Melanie Martinez’s “Strawberry Shortcake” deals with a lot of different subjects, all related to the sensuality and body-type ideologies of girls. On a grander scale, it deals with the issue of harassment against females in general. And basically, what Melanie is saying is that women are compelled to make themselves sensually appealing, even going to great lengths to do so.  This is particularly in regards to trying to achieve popular notions of beauty. 

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Also they see that men like it when they dress a certain way or if certain body parts are bigger than average. Yet despite making these efforts, they don’t want to be pestered by men. However, the way the system is structured is such that, if harassment were to occur, the woman would get blamed for being attractive as opposed to say men being educated not to harass women. 

And the title alludes to the idea of men perceiving such women, basically, as a snack. So what the singer is ultimately expressing is that even if a woman makes an overt effort to attract men, she should not be blamed if they ultimately do something unethical to her in response. Thus the subliminal idea being put forth is that feeling attractive is more important to women than actually being accosted by men.

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This song was produced by Michael Keenan.

He also co-wrote the song along with Emily Warren and Martinez herself.

This track is featured on Melanie Martinez’s album “K-12”, which came out on 6 September 2019. Melanie didn’t release it as a single. As a matter of fact, she didn’t release any of the tracks of “K-12” as a proper single.