On Twitter I was seeing a lot of controversy on Little Mix’s new video for Black Magic. I’m not a fan of Little Mix and honestly haven’t heard anything by them for a while now (Wings was probably the last song I heard from them) so I was intrigued by what was being shown in this video and why people thought it was so bad.

The actually song is incredibly catchy and tells how the girls have a magic spell that will make people fall in love with them – the video mirrors this. At the start the girls are portraying the typical nerdy, self conscious girls who boys don’t find attractive (apparently). Firstly I find this quite insulting because this stereotype is so outdated that I felt like this music video couldn’t be from 2015.

They stumble on a spell book that makes them attractive and suddenly the boy that didn’t care about them at the start suddenly wants to know them *yawn*. I was shocked by this because it basically told the female audience that they have to change themselves completely to get male attention. The girls were shown to wear quite short and showing outfits as well as if a standard jeans and a t-shirt combo wouldn’t be good enough.

This was bad enough but what I thought put the icing on the cake was the girls then made the boy’s girlfriend disgusting so they could have him! So many things wrong with this:

1. The director is putting the girls against each other which is something that girls shouldn’t be taught to do! There is enough bullying and competition out there already between young people they don’t need to see it in their idols as well.
2. This boy has a girlfriend! Why can’t you just leave them alone and go off with some other boy? Why is everything a competition and if someone is with someone you like you have to immediately hate them? This isn’t a good lesson to teach impressionable girls (many of their fans being between 10 and 16)

To show off the girls’ powers they showed four different girls bullying a nerdy boy who Little Mix then make desirable. I’m guessing these girls are meant to be used to show how good Little Mix are being but really the girls, to me, are mirrors of Little Mix themselves. They’re bullying a nerdy boy and yes that’s wrong but Little Mix were seen moments before bullying the boy’s girlfriend to the state that she ran off, presumably, crying or at least incredibly upset and embarrassed.

I was shocked that anyone would think this would be a good video to show girls and I don’t want to assume that people will follow their idols and become like them but I know from life experience that if I saw my idol doing something I’d want the same (I have blonde hair and now want fake nails? I blame Elle Woods from Legally Blonde haha). It’s the 21st century and I believe that we should completely eradicate this idea that girls have to have competition with each other and to be liked by someone you have to change who you are completely to get their attention.

No! We should teach people that everyone is special and have their own quirky characteristics and we should celebrate that instead of putting them down for it. Never change yourself to be with someone, the perfect person who loves you for who you are will come along.

What is your view on the music video?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding