How to be PRETTY4U

I’ve recently been binging a song called “PRETTY4U” by Tiffany Day. It’s a fairly standard hyperpop, dancey, chic song that uses the classic tactic of flooding your ears with electronic whirls echoing a cyberpunk future where the punk has been replaced with popping bubblegum. To me, this kind of music sits laterally opposite to shoegaze on the aesthetics dimension of the music genre compass. Both share a love for overstimulation, but shoegaze maintains low enough energy to still allow you to nap should you choose. If sensory overload and torrents of energy are at hyperpop’s core, the aesthetics therein must also be blinding. In that case, what on earth could hyperpop have to teach about being pretty, let alone being PRETTY4U?

The song softly rants about a woman going through her repertoire of “prettification” techniques to win the affection of another woman. Whether this other woman is someone she wants to impress, or an idealised version of herself is unclear. In either case, she sees this other as so much prettier than herself that she devotes her entire sense of self to achieving the validation of the other. She even longs to show the rest of the world the prettified mould that she designed for her person of yearning.

While repeatedly soaking my brain in the peculiar calm this song gave me, I kept wondering what it meant to be pretty, and more, what it meant to be hyperpop-pretty. Is being pretty defined by how others interpret the aesthetics of my outfit? Or is it about the effort and spirit I put into preparing myself for each new activity I take on? Or does it just involve moisturising and exercising daily, then wearing sunglasses in the club while relying on my face card to carry my prettiness? 

Literature and YouTube video essays are rife with questions of beautification and the meaning behind its pursuit. However, the rise of hyper-individualism in recent decades has introduced a new dimension to this search for reason behind a person’s prettiness - namely, the acknowledgement of the diverse set of characteristics that make up an identity. As these spectacular differences between people have become more accepted, movements like hyperpop have coalesced around a superficially general, yet subtextually precise, meaning of pretty. We can be pretty simply by capturing what we find attractive and embracing the connection between our character and our perception of beauty. In all, being pretty has become an expression of the authentic self. 

In a progressive, accepting, and diverse world, what then does it mean to be PRETTY4U? I see this answered in two ways: we can select from the myriad of personas splayed across social and commercial media, and attempt to predict which persona the U will find “pretty;” otherwise, we can reflect and seek to embrace all possible connections we may have with art, culture, and other people to discover those which we value, thereby finding our authentic prettiness. In either case, we must then paint ourselves with what we discover. The former offers safety and security at the expense of the real pretty-self by feigning attachment with a faux persona. The latter demands that we exhaust our hearts in the hope that the pretty-self will be revealed.

 Both sound disastrous! 

While I can never give a specific answer on how to be PRETTY4 a U, I think hyperpop offers warnings about the destructive nature of faux prettification while providing insights into how to sustainably pursue authentic prettification. PRETTY4U exemplifies the madness that ensues when hyper-fixating on finding someone else’s “pretty,” but notes that being pretty means being whole. “mememe” by 100 gecs blames defaulting to clichés and façades when being perceived by others for their inability to be truly understood by someone close. Even the hints of hyperpop sprinkled through Charli XCX’s Brat, like in “Everything is romantic,” assert that our own ideas of pretty can be found at the extremes of our imagination and introspection.

 As a genre, hyperpop is loose, but as a movement it emphasises the need for the maximal exploration of our interests and connections to discover something truly authentic and beautiful - even if it means diving into the synthetic. Thus, to be PRETTY4 a U is the same as being pretty for ourselves, for which we must unapologetically explore and grow.