The Cognitive Construction of Girls' Power Concept in K-Pop

Duanyang Wu

School of English Studies, Xi'an International Studies University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710000, China

Keywords: Girl's Power, K-Pop, Commodification.

Abstract: The construction of girls' power within the K-pop industry has sparked critical debates over its expression of

female empowerment. While existing scholarship has examined the disadvantages of the K-pop industry's

operation, attention has been paid to systematic barriers is insufficient. This study analyzes the overall

construction of girls' power concept from the perspectives of the evolution trend, reflection on visual

performance, and lyrics narration. This study then systematically points out three existing obstacles in the

girls' power construction process: the paradoxical limited gender expression, the structural gender

asymmetries in creative decision-making hierarchies, and the capitalist interference that turns feminist

discourse into market-oriented commodities. Through critical discourse analysis, this study reveals how

patriarchal capitalism employs post-feminism and neoliberal logic to distort girls' core expression. Based on

this, the study proposes feasible suggestions to counter the barriers, including adjusting gender quotas,

deepening feminist expression, and getting rid of over-commodification, aiming to dismantle structural

barriers while preserving the transformative potential of feminist expression in the industry.

1 INTRODUCTION

Since the beginning of 21 century, South Korean

popular (K-pop) culture, including its music, TV

series, etc., has made a profound breakthrough in the

spreading process under the strategy of globalization.

The global success of K-pop culture has made it a

vivid reflection of South Korea's strong cultural soft

power (Lin &Rudolf, 2017). As an important

component of K-pop culture, girl groups go by the

growth of K-pop culture, developing with the pace

and context of globalization.

The concept of girl group has been deeply

influenced by the waves of feminism and the progress

of feminist movements, especially the third and

fourth wave, which advance the feminist agenda and

self-independent awareness. In this period, many

movements related to gender and sexual issue, such

as MeToo Movement, advocate fighting against

sexism, encouraging women to give voice to their

experience and self-identity, showing emphasis on

essential feminist values, influencing various aspects

of the contemporary condition, engaging femininity

in all social strata, including the construction of South

Korean idol group (Murphy, 2019 & Malinowska,

2020). The "Girl Power" concept within the girl group

has progressed to become one of the most important

core narratives in the process of K-pop cultural

exportation. From the bourgeoning girl-next-door

type female image of Girls' Generation to the

aggressive expression of female subjectivity reflected

by BLACKPINK, the K-pop industry has

systematically constructed a discourse system of

female empowerment through the combination of

music production, visual symbols, and performance

strategy. The cognitive construction of girls' power

concept has been built up, characterized by self

recognition, subversion of the traditional female

image, etc.

However, there are obstacles to the development

of the construction of girls' power concept. Due to the

operation system of the K-pop industry, such a

concept has a paradoxical nature against the

information that girls' power concept originally wants

to convey. The limited gender expression and

structural inequality within the K-pop industry,

alongside the commodified feminism, hinder the

construction and perception of magnificent girls'

power.

This study will analyze the cognitive construction

of girls' power concept within the K-pop context from

mainly three aspects: the construction of developing

girls' power, the obstacles that exist in the process of

330

Wu, D.

The Cognitive Construction of Girls’ Power Concept in K-Pop.

DOI: 10.5220/0014374200004859

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science (ICPLSS 2025), pages 330-335

ISBN: 978-989-758-785-6

development of the concept, and feasible suggestions

for future development.

2 THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE

DEVELOPING GIRLS' POWER

CONCEPT

The feminist movement under the guidance of

feminism has significantly promoted the subversion

of women's subjugated positions, private and social

alike, by exerting an impact on various aspects of

modern societies (Malinowska, 2020). The

developing concept of K-pop girls' power is deeply

influenced by the waves of the feminist movement,

especially the second, third and the latest fourth

waves.

2.1 Evolution Trend of Core Concept

The whole process of K-pop girl groups' evolution

can be divided into four development stages. The first

generation was from the 1990s to the early 2000s, the

second generation was from the middle of the 2000s

to the early 2010s, the third generation was from

2010s to the year of 2020, and the latest fourth

generation refers to the groups which are launched

after 2020. Each generation's interpretation of girls'

power and the way of representing is quite different

from each other.

