CL's "Hello Bitches" and the Post-Feminist Representation of the Body
In the music video by CL entitled "Hello Bitches," CL has managed to escape the constriction of the typical K-pop girl group (sexy, innocent, seductive, chic) by asserting a more aggressive, masculine-mimicking (gagsta-rap-mimicking to be exact), hyper-sexual attitude of domineering vibes; yet, in doing so, she has fallen into another and separate trope -- not the trope of the cute/sexy K-pop artist but rather the trope of the strong, feminist, sexually assertive/aggressive pop artist (a trend represented in various modes by others such as Nicki Minaj, Iggy Azalea, Beyonce, Lady Gaga). CL's performance in the video channels the swagger of chauvinistic hip-hop artists, who wave and strut and bounce in front of the camera while surrounded by their posse and/or cadre of scantily clad women. For CL, her posse is the cadre of women -- but here they are donned in tight leather one-piece swimsuit-cut gear, flaunting cleavage, derrieres, and snarls (the ladies do not smile seductively for the viewer but rather grimace and raise their lips as though sneering at the viewer for thinking this would be just another "K-pop" song). The tone set by the video and its choreography is that CL is "street tough," that her gang of girls would just as soon run you over with their attitudes than they would give you the time of day. CL manages to flip off the camera within seconds of arriving on screen, as she bounces in hip-hop video fashion, surrounding by a circle of similarly dressed girls, who appear to be conducting some sort of feminist spirit via a tribal/ritualistic dance. It is a sensationalistic presentation of what Feminism has come to today -- a suggestion of post-feminism within a paradigm of gaudy, over-the-top women who imagine that "being tough" means strutting, swaggering and sneering like their tattooed, hip-hop gangsta male counterparts.
In some ways, the video challenges the constrictions of identity of the genre codes of K-pop, but in others it reproduces and reinforces them. One cannot separate the music from the video or the message from the performance. The "medium is the message" as Marshall McLuhan has noted.[footnoteRef:1] In other words, the visual representation and the audio both convey messages that have an effect on the viewer. The visual content is still rooted in the K-pop paradigm: the video consists of scantily clad young women (the majority of whom, were they not snarling throughout, would be considered attractive); to downplay or challenge the K-pop base, however, the video highlights the toughness of the girls by putting their hair in long dreadlocks (dyed pink and purple to signify femininity); their makeup is heavy and bold (to indicate strength of personality, courage, and commitment to a sort of no-fear philosophy of life); and their outfits are typically K-pop sexy (though they fall to the extreme edge, representing more of a dominatrix version of sexuality than the usual sweet but seductive, innocent yet suspicious, broken-hearted display of the standard K-pop band representation). The point of the CL video is to command: it is to upset the standard, which to some degree it does, though it also relies upon the standard in order to set up its motif of flaunting itself so gaudily. The dance moves of CL and her girl group are hypnotic, fast, angry, sexualized and full of angst -- but they are still just a variation on a theme -- the Asian-as-sex-object theme that nearly every K-pop video utilizes for effect. [1: McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media, critical edition (Berkeley, California: Gingko Press, 2013), 1.]
Thus, CL's video may seem revolutionary to some, but by relying upon feminine aggression and gangsta-style mimicry, it relegates itself to a trope that is unoriginal, as flat and stale as its sugary-sweet polar opposite, and does nothing to really expand the genre of K-pop music video artistry.
In this sense, it could be that CL represents the image of post-feminism -- but then again, as Rosalind Gill points out, it is difficult for scholars to arrive at any agreement as to what that term actually means.[footnoteRef:2] Gill makes the claim that postfeminism is "best understood as a distinctive sensibility, made up o a number of interrelated themes" such as the idea that "femininity is a bodily property" (CL certainly demonstrates this notion) among others.[footnoteRef:3] CL's music video does maintain a post-feminist aura, if one is to use Gill's definition in order to understand the term. Sexuality is...
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