On This Day in Pink History… 26th January 2006, Stupid Girls music video was released
Stupid Girls was released as the first single from Pink’s fourth studio album, I’m Not Dead.
The music video was directed by Dave Meyers and premiered on MTV’s broadband channel Overdrive. Pink and Meyers shot the videos for both Stupid Girls and U + Ur Hand before he decision was made as to which would become the albums lead single.
Pink describes the video as “sick and twisted and insane”, and says of Meyers “He has an insane imagination. I don’t think everyone else is going to laugh, but just know that we all did.” Pink did all her own stunts for the video.
According to Barry Weiss, president of Zomba Music Group, executives at Pink’s label were reluctant to release the song as the album’s first single. They decided to release the video before issuing the song to radio, and 8.6 million people downloaded the video when it was made available on the internet. Zomba’s senior vice president of marketing Janet Kleinbaum said that radio programmers “went online to download the audio from the video in order to get it on radio”.
The video shows Pink as an angel and a demon who try to influence the future of a young girl. The angel shows her a series of images demonstrating the stupidity of current trends in female celebrity, and the images feature Pink in various roles, including a dancer in a 50 Cent video, a girl attempting to attract the attention of an instructor at the gym, a girl who uses her emergency inflatable breasts at a bowling alley, a girl at a tanning salon, a girl with purging disorder who considers calories “so not sexy”, an old woman in a pink tracksuit who looks as if she is trying too hard to look young, a girl getting plastic surgery, a girl making a sex tape, a girl washing her car and rubbing a facecloth and soap all over herself, and a girl who goes into what looks like a pet shop, buys an “itsy bitsy doggy” with the advertisement that it “stays younger longer”, and drives her car so carelessly while putting on makeup that she runs over two people. Pink also plays characters meant to represent the opposite of “stupid girls”, such as a female president and a girl winning a game of football. The video ends with the girl choosing a football (fitness), a computer (work), books (knowledge and adequate education), dance shoes (love), and a keyboard (leisure) over makeup (vanity) and a set of dolls (children) as she wants a normal life and the images are too overwhelming for her; the demon is defeated.
Some of the negatively portrayed characters in the video are parodies of young female celebrities such as Mary-Kate Olsen, who provides the basis for the Boho-chic dressing style of the girl who visits a Fred Segal clothing store. The redheaded girl who accidentally hits pedestrians with her car is a parody of Lindsay Lohan. The scene in which Pink washes a car in a bikini is a parody of similar scenes in the video for Jessica Simpson’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'” (2005) and a 2005 Carl’s Jr. television commercial featuring Paris Hilton. The digital video shots showing Pink in bed with a man parallel those in the Paris Hilton sex tape 1 Night in Paris. The scene where Pink portrays a blonde coming into a bathroom throwing up food in order to be skinny (portraying bulimia) is reported to be portraying Nicole Richie. Towards the end in the video, a middle-aged woman with leathery skin appears next to a hot pink Honda S2000, which is exactly the same car driven by Devon Aoki in the film 2 Fast 2 Furious.
The video debuted on the U.S. MTV Total Request Live countdown and peaked at number six; it remained on the countdown for fourteen days. The video was retired on the Poland version of MTV’s Total Request Live, and it won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Pop Video in August 2006. When she was receiving the award, Pink parodied Paris Hilton by talking in a higher pitched voice and acting overly excited. Nicole Richie co-presented the award.
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