Dotta Coppa Drops ‘Work’ On Int’l Women’s Day, Talks Challenging Conventional Beauty Standards

Super long lashes, big bottoms, toned stomachs, pouting lips and wads of makeup, feature heavily in Dancehall music videos, reinforcing the idea that women have to look a certain way to be attractive.

While understanding that image plays a critical role in the industry, Dancehall artist Dotta Coppa, knowing all too well what it means to look differently, dropped his latest single Work to challenge the status quo.

According to Dotta Coppa, who released the video today, on International Women’s Day (March 8), too many women are being sucked into the idea of a stereotypical “perfect-looking” woman, not recognizing that beauty comes from within.

“I see that a lot of women they always try to change something about themselves, a lot of women also seem to be insecure about how they look. You know because they watch the TV and, they see how the celebrities look and they always thinking and, looking down at themselves and always trying to do so much things to feel comfortable or to feel beautiful,” Dotta Coppa told DancehallMag as he sought to explain the inspiration behind his latest single.

“When really beauty is from the inside. We are all made in God’s image so we are all beautiful people. It doesn’t matter what we think about ourselves, the fact is that we should always know that beauty comes from within and not outside,” added Dotta Coppa.

However, Coppa, who started off his career as part of the Vybz Kartel-led Portmore Empire, said that this doesn’t mean he is against make-up and other beauty enhancers but notes that women are just as beautiful without such additions.

“I don’t have a problem if a woman wants to put on her make up and thing. I always try to motivate them and say if you put your make up on you still look good, but without make-up you still look good; long hair, short hair you still look good,” Dotta Coppa said.

“In this song I am really expressing and letting the women know that they are beautiful no matter what they put on, no matter what hairstyle they have or their skin complexion; no matter what they do they are beautiful,” he added.

In line with the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day celebrations #choosetochallenge, Dotta Coppa revealed that he sought to break from the tradition of hiring models to participate in the video, instead choosing to get a more authentic diverse grouping by launching a fan competition.

Dotta Coppa further shared that the videos submitted by fans formed the basis for the visual for “Work”.

“We decided that we wanted to do something special and we want to do something different. So we came up with this idea that we are going to launch a challenge for the song, because we were getting a lot of good feedback. So we decided that we’re going to do a challenge for the song and use the videos from the challenge and create an official music video for the song,” Dotta Coppa said.

“The challenge was about being beautiful, just doing whatever you do to look good. We used TC, that’s one of Spice’s dancer, to launch the challenge on our platform. Videos started coming in right away with women participating. The collection of videos was so diverse, every type of culture, every type of female, every type of look,” added Dotta Coppa.

Work is featured on Dotta Coppa’s We Love Dancehall album which was released in March 2020.