The core concept of the first generation still stays

on the construction of the previous traditional female

image, with the core concept of extreme sweetness

and innocence, emphasizing being sweet and

beautiful enough but without aggressiveness. With

the influence of the second wave of feminist

movement which challenge the component element

of gender roles and women's sexuality and aimed to

relax the social restriction of femininity, the second

generation has tried to add some special

characteristics to the traditional female image of the

first generation, emphasizing variation and

differentiation elements in each girl group's member's

image building (Malinowska, 2020). For example,

while perpetuating the sweet style of the first

generation, "Gee", one of the songs of the girls'

Generation, has added the characters of a

mischievous girlfriend. 2NE1 tried to provoke the

gender limitation by showing images with queer

elements like heavy smoky eyes. When stepping into

the third generation, which is deeply influenced by

the third and fourth wave of feminist movement that

emphasize the awareness of being independent and

appreciation of essential feminist value, more direct

expression of feminism and more drastic and

controversial style appears, emphasizing the diverse

and novel interpretation and expression of the concept

of girls' power (Malinowska, 2020). For example,

BLACKPINK insists on the strong aggressiveness of

"girl crush" style. The latest fourth generation

diverges on the basis of the existing pluralistic

expression of the third generation. For example, (G)I-

DLE insists the concept of speaking up for females

should spare no effort by directly and strongly

fighting against the standardization of females. The

overall trend is the transformation from the traditional

female image to the subversive style that breaks the

label and limitation used to shackle females.

2.2 Reflection on Visual Performance

From the perspective of semiotics, huge changes can

be found from the first generation to the fourth

generation girl group, representing the symbolic

meaning behind visual language. S.E.S's "I'm Your

Girl" and BLACKPINK's "Kill This Love" are

chosen to show a strong contrast between the

innocent and sweet image of the previous generation

and the subversively aggressive female image created

by the later generation.

In the performance of "I'm Your Girl", members

of S.E.S. wore the same series of sweet uniforms,

showing the innocent and pure image of a schoolgirl,

symbolizing the social expectation of girlish sense.

As a semiotic representation of collectivism, school

uniform indicates the submission to social restriction.

The Macaron aesthetic features soft colors echoing

societal demand for harmless cure, expressing a

protege image under the gaze of society.

BLACKPINK's style is different from the

previous generation's soft and innocent style. In the

performance of "Kill This Love", the costume of each

member is militarized and differentiated, contain

semiotic meaning of power, reconstructs the female

body into gears of war. The militarized costumes

reflect the declaration of war to the patriarchy,

showing defensive aggression and creating a

dangerous but charming visual sense of oppression.

The strategy of color-using for the stage emphasize

the collision of conflict color, creating tearing

sensation, putting female's power into the situation of

destruction and rebirth, with members' triangle

formation in the centre of the stage, gaining the

dominant power instead of the object position under

gaze (Chang, 2020).

The visual performance style of girl groups has

changed from being innocent for gaining develop

The Cognitive Construction of Girls’ Power Concept in K-Pop

331

space, which finally became standardized production

of cultural industry, to using the violent aesthetic to

split sugar-coating and shifting the stage into

battlefield of feminism declaration. While

BLACKPINK tramples the roses at the beginning of

their MV, they also destroy the pinky fantasy of

previous generation.

2.3 Reflection on Lyrics and Narrative

Construction

The lyrics and narrative construction of girls' power

can be reflected on the topic like self-love, anti-

patriarchy, emotional independence, etc. The change

from the first generation to the fourth generation is

obvious through the analysis of language style of

lyrics, the content of songs, the narrative theme, etc.

"Gee" of Girls' Generation and (G)I-DLE's "Tomboy"

are presented to show the gap between the previous

and latest female expression.

