Where all my bad girls at

Cosmopolitan femininity through racialised appropriations in K-pop

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7529964
AutoresJoyhanna Yoo (0000-0002-4857-5693, University of California, Santa Barbara, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen15
Número1
Páginas11-41
Fecha de publicación2021-03-25
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaGender and Language (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1747-6321 • E-ISSN: 1747-633X
EditorialEquinox Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1558/genl.18565
OpenAlexW3138563458
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas17
Referencias citadas64

This article examines the polyvalence of racial(ised) representations in K-pop performances. The analysis of K-pop star CL’s (2013) song and video ‘Nappeun gijibae’ (‘The bad girl’) demonstrates how the artist projects an assertive femininity by embodying and localising the Bad Bitch: a sexually agentive figure of womanhood from US hip hop. CL’s use of African American English and conventionalised hip hop tropes helps resignify gijibae, a pejorative Korean term for women. By shifting between decontextualised styles invoking a different time and place, CL is able to build a kind of chronotopic capital that transforms fragmented styles into an empowered cosmopolitan femininity. However, although CL’s performance challenges Korean gendered norms in its use of local linguistic resources, her selective appropriations of US Black and Chicanx cultural signifiers reproduce narrow images of racialised femininities and reify a hierarchy of valuation along lines of gender and race

Aesthetics · Art · Femininity · Pejorative · Political science · Sociology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Gender Studies · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Music History and Culture · Psychology