Six years ago, in November of 2014, a user who went by the name of “That Poppy” uploaded her first YouTube video entitled “Poppy Eats Cotton Candy”. This was just the beginning of a series of very strange and unusual videos that would be uploaded to the channel and eventually went viral. I was in high school at the time, and I remember my peers talking about the “creepy Poppy videos”. Now, “Poppy” has created a music career out of her enigma of a YouTube channel; but the girl who once dressed in light pastel colors for each and every strange and unusual video that got uploaded, has now taken on a tougher and darker aesthetic. For my fourteenth post, I will be analyzing the song “So Mean” by Poppy.
The song begins with a repeat of the main lines of the chorus: “How did she get so mean?” then the first verse begins.
“Operating freely from another, my head and my heart hate each other. Can you keep it a secret? Keep it undercover, everyday I wake up, it’s a struggle”
“Love me when I’m under your spell, Hate me when I’m giving you hell. Judge me till you’re blue like you love to do, you taught me how to hate myself, yuck. Now she hates everything, how did she get here? How did she get so mean?”
The second verse:
“Dirt is all up in my wounds, on my knees begging for the truth. Ask me which side I am gonna choose, whatever side is without you”
“She couldn’t ever feel a thing, she couldn’t hear herself think, how she hates everything, how did she get so mean?”
The repeating chorus of “how did she get so mean” gets interrupted near the end of the song when you hear Poppy speak in a very light, bubbly, and naïve tone “How did I get here?” before she resumes to singing “how did she get so mean” until the song ends.
I think these lyrics are in typical Poppy-fashion of attempting to confuse the audience and beg them to question who Poppy is. This song seems to be a perfect insight into the divide between men and women in a heterosexual relationship when it ends badly.
Poppy describes herself as being changed in a negative, cold, and dark way because of the actions of another in romantic relationship. Poppy is known to identify as heterosexual, and is engaged to underground rapper Ghostemane currently. Given this information, it can be assumed that the past ex who changed Poppy to become “so mean” is a male. Poppy delivers the message that sometimes the person you used to love is the person who can strip away your innocence and happiness: a view that is commonly demonstrated by other heterosexual women in the music industry (and beyond).
When looking into Poppy’s official Instagram, there is a noticeable difference between her image when she first went viral on the internet, and who she expresses herself as now. As previously stated, Poppy emerged onto the internet in pastels and skirts, with long blonde hair and long feminine lashes. Now, her Instagram is almost entirely black and white, with some pops of color like shades of red here and there. She still expresses herself in very feminine ways, such as dresses, skirts, makeup, and long hair, but she has given everything a darker, heavier twist. She incorporates a lot of influence from the metal-rock scene, which is a genre that is very male-influenced since it takes on very masculine associated traits such as more aggressive, forceful, tough, and dominant.
Overall, it appears Poppy has been able to script a new aesthetic and representation for herself that has heavily impacted her gender identity. Although she is no longer the bright pastel-pink Poppy she was when she first appeared on YouTube, she has re-written herself to be a stone-cold, fierce standing, and forceful female. Although she might have changed for reasons relating to her romantic relationships with the opposite gender, she has come out of it stronger than before and ready to wield this representation as a result.
Shared by: Em von der Ruhr
Image Credit: https://www.instagram.com/impoppy/