In Girls' Generation's "Gee", the language style

features passive voice and vocabularies of

paedomorphism, as well as the metaphor rhetoric, all

form the passiveness of female when she is in

romantic relationship. The narrative lyrics put "me"

as an object under male gaze, like the metaphor

rhetoric comparing female to doll, "staring at you like

doll on the music box", which objectify female,

indicating the unequal power structure in romantic

relationship. The theme of "Gee" focus on sweet

sorrow caused by unrequited love, in which female

try to attract crush's attention by performing cute, and

male play the role of a deliverer who give the young

girl continuous motivation to pursue love, in which

process love is the eternal goal for the whole life of

female.

Deeply influenced by the third and fourth wave of

feminist movement, especially the MeToo Movement

which emphasize the obligation for each individual to

promote the achievement of gender equality and

construct a society that is fair and equal for both

genders, (G)I-DLE's music works are total subversion

of the previous kind of traditional narration with the

aim to speak up for female (Murphy, 2019).

"Tomboy" is one of the most typical songs. The

language usage in this song characterized by the use

of swearing and slang expression, alongside the

active voice and rhetoric of irony. Provocative words

like "Yes I'm a freak" provoke the linguistic

regulation of female under the honorific language

system of South Korea. All the actions in the song are

narrated from the first person perspective, for

example "Ye I'll be the Tomboy, I don't wanna play

this ping pong, I would rather film a Tik Tok, I like

dancing I love ma friends, sometimes I swear without

cigarettes, I like to eh on drinking whiskey, I won't

change it what the hell", expressing subjective

intention of female. As "tomboy" is criticized in

tradition time period, here it is reconstructed to be the

symbol of glory. Destruction of traditional gender

image also involves, reflected by misappropriation of

male quality that traditional male-quality semiotic

such as smoking and tattooing are repossessed by

female. For the narration aspect, "Tomboy" use

fragmentation instead of linear structure. At the

beginning, the identity of tomboy is directly declared

without narrative foreshadowing. Several scenes such

as destroying the wedding ceremony and street

graffiti are fragmented, instead of being connected

within a complete storyline, reflecting subversive

spirit.

The sweet "Gee" has imprisoned female in the

fake romantic fairy tell, but the declaration of

"Tomboy" ruins the pinky shackles. It's not only

about the evolution of girl group's narration, but also

the provoking process of turning female collective

from the object to the subject that is empowered by

self (Varianna & Kusumawardani, 2024).

3 OBSTACLES

Although the construction of girls' power has made

breakthrough achievement, from the traditional

regulated innocent female image to various styles of

confident female, obstacles exist in this provoking

process. With the raising of the feminism

consciousness in South Korea, demand for producing

idol groups which can break the traditional gender

performance has been surging, the girl power concept

becomes a strategy for marketing differentiation by

attracting fans' admiration and appreciation by

showing special personality of confidence,

independence and great power and strength. Its core

is about breaking the traditional tender and innocent

image of female and present rebelliousness and

neutral charm which can be regarded as subversion of

traditional one. The root of the rise of girl power is

oriented by market profit, which means the idol

groups are still under control of South Korea's

patriarchal management. Although members of girl

groups appear to be cool and independent, seem to

subvert traditional image of females, they are still

incorporate with demands of market which is

dominated by male. To a large extent, the

construction of girl power concept probably cannot be

regarded as empowerment of feminism, in the

contrast, it is actually a production of

ICPLSS 2025 - International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science

332

commodification of feminism. The main obstacles

can be concluded as limited gender expression,

structural inequality and over-commodified

feminism.

3.1 Limited Gender Expression

The girls' power's construction reflected on girl

groups' performance contains paradox. Their

expression of girls' power seems to challenge the

traditional regulation of female, however, it's still

restrained within patriarchal aesthetic system. As

Gooyong Kim states, the nature of frequent design of

pelvic thrusts and body rolls is strategic pander to

male gaze. Although the expression has been packed

as girls' power, the visual language still indicate the

logic that sexualized female body can be used as

changeable commodity (Kim, 2018).

Paradox exists in the tension between female

expression of girls' power and the commodification.

