Why I love Amy Schumer’s new music video, “Girl, You Don’t Need Makeup”

The other morning, while eating my breakfast, I found this: comedienne Amy Schumer’s new music video, “Girl, You Don’t Need Makeup.” I watched it thinking it would be a silly remake of some song. I was wrong. It is so much more.

I have since sent this to all of my best girl friends. I ask you to do the same, and here’s why.

The video is colorful and seems like just another one of those “girly” music videos — lots of pink, cute guys, and cute outfits. Then you start listening to the lyrics, and you realize they actually send an incredibly empowering message to not only girls around the world, but to guys too.

Through her clever comedy and incredible feminist power, Amy Schumer shows us what our society is really about — and how wrong it is. She points to the fact that we as girls are told not just by each other, but by guys that “we are beautiful just the way we are,” and that we shouldn’t and don’t need to wear makeup (unless of course we’re wearing it to have fun, to feel confident, or to  just let out our creativity).

Then, Schumer puts a twist on it and brings it back to reality. Once we take our makeup off, we are told to put it back on! While natural beauty is what society wants to promote, it’s actually promoting the exact opposite. There are plenty of studies out there that show that women are taken more seriously at job interviews when they are wearing makeup.

What Schumer is saying through this video — and what I would like to stress by writing this blog and bringing your attention to this fantastic piece of feminist art — is that society can’t make up (no pun intended!) its mind. It will say anything to get you to conform, to get you to fall into the consumerist trap of the beauty world. But that is exactly why we have to pay attention. We have to learn to stop listening to the wishy-washy media messages that tell us to change ourselves this way or that way.

We have to do what works best for us. If that is more makeup, less makeup, or no makeup, that’s what we have to do. You don’t have to listen to anyone — not guys, not girls, and especially not the media — about how to present yourself and how to act.

Watch Amy Schumer’s video, laugh at it, share it, and realize that the only person you have to make happy is YOU!

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Also, there are so many other messages in this wonderful music video that I didn’t have enough space to write about in this blog. So please, if you have any other takeaways from it, share!

Kinga Vasicsek was born in Hungary and has lived in the Bay Area since age 10. She is a currently in college studying Political Science and Communications. She is an actress and also spends much of her free time writing.