The music video for Red Dress by the band Dear Annie translates the emotional chaos of the song into a visual narrative about the complex relationship between a mother and her unwanted child. The red dress, which is a symbol of power, provocation, and self-definition in the song, becomes, in the video, a symbol of motherhood that is not idealized but marked by resistance, ambivalence, and inner struggle.
The female figure is not merely a seductress but a mother — imperfect, wounded, yet burdened by the weight of social expectations. Her red dress embodies menstruation, the blood of birth, stigma, and the consequence of a choice she was never given. She does not look at the child with affection but with distance; in it she sees the loss of freedom, of identity, perhaps even a future she never desired.
Through motifs of suppressed anger, forbidden maternal despair, and collective guilt, the video moves along the edge between reality and symbolism. It can be read as a veiled critique of abortion bans, a reflection on infanticide once seen as an “unnamed solution,” or as a portrayal of a psyche forced by society into a role it did not choose. (Source: Hannah Koselj Marušič)