Montreal-based electronic dream-pop band, Braids, released a new music video for their track “Miniskirt” off their latest album, Deep in the Iris. The lyrics to the song convey the lengths to which women have had to deal with misogyny and double-standards: from being called damaging names like “slut” or “whore” (for which there are no male equivalents) to being reduced to objects of male desire.
The music video, directed by Kevan Funk, opens with vocalist Raphaelle Standall-Preston singing inside a greenhouse filled with endless rows of flowers. Funk tells Pitchfork that he wanted to delve into “a historical relationship to nature, in terms of the patriarchal and imperial societal impulse to control, conform and dominate.” Standall-Preston and the flowers are effective parallels to draw: both are naturally free, but are restricted and turned into objects of beauty by artificial and controlled environments. The video takes a hopeful turn when Standall-Preston finally gets the chance to run away into a forest, where she dances as a symbol of newfound freedom.
