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...

There is a kind of self-discipline about the dancers' performance, which suggests an overly-strong confidence that borders on farce (but the point appears to be that CL and her posse are women who do not take any nonsense from anyone). The "shift from objectification to subjectification" that Gill speaks of does not quite ring true in this sense (or really in any sense) as the girls remain an object of desire -- a subject of the "male gaze"[footnoteRef:4] -- even as they project sexual desire and a sense of seeking conquest onto the viewer (so objectification and subjectification are never really separate or without the other). Nonetheless, there is a clearly distinct sensibility that is evident in the CL music video -- but it is, to be fair, a trope that is not really reaching for originality as much as it is for shock effect. [2: Rosalind Gill, "Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility," European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 10, no. 2 (2007), 147.] [3: Rosalind Gill, "Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility," European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 10, no. 2 (2007), 147.] [4: Mulvey, L. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen, vol. 16, no. 3(1975): 6.]
But this is nothing surprising, either, as Michael Unger notes: "the K-pop girl group music video is a paradox of (re)presentation" -- the performers are celebrated and empowered, as Unger states, but at the same time they are "objectified and reduced to a commodity of idealized beauty."[footnoteRef:5] What CL at least manages to do is to shift that sense of "idealized beauty" towards a more masculine display of gratuitousness, swagger, and cheap street toughness (bordering on images of thuggishness): the women in CL's video are not simply sex objects (even though they channel a kind of Amazonian sexuality -- a fierceness that resonates within the dominatrix fetishistic genre of sexual tropisms); they are also sex seekers and sex dominators. They display through their dance routine, sneers, and gestures that they control sex: for them, sex is not something that is for the male gaze; sex is for them and them alone. It is an assertion of sexual power -- but that does not mean they are no longer objectifying themselves; they are -- and their costumes say as much. A woman who does not want to objectify herself covers herself in a veil, head to toe. These women bare almost everything -- and they do it with a tongue-in-cheek farcical tone of disgust for the "lesser" women who bare it all out of a desire to attract the male gaze. CL's posse suggests that it wants to attract the male gaze only so it can crush it -- or dominate it, sexually. The constriction by which other, more cutesy-pie K-pop girl groups are constricted is not in force in CL's video. CL is essentially breaking free of the "cute" trope and taking on a more sexually-militant feminist trope. [5: Michael Unger, "The Aporia of Presentation: Deconstructing the Genre of K-pop Girl Group Music Videos in South Korea." Journal of Popular Music Studies, vol. 27, no. 1 (2010): 25.]

Indeed, Unger notes that "several K-pop girl groups manage to escape [the cute girl] constriction, as evidenced by the virtuosity of CL in her group 2NE1."[footnoteRef:6] In other words, Unger supports the finding of Gill that some K-pop groups are able to assert a new image or representation of feminism that does not represent the normative depiction of femininity. The "virtuosity" of CL's group is established by the radical, assertive, distinctive and hyper-realized fashion and aggressiveness with which the females chart their sexual instinct, sexual self-confidence, sense of body power, and desire to dominate sexually. There is no shame or sense of "playing" by this group: they ladies are transparent, hardline, militant, deliberate and purposeful. [6: Michael Unger, "The Aporia of Presentation: Deconstructing the Genre of K-pop Girl Group Music Videos in South Korea." Journal of Popular Music Studies, vol. 27, no. 1 (2010): 28.]

In short, CL's music video is a post-feminist representation of the body that breaks through the prior constrictions binding other K-pop groups, who must be "pretty" and sensual in their movements in order to cater to the male gaze. CL's body image is only conscious of the male gaze in the sense that it intends to trap and use the male -- not the other way around. CL's posse is equally snarky and sneering in their demeanor, suggesting that the post-feminist decorum is one that is wild,…