Glorious doesn’t cut it, but it comes very close to describing Janelle Monáe’s new music video Pynk. The song, which is from the singer-actress’s forthcoming album Dirty Computer, is 2018’s girl power anthem. And the rosy-hued video, which is directed by Emma Westenberg, is an ode to self-love complete with a female-only chorus of dancing labias and a cameo from Tessa Thompson.
Arguably, Pynk is everything a pop song needs and should be right now: it’s political, it’s catchy and it’s laden with early 2000s nostalgia. Outside being peddled as a feminine color, pink is a codeword for the vagina. Janelle’s suggestive lyrics don’t just validate euphemism, they thrive on the innuendo.
If the body is political, then Janelle’s lyrics alone make her an activist. She sings: ‘Pink like the inside of your, baby (we're all just pink)…Pink is my favourite part’. The video champions ‘pussy power’ with evocative imagery - such as the flouncy ’labia’ trousers that Janelle and her crew butterfly dance in and symbolic fur accessories - strategically placed cats and a zoomed in shot of Monáe’s own pubic hair.
Monáe’s masterpiece falls neatly into a niche canon of fiercely feminist and unapologetically brilliant videos with one thing in common: the desert. Hear me out. From the Spice Girls to Madonna to Little Mix, only the very best paeons to womanhood have been shot in this fascinating arid landscape. Maybe it’s a metaphor for the thirsty fight for equality or the natural landscape as a vision of raw humanity?
Here is a shortlist of the best videos set in the desert:
Shania Twain, That Don’t Impress Me Much
Madonna, Frozen
Spice Girls, Say You’ll Be There
Shakira, Wherever Whenever
Britney Spears, Not A Girl Not Yet A Woman
Taylor Swift, I Knew You Were Trouble
Grime, Genesis
Beyonce, Sweet Dreams
Sheryl Crow, The First Cut Is The Deepest
Goldfrapp, Anymore
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.