According to Ratner, Myers was not comfortable with these scenes, as he felt it was too sexual and inappropriate; he even asked him to cut that particular shot. Madonna on the other hand, thought it was fun and convinced the director to keep it. The video ends with one of Powers' fantasies, him proclaiming "It's good to be me!" as Madonna playfully strokes his cheek. Author Georges Claude Guilbert wrote in his book, "Madonna as Postmodern Myth", that "Beautiful Stranger" denoted one of the series of looks reinvented by Madonna around that time, and was a "radical" change from the geisha look of her previous video for "Nothing Really Matters", released the same year. Matthew Rettenmund wrote in his "Encyclopedia Madonnica" that "Madonna probably gave very little thought the video" but he felt that it was better than being a "couple of steps above a clips compilation".