The song “Prom Queen” was released on August 10th, 2018 by Lili Trifilio, who uses the name Beach Bunny, for her band. Trifilio began releasing music on her own in 2015, and began releasing music with her current band in 2017. None of Beach Bunny’s previous songs had reached 50 million streams on Spotify, but Prom Queen was a breakthrough. As of April 27th, 2022 the song has 218,116,371 streams, more than quadrupling her previous songs!
The song addresses common teenage struggles of wanting to be thin, in general, and in this instance for the upcoming dance, prom. Trifilio sings about the social pressures of being thin, and placing too much weight on the actual weight of yourself. The song blew up on Tiktok, which is no coincidence considering Tiktok is a social media platform by majority used by the teenager/young adult community. The song resonated with many teenage users, who posted videos relating to the lyrics. The sound has been used 105,200 times as of April 27th, 2022.
Trifilio starts the song out with the line: “Shut up, count your calories” already alluding to her struggling with body images. As the song progresses, we get more detail, “Wish I was like you, blue-eyed blondie, perfect body” and “I was never cut out for prom queen” she explains how she isn’t stick thin so the public would never choose her to be prom queen.
She then starts talking about how she feels like she has to be thin for boys to like her. She expresses that through the lines “If I’m pretty, will you like me?” Following with “They say, “Beauty makes boys happy”. This is a common and such a sad societal norm that I think directly connects to the Fat studies we did towards the end of February. Specifically, the conversation we had in class relating to the Jezebel article about the history of deodorants and how it relates to diets.
Just like advertisements made women feel like they had to wear deodorant to be attractive, and appeal to sexual partners, advertisements and media have done the same thing for body weight. The advertisers have invented a problem, not being stick-thin, in order to sell products, such as diet meal plans, or waist trainers, but in doing so, they’ve made a profitable income but also damaged our generation and so many to come. Teenagers are reached within the song prom queen, but people of all ages are so concerned with being thin in order to attract a partner, when in reality, by feeding into this, we are letting the advertisers win and profit.
Trifilio closes out the song talking about how she is starving herself and the final lines read “They say beauty is pain, you’ll only be happy if you look a certain way. I wanna be ok. I wanna be ok”. Trifilio wants to be comfortable in her own skin so badly, but because society tells her she must look a certain way, she is unsatisfied.
Lili, Trifilio. “Beach Bunny- Prom Queen (Official Video).” Youtube, Beach Bunny, December 31, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc6SSu5pnHw.
Kot, Greg. “Meet Chicago’s Newest Rising Band Beach Bunny.” Chicago Tribune, 5 Feb. 2020, https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/greg-kot/ct-ent-beach-bunny-0209-20200206-te2hfolpy5hxtaa3cei3st7gru-story.html.