When I first heard/saw Pink’s song/video “Stupid Girls” (see a clip or buy the whole thing), I thought it was a nice intervention against our celebrity-driven culture that infantilizes women. Looking at it as cultural criticism, however, I thought it didn’t force us to ask the tougher questions about why smart girls spend entire lifetimes running away from their intellect.

So it was one of those classic pop culture moments that I thought could stand on its own, without commentary. It was what is was — and that’s pretty good.

But over the last couple of weeks, as the popularity and radio play of the song has crested, a couple of critics have engaged the song in substantive ways — and they are worth noting.

What is ultimately most fascinating about Devin McKinney’s analysis in The American Prospect is his intriguing new approach to music criticism. Instead of simply asking the question that Pink’s song begs — what is the impact of Pink’s message on young girls? — he attempts to answer it, by reviewing the many homemade lip-sync videos that young girls have made and posted on YouTube.

He finds the girls’ interpretations mixed, but I believe he has tapped into a way in which critics can incorporate the response of fan culture into their own responses. Henry Jenkins would be proud.

McKinney also makes a compelling argument that Pink is saying something fairly profound about what our society values in women:

Pink?s song asks precisely the right question — are we going forward or back? — and spots the single salient detail in what seems to be no more than the latest pop style for girls. Namely, that vapidity and vacuity are not mere byproducts of stupid-girl style — they are key to its chic. Where competence and self-sufficiency were once considered essential to the pop-cultural female image, now the behavioral accessories are docility, ditziness, and a dazed willingness to spread — with maybe a dash of diva sass for tossing at some predatory ?ho. Next to Paris, Nicole, and the halter-hoisting legions of Girls Gone Wild, Charlie?s Angels look like models of womanly self-determination.

Oh, to be giddy and giggly, gawky and feathery, bony and brainless, as dim, limp, and inconsequential as a hologram! It?s the bottoming-out of the diva mentality: in contrast to the shrieking, phone-throwing harridan who is at least active, who sweats for her diamonds and furs, the undernourished, teddy-wearing, Roofie-doped princess has grown too sated with comfort and convenience to even spit on the peasantry. Stupid-girlism is diva arrogance sucking itself inward to nothingness.

Zoe Williams offers a corrective, though, to this unabashed praise for “Stupid Girls” in The Guardian. Writing partially in response to a Paris Hilton interview with Ellen DeGeneres in which Hilton took being called “stupid” as “flattery,” Williams attempts to negotiate more complicated ground:

I will always applaud Pink because I think she is basically a good egg, but I do not buy the notion that Paris Hilton is really stupid …. [T]here’s a reason, beyond psychopathy, that she seems so undisturbed by accusations of stupidity. Whether you are stupid or just choose to seem it, stupidity is very now. Or rather, it’s very passé to disapprove of stupid, which amounts to the same thing.

The conundrum, though, is that intelligent women are supposed to hate airheads. It is supposed to be a feminist position to hate airheads because airheads let the side down. The public and the media, therefore, respond to female stupidity in a variety of ways. There’s the kneejerk, Pink response (they’re so stupid!). There’s the Daily Mail response (they’re supposed to be role models, when in fact they’re all, whisper it, slags). There’s the woman/man of the world response (you go, girl! You ain’t so dumb, with a pay packet like that! If you’ve got it, flaunt it!). And there’s the sensible, well-meaning aunt response (these poor girls, the world is going to chew them up and spit them out).

None of which judgment and approbation applies to men. You might find men laughing at a stupid contemporary or, at the outside, voicing disapproval at his low IQ, but you would never — from real men, fictional, soap-opera men or pop men — get this sort of derision. A stupid man is like Joey from Friends — he means well, and we don’t hate him for his stupidity.

Plus: If, after watching Pink’s video, you yourself are looking for a representation of women you can be unabashedly proud of, please check out and support the “Real Hot 100” — a project of Feministing that is a response to Maxim’s yearly hotlist of women. And read editor Jessica Valenti’s commentary in today’s Guardian on why the “Real Hot 100″ matters.