Janelle Monae continues to slay the music video game with PYNK. Photo / Getty Images
Janelle Monae continues to slay the music video game with PYNK. Photo / Getty Images
Janelle Monae has caused quite a stir with her new music video - not with the song itself, but rather the clip's content, which includes the singer dancing around in a pair of flamboyant vagina pants and flaunting fake pubic hair.
Indeed, the 32-year-old seems to have taken a greatdeal of inspiration from the female form when it came to creating the video for PYNK, placing vaginal imagery and innuendo front and center.
"PYNK is a brash celebration of creation, self love, sexuality, and p**sy power!" Monáe explains on YouTube.
"PYNK is the colour that unites us all, for pink is the colour found in the deepest and darkest nooks and crannies of humans everywhere... PYNK is where the future is born...."
This translates to the singer and her backup dancers donning vagina-inspired outfits for a portion of the video, and invoking images associated with female genitalia courtesy of a raw oyster, a pink ring donut and a pink grapefruit sliced in half.
In another scene, Monáe can be seen dancing in a bedroom wearing underwear featuring the words "Sex Cells" embroidered on the front. The camera also pans in on another woman wearing similar underwear which feature the words, "I grab back".
Fans of her music have likened the video the work of American modernist artist Georgia O'Keefe, who rose to critical acclaim for her flower paintings that were likened to vaginas.
Absolutely loving what Janelle Monáe is doing to recalibrate the sexual politics of modern pop. There's at once ten years and an entire generation separating this from 'I Kissed a Girl'. https://t.co/gE10IB13ak
vagina imagery and art is lowbrow terf kitsch bullshit that lacks any intersectionality or thought beyond shallow “pussy power” rhetoric but PYNK managed to use it it a way that was inclusive towards trans women- a rarity that I appreciate
Directed by Emma Westenberg, the video also features Thor: Ragnarok actress Tessa Thompson, who appeared in Monáe's sexually charged Make Me Feel video in February.
In PYNK, Thompson can be seen emerging from Monáe's thighs which are clad in the vagina pants. And in Make Me Feel, Thompson plays Monáe's female love interest as the singer flits between flirting with a man and a woman.
Janelle Monae in the video clip for PYNK. Photo / Youtube
In an interview with The Guardian in February 2018, Monae said: "I'm about women's empowerment. I'm about agency. I'm about being in control of your narrative and your body. That was personal for me to even talk about: To let people know you don't own or control me and you will not use my image to defame or denounce other women."
Canadian singer Grimes also worked on the track, however she does not appear in the video.
