When it comes to things that absolutely and completely anger me, the top three things in order of most angering, to slightly less are as follows: terrorism, religion, and the music video for Black Magic by Little Mix. All three of those things can also be put into one category for more convenient purposes; stupidity. For the purposes of this essay, I am focusing on the Black Magic video and what it represents, as it is the easiest of the three stupidity topics to try and reason with people about. As it doesn’t involve death (not directly) and people aren’t going to be too upset by my challenging it (hopefully).

The Cinderella Ideal is something that has been prominent in pop culture for a long time, but has made some particular appearances recently, with the #DONTJUDGEME challenge and the Little Mix Black Magic video. The Cinderella Ideal isn’t an actual known thing. It’s just a name I put to the concept to make it easier to refer to. The Cinderella Ideal is the idea of of a stereotypically  ugly or unattractive person becoming liked, and getting what they want because they change, usually becoming stereotypically attractive in a positive light. So not the kinds of things where the transformation is discovered as wrong, things like Mean Girls. Coming from someone who isn’t noticeably attractive and not particularly unattractive, but being fairly intelligent, I can say that this idea is offensive and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Examples of uses of the Cinderella Ideal in pop culture include Cinderella (of course),The Princess Diaries, The Duff, Katy Perry’s Last Friday Night video, #DONTJUDGEME, the list goes on. They all follow the same basic formula, so explaining to you the plot summary of Little Mix’s twisted Black Magic video, and every part of it that makes it wrong is the same thing as analysing them all.  The premise of the Black Magic video is that the girls of Little Mix (Perrie Edwards, Jesy Nelson, Jade Thirlwall, Leigh-Anne Pinnock) are nerdy, disliked, unpopular girls. Complete with being very studious, having big glasses, sweater vests, cardigans, and awkward demeanors. Already they have set up the idea that all of those things are  negative concepts and thus furthering the stereotypes of ugly, unpopular and “nerdy” as being wrong. Impressionable young people, girls who look up to Little Mix now see these traits as negative concepts. Negative things to be, and in many cases, notions that is wrong to be themselves. The kind of thing that leaves young people struggling, suffering while they’re striving to be something they’re not.

Into the beginning of the video, the girls discover that they have magic powers, which they later use to shed their unattractive looks for new revealing, sexy outfits, humiliating the girls who picked on them, and helping out other nerdy, unattractive kids who aren’t good with getting dates. The video ends with Little Mix  in class with a bunch of rowdy kids not paying attention to the teacher at the front. They then use their magic powers to get the teacher to stop teaching and instead start dancing on his desk. Hilarious. What a fun, upbeat, good natured video. They’re sticking up for those poor kids and for themselves.

So what have we learned from this video? The exact opposite.

-Being nerdy, unfashionable, unpopular, and “ugly” are all bad things to be.
-We should use power for revenge.
-Being physically, stereotypically attractive is how to get a boyfriend.
-All girls should want a boyfriend and should be willing to change themselves to get one.
-We should help change other people who are nerdy and attractive, so they can get boyfriends or girlfriends, instead of supporting them in being themselves.
-Over -alls, cardigans, awkwardness, scrunchies, clothes that aren’t revealing, glasses, sneakers and studying are all nerdy things that unpopular people do and the reason that girls don’t have boyfriends.
-Education isn’t important, especially when you’re attractive.

Those are the seven reasons as to why the Black Magic music video drives me to frustrated anger, and upsetting my family, especially my sister (who is a fan of the british girl band) with my ranting and yelling about how sick and wrong it is, and, “why doesn’t anyone understand how degrading this is?!” Unfortunately, the song is currently in its second week at the top of the Billboard Top U.K. Songs Chart. Two weeks of popularity being used to mold the minds of young people to believe all of this crap.

Every bit of that music video is untrue, and preaching it to impressionable young people is sickening.

Being what society deems as nerdy, unattractive, or unpopular are perfectly fine things to be, especially when that means you’re being yourself.

Revenge never works out the way you want it to. Take Kill Bill for example, except in a high school setting it hurts a lot more. Trying to exact revenge is not something that doesn’t go down well in the high school hallways. It creates drama, and broken friendships, trouble with the school, and a lot of emotional pain. It’s unnecessary and petty.

Being attractive is not how you get a boyfriend, not the kind of superficial boyfriend anyone wants anyway. Every relationship stands on who you are as a person, and the way two people make each other feel. And more importantly, nobody should feel that having a boyfriend or girlfriend is necessary. The affection of someone else should not determine your self worth. Actually, it doesn’t determine your self worth, period.

The video even mirrors the ideas of the disgusting #DONTJUDGEME challenge (if you don’t know what that is, I suggest looking it up for a better understanding). Essential it says that you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover not because of how great the story on the inside is, but because it could potentially be reissued with a prettier cover. Yes, it’s bad.

I’m in no way saying that the girls of Little Mix are bad people, they’re very talented singers and dancers, and I’m sure they’re a nice group of young ladies. I’m even aware that they probably went along with that video concept with good intentions.Those girls (giving them the benefit of the doubt here) probably don’t have a clue about the messages that they’re actually putting out with the Black Magic music video. As they didn’t direct the video, Director X did. Director X also directed the video for Little Mix’s song Little Me in 2013. So they probably didn’t mean to be offensive, or even know that the video would be so rant inducing. But that’s the worst part, is that these girls don’t know. Celebrities with the kind of power to influence people have the responsibility to use it for the better (or at least with a bit of thought). In fact, this isn’t the first time that the Little Mix group has had a music video that completely contradicted what they were trying to say. The music video for Salute, off of the previous album of the same name, was suppose to be an empowering song. But the video displayed the girls with men on leashes, channeling Michonne with her zombie brothers from The Walking Dead. This imagery is completely against the idea of feminism (the girls have said in interviews about how important feminism is to their writing and how they’re all about girl power), as feminism is about believing that men and women are equal, not that either one is above the other. Again, it wasn’t like Little Mix themselves came up with the concept. This time the video was made by director Colin Tilley, who does numerous lame videos for all the people that people hate (including Justin Bieber and Justin Derulo). But they never thought twice about it. If you put yourselves out there as the kind of people who are role models for empowering young girls (which has become the staple of Little Mix) then you at least need to understand the messages you’re sending out to the people you’re modeling to.

As for the cinderella ideal, it’s a shame that it’s still seen as a good thing. People who drool all over the ugly girl in the movie that  got a makeover so the boy will like her. Well to that I say f*** you! Stay ugly, because you know what? You can’t keep the makeup on forever. There are some (by society’s definitions) sincerely ugly people out there, the kind of physical ugly that makeup can’t fix (again, by society’s f***ed up view of it), but they don’t need a makeover, no one does. Just be yourself, because the only person you should worry about liking you is you. The only person you should ever change yourself for is you.