“Never was a Cornflake Girl”, the opening lines of Tori Amos’ 1994 song Cornflake Girl became an anthem for teenage rejects who felt that they didn’t fit in. Upon close inspection (aka I saw her live a couple of months ago and have been listening to her all my life) I feel there are a few elements of the song that can be studied. I’ll use a few headings in this post in order to summarise a few ideas and later bulletpoints to introduce some potential (future) topics. Also to make things a bit easier I’ll refer to the specific times in the music video’s and which version they are from.
The music video was released in two different versions a UK version and a US one. Both have similar images occurring throughout. The UK features what seems like Amos being brought to Oz but turns out to be hell. The US version follows Amos and a group of women traveling through an American wild.
Female Betrayal or Female empowerment?
In the below video, Amos gave some background to the song. She discusses female genital mutilation and how women in Africa were betrayed by her mother, grandmother etc. and forced to participate in the practice. Amos has previously cited Alice Walkers Possessing the Secret of Joy and its inclusion of the practice in the narrative as an influence. Amos has stated that she referred to untrustworthy/fake women as Cornflake Girls. In both versions of the music video, you can see instances where this is evident.
The US video opens with Amos driving a truck of women through what seems like a wasteland. What is interesting to note about this is one of them appears to be on a leash and they immediately start fighting (0:40 US). This is a good representation of the false women but also of female betrayal. By capturing and subjugating one of the women a clear commentary on women fighting is shown. In the UK version, this image of women fighting is also seen at 3:08 (and in the image at the beginning of this section ). Amos makes a commentary in this song on same-sex conflict. Society promotes females to fight each other if they are different if they aren’t a “Cornflake girl”.
At 3:11 in the US version, Amos is seen hitting herself, well attempting to play the melody of the piano on herself. This bodily percussion reminds me of the image of an internal struggle. Is this image a representation of societies view being fought with eternally? The women must rebel against the constructed femininity.
Amos does show this rebellion against constructed femininity in the music video in particular…wait for it…. the scene where the women hold the ceremony of cooking the man (2:27 US). Just this image itself of almost like primal dancing over this cooking man shows a rebellion against domesticity. The image I opened this blog with of the lipstick also can be read as a gesture of female empowerment. Seen in the US version at the same time as the cooking of the man, the image shows the transformation of an item seen as generally superficial and typically feminine into a weapon against masculinity.
Transcendentalism.
I often think of American transcendentalism in the music of Amos, her music often discusses the primality of nature. I might do a post in the future on her latest album Native Invader as Amos has explicitly said how the album was conceived as she was on a road trip through the mountains. This reminds me of the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson of exploring nature. In Cornflake Girl Amos sings repeatedly “Rabbit where’d you put the key girl?” in an interview Amos explains that Rabbit was a woman who lived out in the woods for most the year in nature (which you can see in the video interview with NME). This desire to achieve a connection can be seen at 3:35 (US, also in the below image) as she is seen reaching towards the other woman but cannot quite reach while the lyrics are sung at this time. I think it would be quite interesting to look at Amos’s feminine work in relation to transcendentalism and how they play off each other.
Overall I think there is so much that can be analyzed in this song and its accompanying videos but I am conscious already of the length of this post so I’m just going to use bullet points to show a few teasers of what would be interesting to look at.
- Intertextuality- the reference to Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy and Frank L. Baum’s The Wizard of Oz – It could be interesting to look at how these texts are used by Amos
- Capitalism – The use of the Cornflake brand – how does this represent society? (Fun Fact. Cornflake’s not knowing the negative connotation of the brand in the song released a series of cereal boxes with Amos’s face on it.
- Colonialism – Plays into the transcendental idea, both versions of the song feature images of the American wild. The UK version show figures of Puritan women next to Native women. It would be interesting to compare this with her other work such as Native Invader and Boys for Pele and see how culture influences femininity.
- And ultimately it’s a good song that you should listen to.
Works Cited.
And various videos are seen and linked above.
Is everything aok? 
I love that the Cornflake brand didn’t understand the song and chose to use it as promotion for their product. That’s hilarious. I really enjoyed this post— it’s cool to see the different music videos and to think about how music has such a connection to other literary and cultural ideas. You describe the song’s broader points, which was quite nice, and an interesting connection to Transcendentalism
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I have been waiting for a Tori post! I enjoyed your analysis of the song, especially the highlighting of the difference between the UK and US versions. Do you think the difference says something about the differing cultures and what can be expressed on either side?
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Personally I feel that this difference could in fact relate to the “selling” of the song. The UK version is very much more unusual and out there. I think the version difference might link to the American one being more accessible to the American audience and it kind of fits into the 90’s aesthetic more. Which is funny, as the whole point of the song rejects popular thought yet the video very much plays into it.
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