In many MV and stage performances of girl groups,

the costumes reflect dual nature of military semiotic

and sexiness. The military semiotic represent strength

and power is reconstructed by sexualization,

becoming commodified violent aesthetics (Zahra,

2024) . The camera movements have frequently

moved from the panorama which present the overall

dancing design to the close-up view that focus on

certain part of member's body, thus the expression of

power and strength is weakened with the emphasize

on materialization of female body. The lyrics and

narration are also empty, using the advocacy of

emotional independence as commercial gimmick,

reducing the issue of gender discrimination and critics

to the superficial declaration of sentiments. Such

narrative perspective has fallen into the trap of

postfeminism, using personal choice to cover the

collective struggle, lacking the exploration of

complex female-dominant subjectivity.

3.2 Structural Inequality

The imbalance of gender power in the K-pop music-

production system directly causes the lack of female-

perspective narration. The vertical integration of K-

pop industry has degraded and marginalized female

producer to technical executor instead of the

subjectivity of narration (Kim, 2018). Many

represented female expression of girl power is in

accordance with male's imagination instead of true

expression from female subjectivity (Dimri, 2023).

Most entertainment companies within K-pop

industry insist male-dominated concept-decision

layer, thus female perspective is excluded from the

early stage of creation (Jonas, 2021). Male-dominated

filter exists in the process of designing core concept

and creating narrative lyrics. Both the concept, lyrics

and narration should follow the gender compliance

check, kicking out the elements that contain the

concept of true feminism which is not expected to

appear in the market (Sun & Paje' et al, 2023). Even

if female get the chance to design her own concept

and create female-perspective narration, the process

would be hindered by the clearance from male

supreme executive.

The tension exists between female creating right

and male's power of review. Sometimes a female

producer's original inspiration of comes from the

criticism of sexualization, considering marketing

risk, male production manager may probably asks her

to revise, the final version may use metaphorical

expression to replace the direct critique. Male's

interfere erodes the antagonism. Female producer has

to pass the concept clearance by changing radical

narration into digestible cultural commodity. True

expression of feminism and girls' power is diluted

through this whole process.

3.3 Commodified Feminism

K-pop industry shifts expression of feminism and

girls' power into commercialized branding elements,

realizes the compilation and conversion of

controversial narration. As Dimri points out, the

nature of feminist expression is marketplace

feminism, concealing structural oppression by

purchasing the fantasy of female empowerment

(Dimri, 2023).

In both MV and stage performance, commercial

elements appear frequently. Members of girl groups

are always sponsored by luxury brand, wearing the

clothes, shoes, gloves, bags offered by sponsorship.

This phenomenon reflects the visual language of

neoliberal feminism, indicating that female power

need to be realized by consuming action (Sun & Paje'

et al, 2023). The entertainment company and the

famous brand may hype female idols' fantastic

performances as redefining female's power, covering

the nature of combining expression of feminism and

female's power with profit-oriented marketing

strategy.

The commodified logic is incorporate with

affective capitalism. The fan's agreement with female

empowerment has been concreted into the album

sales, sales of concert tickets and ambassadorship of

luxury brand (Sun & Paje' et al, 2023). The

entertainment companies smoothly change the

expression of feminism into fans' cognition, directly

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getting large amount of profits through fans' fondness

with their idols and consuming of feminism-

embodied products. Fans are encouraged to

repeatedly purchase large number of album, using

money to promote the ranking of their idols, as this

kind of actions can prove the value of female idols.

Fans have accepted the point that purchasing the

cultural products is equal to supporting female's

value. In this process, the real meaning and

significance of the expression of feminism and

female's power is diluted by the commodification

operation to a large extent, as the nature of feminism

is distorted to be commodified instead of the original

meaning of relating to social gender issue.

4 FEASIBLE SUGGESTIONS FOR

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

As obstacles exist in the construction of girls' power,

some ways to break the obstacles and promote further

development of girls' power concept and feminist

expression are needed.

