Bella Poarch’s runaway hit, “Build-a-Bitch,” might possess a theoretically positive and empowered message about how women shouldn’t yield to the pressures constantly put upon them to be a certain way. But in practice—otherwise known as: visually—Poarch does not really adhere to the tenets put forth in her own lyrics based on the accompanying video. And who can blame her, what with needing to look her best for her legion of TikTok followers?
Not only a rip-off of The Weeknd and Ariana Grande’s visual concept for “Save Your Tears Remix,” “Build-a-Bitch” features a slew of “women” (or more like “dolls,” if you will, since they’re assembled) who are destined to be deemed “defective,” therefore chucked into the incinerator. Yet these women, including Poarch herself (carrying on the recent Olivia Rodrigo tradition of Filipina “cachet”—in other words, fetishism), look like perfect male fuck toys regardless of a sign above them declaring “defective.”
It would be different, of course, if Poarch was willing to take the plunge, go the distance and all those other cliché metaphors and platitudes if she wasn’t herself such a cliché…of conforming to male expectations of beauty while touting isms like, “This ain’t Build-a-Bitch/You don’t get to pick and choose” and “Boys are always playing dolls/Looking for thеir Barbie/They don’t look like Kеn at all.” She has a point there, for it must be admitted that there are far more unattractive men than there are women, which is really saying something since there are fewer men on this Earth.
Poarch also calls out the retro male mindset of “need[ing] someone who falls apart/So he can play Prince Charming/If that’s the kind of girl he wants.” You know, the classic “damsel in distress” who needs to be rescued all the time because she’s just too meek and dainty to function. And her tiny brain simply can’t compete with his “big” one. Hence, what “Build-a-Bitch” really seems to be about is Poarch’s own contempt for men (and she hasn’t even reached twenty-five yet) and their false sense of superiority rather than her alleged feelings of being hemmed in by the barrage of societal pressures with regard to “appearance”—further accented by the multibillion-dollar beauty industry.
An industry that banks on female insecurity as much as men do in terms of capitalizing on a woman’s vulnerability. For her Achilles’ heel from day one is the way she looks. It’s something that no girl can avoid having indoctrinated within her thanks to the system of patriarchy that’s been in place for centuries. One that thrives on making women come across as frivolous for their so-called obsession with looks. But if they are that way, it’s only because they’ve been programmed to be, like the fembots and playthings they’re still seen as. In this way, the factory portrayed in the “Build-a-Bitch” video is very representative indeed of a society that thrives on churning out mentally damaged women (in that so many are imbued with body dysmorphia)—but as long as they “look cute,” what does it matter if anything sinister is happening on the inside? You’re only “defective” if the signs show up on your body.
The fact that Poarch herself is a requisite “hot girl” fulfilling the pop star role makes it all the worse for those “ugly chicks” watching from behind the screen and actually receiving the opposite intention of information: that if Poarch sees herself as “hideous” by the male viewpoint, then what the fuck kind of prayer does the girl watching have for boosting her own self-esteem? Therefore, it only seems to feed a vicious cycle of insecurity. Like when that normal-sized friend complains to a larger friend about being “fat.”
So yes, unfortunately, Poarch couldn’t quite take her message all the way with the video in addressing some deep-seated and longstanding flawed ideals in relation to the body issues women are faced with on a daily basis. But there’s always a chance to go more full-tilt in a remix video… No one is saying she needs to pull a Naomi Watts in I Heart Huckabees (who still can’t make herself look all-out “moche” in a bonnet or with shit on her face), but there’s undeniably a missed opportunity for showcasing a truly diverse variety of beauty “styles” that could still be re-explored.
