're more attractive than others is where the conceited attitude comes in. It's called modesty, honey. I'm not saying that we all need to clam up about our beauty, or that we should berate ourselves so that we don't seem conceited--quite the contrary. Instead, let us celebrate this beauty because I don't think that there is a true celebration of universal female beauty these days, which is thoroughly disappointing, but that's another argument all together. So let's celebrate our beauty, but not go around shoving it in other people's faces and saying we're prettier than them. Let's not go around saying "Don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful" because, really, you just come across seeming like an arrogant piece of work. While "[j]ealousy [may indeed be] the ugliest trait", to me it's positively ludicrous to think that people hate you simply because they are jealous, especially of something as subjective as beauty. You hate something or someone because there is something that you genuinely dislike about it/them; to say that these things/people are hated because of they are aesthetically pleasing is like saying, 'I think that sunset is so pretty that I absolutely hate it!' Ridiculous, yes?
True, as a society we might see someone that's really beautiful and say, 'oh my god, I hate you!' but here it's not a genuine hate. It's a playful hate that does show that the person is jealous, but it is not a loathing hatred--it's just a coloquial phrase that we throw around without really thinking about it. The lyrics of the song, on the other hand, seem to be suggesting that this hate is real and that it is spawned by the jealousy of beauty and the attention that this beautiful person is receiving. When you look at lines that portray the stares, paparazzi-like moments and the male attention that this beautiful woman is receiving and then at lines like "Girls think I’m conceited 'cause I know I’m attractive / Don’t worry about what I think, why don’t you ask him?" it positively is suggestive that the speaker is more beautiful than the woman she is talking to. "Don't worry about what I think" is saying that yes, the speaker sees herself as beautiful, but don't worry about what she thinks of herself because clearly everyone else thinks she is more beautiful as well. "[W]hy don't you ask him?" suggests that the not-so-beautiful woman's male signficant other obviously thinks that the speaker is more beautiful and what with all these "[c]ameras flashing" and "all eyes on [her] when [she] walks in", it is clear that the more beautiful are the ones that deserve the attention. While it could easily be a comment on society that that's just how it is, the fact that the lyrics continually repeat these things suggests a pushing towards this opinion instead of simply a comment upon it. If it were a comment upon it, I would think there would be some alternative view provided, or some disdain towards it, but we're celebrating the "pretty girl rock" here, so all the "pretty girls", which is not really as all-inclusive as it wants to come across, need to rock it out and strut around like a peacock.
To wrap this up, I must say that these are only my findings when it comes to this song. I haven't heard any uproar about it otherwise, not that I really expected to with the way media these days talk about things. I'd be interested to hear/read someone else's argument otherwise, or just any opinions in general.
I am quoting these lyrics as I have found them on azlyrics.com.