4.1 Adjusting Gender Structure in

Producing Process

Excellent female music producers are ought to be

encouraged to join in the productive process,

especially the discussion and decision of core concept

and the choice of narrative perspective. The meaning

and expression of female power is supposed to be

patriarchal framework to restrict female expression.

Girl groups' member who is considered mature in

thought and has high artistic quality can be promoted

to cooperate with independent female musician or

director, creating music production from female

perspective without male's interfere.

The existing fixed producing model is supposed

to be deconstructed. Before making a debut and being

a true idol, female trainees should be exposed to

various categories lessons, including gender study

theory, usage of arrangement software, audio

engineering, arrangement principle, etc., instead of

only focusing on performance lesson such as dancing

and singing as well as facial expression management.

4.2 Deepening Female's Empowerment

Expression

It is a paradox that girl groups' members all wear

figure-highlighted costumes such as miniskirt, crop

top, tube top, hot pant, black silk stockings, long

boots, high heels, etc., while their are singing lyrics

that express the opinion that girl should be

confidence, girl should not be limited by others'

thought, etc. While they are expressing girls'

confidence, their costumes at the same time highlight

the beautiful figure and limit their free actions, which

is contrary to the idea their performance want to

show. The clothes girl groups' members wear on the

stage should be improved with the premise of

comfort, instead of deformed aesthetic level, which

serve the male gaze and patriarchal aesthetic to a

certain extent.

The female expression should not be limited at

superficial level, it is ought to go further. The

awareness of girls' power is not supposed to be

narrowed down to the level of dealing with romantic

relationship, simply follow the logic of falling in love,

being betrayed, awakening and revenging. The

narration should go beyond the loving issue to the

social issue, such as domestic abuse, workplace

gender discrimination, sexism concept, etc. There is

no need to metaphorize the direct critique to gender

discrimination. Gender issue is of great significance

at socio-cultural level, thus it deserve people's

attention and awareness.

4.3 Breaking out of Condition of

Commodification

In order to get out of the limitation of over-

commodification of female expression, non-profit

action should be taken. Non-profit feminist art-

creation monetary fund is supposed to be established

and supported by the government to encourage

female music producer to do non-profit creation

which can have wider spread than profit-oriented

production, letting more and more female gain the

awareness of feminism and girls' power.

Girl groups' female expression of girls' power

should be related to social or even global issue.

Through this process, true expression of girls' power

is reflected and realized.

5 CONCLUSION

This study critically examines the cognitive

construction of the girls' power concept within the K-

pop industry, tracing its evolution across different

generations of girl groups, analyzing visual and

lyrical narratives, and identifying systemic barriers to

authentic feminism expression. The research

highlights the progressive shift from traditional

ICPLSS 2025 - International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science

334

innocent female image to more assertive, subversive

representations. However, these empowerment

narratives are constrained by patriarchal capitalism,

which distorts feminism expression into marketable

commodities. Three key obstacles emerge:

paradoxical gender expression that sexualizes female

bodies under the guise of empowerment, male-

dominated hierarchies that marginalize female

creative agency, and neoliberal commodification that

reduces feminism to a profitable branding strategy.

To counter these challenges, this study proposes

systematic reforms, including increasing female

participation in production decisions-making process,

diversifying and deepening narratives beyond

romantic tropes to address systemic gender issues,

and establishing non-profit platforms to decouple

feminism expression from profit motives. These

suggestions aim to reclaim the radical potential of

girls' power as a tool for societal transformation rather

than commercial exploitation.

Looking beyond K-pop industry, this analysis

underscores the tension between cultural industries

and feminist movements globally. As K-pop

continues to shape transnational perceptions of

gender, its contradictions mirror broader struggles in

neoliberal societies, where empowerment rhetoric

often masks persistent inequalities. Future research

could use intersectional approaches, incorporating

race, class, as well as queer theory, to deepen

understanding of how globalized pop culture both

reflects and challenges societal norms. Ultimately,

the study calls for a reimagining of cultural

production, which prioritizes authenticity over

marketability, fostering genuine solidarity in the fight

for gender equity.

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