What Really Makes You Beautiful

You might expect me to be the last person to criticize a boyband (NKOTBSB 4-eva!!!), yet here I go.  Though I love that there is a boyband resurgence, I must take issue with the ubiquitous One Direction hit "What Makes You Beautiful." I understand the appeal: the target audience for this group is awkward-age girls who don't feel pretty.  Of course they want to hear that they're actually beautiful, even if they don't realize it.  So many girls need to believe that there's a swan just waiting to emerge from the ugly-duckling facade.  So yay, One Direction--you're making girls feel good about themselves!  But hold on--something isn't right here.


First of all, logical fallacy alert!  According to our intrepid boybanders, "You don't know (oh-oh), you don't know you're beautiful; that's what makes you beautiful." Well, wait just a goddamn minute.  Our premises are that A. you are unaware of your beauty, and B. this lack of awareness establishes your beauty. Well, to be unaware of one's beauty, one must possess beauty of which to be unaware.  So this doesn't work at all.  Try again, boys.

Still, this error shouldn't be too much of a problem.  Boybands just have to look cute and sound good, right?  This isn't school.  I didn't get (too) mad at Backstreet Boys for their grammatically tragic lyric Does his gifts come from his heart? But there's another issue with this little ditty that I can't so easily overlook: these guys are telling an outright lie.  "When you smile at the ground, it ain't hard to tell...you don't know you're beautiful."  SMILE AT THE GROUND?!  Are you kidding me?  Girls, I'll let you in on a little secret: you keep smiling at the ground and no one will notice you.  These boys are pushing the abhorrent message that what's really attractive is a lack of confidence, and that couldn't be farther from the truth.  The people who are perceived as beautiful may or may not have classically attractive features, but they do share one trait: they are confident that they look good.  Have you ever wondered why that girl with the flat butt or the big nose gets all the attention? It's because she believes she's pretty, and people respond to that kind of confidence.  The girl smiling at the floor? She only gets attention within the fictional confines of this song's lyrics.

So dance to this song if it makes you happy.  God knows I love my share of problematic music.  But please don't think there's any truth in this song.  Here's the truth: if you want to be perceived as attractive, own that shit.  Know you're beautiful, and everyone else will too.