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Ashley Estle

Professor Wright

English 1201

6 November, 2021

“Perfect” by P!nk and “Pink-Perfect” by Ahmir

“Don’t you ever, ever feel like you’re less than, less than perfect” (P!nk). This

quote is important to both videos because this is the main claim these videos are trying

to make. While the original video by P!nk, which was posted in January of 2011, is

leaning more towards the opinion of yourself from the aftermath of bullying. While the

cover video by Ahmir, which was posted in April of 2011, is leaning more towards

bullying in general. “Perfect” by P!nk and “Pink-Perfect” by Ahmir are spreading a

similar message but despite that, they have slightly different audiences. The original

one by P!nk draws teenagers in due to the style of her video, while the video by Ahmir

tends to draw in younger kids with the clean language and the school setting.

“Perfect” by P!nk was posted January 2011, with some digging, I found an article

that talked about how more people are showing off their scars, and how Pink has been

in similar situations. In the article, she mentions that she wants this video to be shocking

to people, she wants people to remember the video because it shows the truth. She

made this type of video to try to help bring more awareness to bullying. In the cover

video by Ahmir which was posted in April of 2011, just after P!nk had posted hers. They
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made it into a cover to help fight against bullying, they did it without showing the gore-y

side that P!nk had shown. The video gives off enough emotion to make us see near the

same picture, in the description of the video it talks about how 20% of the proceeds

from this video goes to The Trevor Project.

Throughout P!nk’s video, she is explaining a story of a little girl growing up and

dealing with being bullied. We see the girl go through detrimental things in her life, for

example we see her possible first bully and how the teacher scolded her instead of the

bully. We see her as a teenage doing drugs and trying to steal a dress because of these

girls she saw shopping there. The purpose of these types of scenes is to show the

aftermath when someone is bullied for possibly just being different. We see her

behavior change and her harm herself because her opinion of herself started going

down due to everyone else's opinion of her. Which is why the line, “Don’t you ever, ever

feel like you’re less than, less than perfect” (“Perfect”), is so important, don’t let

someone else's opinion of you change your opinion of yourself.

The cover of the song “Perfect” by Ahmir has nearly the same claim, it just

proves it in a different way. They make their video in a school trying to talk about the

bullying that can stem from schools. We see a few different kids experience bullying and

how horrible it can make them feel about themselves. We can see the physical and

mental effect they get from their classmates picking on them. We saw one little boy cry

and another little boy got upset and punched a locker. They didn’t do anything wrong;

they were just unfortunately chosen to be the victims. Which is also why the line “Don’t

you ever, ever feel like you’re less than, less than perfect” (“Perfect”), works well for this
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version too. Don’t let someone try to make you think less of yourself because they are

trying to make themselves feel better.

In P!nk’s video, she uses mainly the emotional appeal Pathos. She shows a little

girl being bullied and scolded, she shows a teen that is just trying to fit in, and she

shows a girl in the bathtub cutting herself. P!nk uses these as emotional appeals

towards teenagers because they might have experienced this or has seen it. Her main

audience is teens around the ages of 14-18 because that is where her fan base is, she

is trying to reach them. In the cover video by Ahmir he uses mainly Pathos but also

uses some Logos as well. The Pathos is appealed by showing younger kids getting

bullied. For example, in the video there was a child playing on the basketball court with

his friend when a group of older boys came by and ruined their game. They push one

down and the other up against the fence before throwing the ball at the one who got

pushed up against the fence. It’s sad to see those kids that couldn’t be older than 15

and they did nothing wrong that could be seen in the video. Now for the Logos part, they

used this because of the two women talking at the beginning who are advocates for

bullying and the facts that were put at the end to talk more about bullying. They put

these facts in to show that this is an everyday/everywhere thing, there are little to no

places that don’t have bullies. Which is why their audience is more of younger kids/

students, they made their video with school in mind and how bullying can start at a

young age.

“Don’t you ever, ever feel like you’re less than, less than perfect” (“Perfect” by P!

nk), this lyric fits into both songs by helping prove that bullying is wrong. No one needs

to feel worthless about themselves just because someone else wants to feel better
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about themselves. There is one more lyric that I feel is important to mention “If you ever,

ever feel like you’re nothing, you are perfect to me” (“Perfect” by P!nk), this lyric helps

show that no matter what is going on you will be perfect in someone else’s eyes.

Whether that be your parents, guardians, friends, teachers, whoever. Someone will

know you're perfect and just keep your head up. This fits really well into both the songs

along with the first lyric because this is basically the claim they are trying to make.
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Works Cited:

-Ciminelli, David. “Pink Knew Her ‘F**kin’ ‘Perfect’ Video Would ‘Ruffle Some

Feathers’.”Billboard, 21 January 2011,

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/473529/pink-knew-her-fkin-perfect-video-

would-ruffle-some-feathers

-“Pink-Perfect.” Youtube, Ahmir, 10 April 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v

=gliHyklHr6c

-“Perfect.” Youtube, P!nk, 11 January 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v

=K3GkSo3ujSY