Media Blog #11: Pretty Brown Eyes

I absolutely love the song, Pretty Brown Eyes, by Cody Simpson. Well, actually I just really like Cody Simpson. He is a 16 year old Australian singer who has a great voice and an amazing body. In this music video, Cody is singing about a girl who has pretty brown eyes. He's hanging by the pool with his friends, trying to get this girl, and when they eventually get together, he plays the guitar and sings a song for her. How romantic is this? However, I do not think that Cody is portraying the right message to his audience.

The target audience for this music video is definitely girls, probably from as young as 10 to late teens maybe. Girls all over the world are dying to meet Cody. He has a great voice, an amazing body, and a pretty cute face. Many girls wish that we could date someone like Cody. This wouldn't necessarily be appealing to guys because they don't really want to see some guy that all their girl friends are fawning over. 

Last week, we watched a film in 0 period called Miss Representation, and this video fits what they were talking about in the video very well. Basically, the media produces this ideal image of girls that we feel we need to fit, and women are very underrepresented and mainly used for sexual ways. In this music video, Cody is describing this girl with the pretty brown eyes with these lyrics specifically:

This girl she came round the corner
Looking like a model
Magazine figure
She was shaped like a bottle
Long straight hair

Cody is describing this girl as being a model, and that is exactly what almost all the girls on TV look like. Cody says, "She was shaped like a bottle", basically saying she had the perfect figure with curves in the right places. Also, I think that long straight hair is just perfect and everyone would love to have it. I think it is totally normal for a teenage boy to obsess over the "perfect girl," but the target audience for Cody Simpson is little girls to teenagers. These subtle messages about being the ideal girl isn't exactly what little girls want to hear. Many people look up to Cody, and would love to be Cody's girlfriend. Does this mean they have to be the perfect girl though. Young girls are being exposed to the media earlier and earlier, and you wonder why so many girls are insecure about themselves. Well, you've got the answer right there. The media. We want to be like the girls that are advertised in the media because we feel like that is the only way we will be accepted. 

A need obviously presented in this ad is the need for attention. Of course, there's Cody Simpson with his shirt off showing his amazing body, and then there's all the other girls in their bikinis. The scenery is absolutely gorgeous and the colors are pretty vibrant.

Besides being a music video, there was also some clever advertising going on, specifically the Capri Sun Big pouch. When Cody reaches in the cooler, he pulls out a Capri Sn and the camera zooms in on the drink for about 2 seconds. This may not seem like a big deal, but it was obviously no mistake. Capri Sun wants you to think that when you drink their juice, you can have as much fun as Cody and his friends on a nice summer day. Ths could also represent the need for affiliation because throughout the video, there are girls drinking it, and they are surrounded by all their friends, having a great time.

Overall, I still really like Cody Simpson, and that probably won't change, but I really do not like the message he is subtly portraying in this video.Girls feel so much pressure to live up to this ideal image that that the media portrays of them, and it just leads to insecurities and girls getting very very hurt.