While driving back to my hometown this past weekend, listening to my favorite country music playlist, I became super hyper-aware of the lyrics of one of my favorite Megan Moroney songs. At first listen, I just always thought the song was about a girl wondering whether her ex’s new girlfriend thinks she’s prettier than her. After really listening to the lyrics, I realized that it’s really much deeper than that; it’s really about the way women can turn heartbreak into a competition that neither woman really asked to be a part of. Â
There is something painfully relatable about scrolling through the Instagram of the girl your ex is now with. We have all been there… You know you probably shouldn’t be doing it. You start comparing everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. “I’m Not Pretty” captures the exact spiral of analyzing everything down to her clothes, her life and the way she takes pictures. In the song, Megan imagines her ex’s new girlfriend scrolling through her Instagram and laughing with her friends about how she isn’t pretty. There’s this almost imagined rule of: she’s the new girlfriend, so she MUST have won. But what if that same girl is looking at Megan’s Instagram and thinking the exact same things? She could be comparing everything about herself to Megan and wondering whether her boyfriend’s ex was prettier or more interesting than she is. All of a sudden the competition looks a lot different.Â
One of the most interesting parts of the song is that so much of the insecurity comes from imagining what another woman thinks about you. Megan doesn’t actually know whether this girl is making fun of her, she just assumes it. We see a new relationship announcement and assume everything is perfect, or that Spring break trip was the best time.Â
My favorite way to interpret the song is to flip the perspective. We spend the entire song imagining the new girl laughing at Megan and being a mean girl. Maybe she’s looking at her Instagram thinking Why did he ever leave her? All of the sudden the girl who seemed like the winner becomes another girl trying to convince herself that she’s enough. If this just isn’t the perfect representation of the toxic space of social media I don’t know what is. Now listening to the song it almost makes me sad because honestly I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum. Next time you catch yourself scrolling or having a random post from high school getting liked from a random girl, please remember the competition is made up.