The inspiration for Dana Dentata's latest music video comes from a viral YouTube clip of Eliza Ibarra, called "Do You Like Me Now?" Part feminist video essay, part performance art piece, the clip sees Ibarra mockingly attempting to embody all the things she thinks "guys like in a girl." Throughout the course of the video, the soft-spoken tween grows increasingly bug-eyed and manic as she delivers some objectively pretty funny one-liners like "Whats 2+2? GONORRHEA!" before devolving into a lisping muttering mess.
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"I saw the 'Do You Like Me Now?' video by 12-year-old Eliza one day at the studio and I thought it was bad ass," Dentata recounts. "It instantly inspired me to talk about all the other bullshit things that are expected of us and projected at us. I related to it because I was actually in a relationship where I had to drastically change my hair, clothes, nails, my personality, everything for someone. I was really screaming a form of 'Do You Like Me Now, Bitch?' inside."
Fast forward to 2021, and Dentata and Ibarra — now an adult film star — are friends and both feature in the new video for the goth metal rapper's single, "Do U Like Me Now?" In addition to borrowing the title and sampling some of the original clip, Dentata's latest thrasher see her living out a full housewife revenge fantasy, clad in Insane Clown Posse-esque makeup from a shed. She smashes a glass vase over her husband's head before turning him over to some menacing punks and freeing her inner child. It's basically that remix Korn did of "Bitch Better Have My Money" come to life.
Dentata explains that "being able to recreate this experience, but take his ass out and free my inner child was my redemption. I feel like the song and video have the same energy as Eliza's original video, and whether you are a 12-year-old girl or a porn star we can all relate to feeling pressured by society to change ourselves. To have Eliza in it made the video so meaningful and literal."
Watch the PAPER premiere of Dana Dentata's official music video for "Do U Like Me Now?" and stream it, below.
Photography: Ashley Osborn