Where all my bad girls at

Cosmopolitan femininity through racialised appropriations in K-pop

Bibliographic Data

ID7529964
AuthorsJoyhanna Yoo (0000-0002-4857-5693, University of California, Santa Barbara, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume15
Issue1
Pages11-41
Publication date2021-03-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGender and Language (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1747-6321 • E-ISSN: 1747-633X
PublisherEquinox Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1558/genl.18565
OpenAlexW3138563458
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited64

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