CL's "Hello Bitches" and Post-Feminist Body Representation

Introduction: Disrupting the K-Pop Formula

In her music video "Hello Bitches," CL manages to escape the constrictions of the typical K-pop girl group — the familiar rotation of sexy, innocent, seductive, and chic — by asserting a more aggressive, masculine-mimicking (gangsta-rap-mimicking, to be precise), hyper-sexual attitude of domineering energy. Yet in doing so, she falls into a separate trope: not the trope of the cute or sexy K-pop artist, but rather the trope of the strong, feminist, sexually assertive pop artist — a trend represented in various modes by figures such as Nicki Minaj, Iggy Azalea, Beyoncé, and Lady Gaga.

CL's performance channels the swagger of chauvinistic hip-hop artists, who wave, strut, and bounce in front of the camera while surrounded by their posse and a cadre of scantily clad women. For CL, her posse is that cadre of women — though here they are dressed in tight leather one-piece swimsuit-cut gear, flaunting cleavage, derrieres, and snarls. The women do not smile seductively for the viewer; instead, they grimace and raise their lips as though sneering at anyone who assumed this would be just another K-pop song. The tone set by the video and its choreography is that CL is "street tough," and that her gang of girls would sooner run you over with their attitudes than give you the time of day.

CL manages to flip off the camera within seconds of appearing on screen, bouncing in hip-hop video fashion while surrounded by a circle of similarly dressed women who appear to be conducting some sort of feminist ritual through a tribal, choreographic dance. It is a sensationalistic presentation of what post-feminism has come to represent today — a suggestion of post-feminist identity within a paradigm of gaudy, over-the-top performance, in which "being tough" means strutting, swaggering, and sneering like tattooed, hip-hop gangsta male counterparts.

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