#idk i picked a good year for double the hotness in kdrama

[clubfluffer]

Kdramas 2018 be like:

You like hot actors?

How about

...double...

....the amount?

[kihyunswrath]

“Unsuccessful” girl idols

I’ve been wanting to break this topic down for years and I feel like I’m still not quite done with my own thought process, but I thought right now could be a good time to at least slightly graze the theme (ok that phrasing sounded awful but you get the idea?? I guess?), what with so many kpop girl groups disbanding and, Idk there’s been a lot of talk about this over the years but no one seems interested enough to search the roots of it.

So here are the two main premises people keep kinda copy-pasting all the time all over the internet: 1) “Girl groups just bore/annoy me to death and they all just twerk their tiny asses in high heels and they are so unoriginal” and 2) “Boy groups do just as sexy stuff as them so stfu, it’s such a hypocritical sexist thing to not support the girl groups too, you only drool after your oppars and forgive all their misbehavior because you hate women”.

And honestly that’s where the discussion mostly ends. I haven’t heard or seen anyone talk much more about the topic even though I feel like that’s just about 0.5% of the whole discourse that should be brought to daylight. This whole phenomenon is strongly linked to Korean popular culture and how Korean music companies treats their employees and how they, as a moneymaking Korean-made industry, wants to be represented in front of the foreign audience... and it should be pretty clear how important it is to understand the details and the whole picture of this big system, if you really want to tackle down issues such as sexism and misogyny in it.

Idk but it feels so weird to me how few fans have actually realized how sexist kpop music industry is by nature, by the very definition, and how it has its roots deep in Korean conservative political ideology, heck, even Confucianism itself. And like... if you call yourself a feminist or anywhere close that term, you should be actively resisting pretty much everything both kpop and kdramas has to offer. 

Kpop is capitalist and conservationist as hell, and that’s p much my main statement here. 

The point in these idol groups is to market and rebrand South Korea as a fresh, young, talented, clean, nicely organized, sexy, vibrant and colourful country fully capable of taking the global trade into its own hands. It sells the capitalist ideology where wealthy, beautiful and racially/economically/socially/religiously homogeneous people work together to create welfare. Intl fans typically only see the surface of it, aka the music videos and the dramas themselves, but the fact is that all idols do much more than that - they’re the ambassadors of their own country, selling products after products with their own names and faces printed on them. Cars, phones, cosmetics, plastic surgery, laptops, games, toys, food, beverages, you name it. And of course they sell their own products, too. 

They’re not there to challenge any status quos, to break down any hegemonies. Korean men wearing makeup and showing their flawless skin may seem “radical” to western people who are used to cavemen-like masculinity ideals at first glance, but silky, pale skin has always been just a sign of wealth, health and cleanliness in Korea (and many other Asian country), and there’s nothing more groundbreaking in that. Korean same-sex friends showing skinship has never had anything to do with gay culture and Korean groups being aware of this eroticization of their friendships still has nothing to do with gay culture. It’s just a clever marketing tactic that stems from the problematic fact that fans (mostly straight people idolizing someone from opposite sex) rather see their favourite idols with their same-sex bandmember than live in acceptance with the fact that their crushes would end up with someone else than the fans themselves. That feels less like a “betrayal” to you if they end up being gay and having a relationship with the bandmember you most likely also admire, than choosing someone random you can have no control over. And yes, as a sidenote, these groups and their companies are fully aware of skinship and mildly homosexual (but still not quite) content being a factor that creates them more fans and more money. For the same reason, since day one Korean culture has divided performance and entertainment groups by their sex - women and men have always performed separately, throughout history, because it’s presumably easier to avoid actual romantic relationships that way. Homoerotic stuff kinda doesn’t count, at least not officially. Also, kpop groups are strictly divided because the industry really treats them as separate entities, separate ranks, much like a sex binary itself. 

So, Korean ideals and standards are literally ingrained into Korean popular culture. They’re not any less sexist than any other capitalist industry you have ever met before. In fact, they’re blatantly much more sexist than many others, just because it sells in so many audiences who consume this kind of stuff. Did you know, that there was a research done in the countries that consume kpop and kdrama the most (many of them are East-Asian, Middle-Eastern, South-Asian and African countries, like India, Iran etc.), and a common reason for them to stay as fans was basically because “kdramas uphold the traditional familial values, just with fashionable rebranding - like men are treating women so nicely and still were so hot and masculine”? So if you think Korean idol groups should be treated more equally among the fans, you’re asking for something that was never even supposed to be there.

Let’s face it: kpop girl groups are given half-assed songs, half-assed choreographies, half-assed concepts, half-assed attention and effort, and neither the fans nor the girl group members themselves are to be blamed. And if not everything they do is half-assed, about 60% is. Compared to the about 40-50% of boy groups’ half-assed stuff, because we all know kpop is also based on unoriginal mass-copying of the same stuff. Mass production, repetition and weak-willed composing is not only part of the capitalist ideology, but also the way to Korean soft power to work their way through; because of the Confucian tradition, you’re not supposed to present new ideas but just follow what your employers tell you to do. 

So girl groups are given shitty and weak concepts with either overtly cute and infantilizing clothing and choreographies, or overtly sexy stuff. Why? Because they’re treated as objects and children. They’re supposed to stand cutely in front of you, letting you have a peek on their long, smooth legs while they wear the smallest mini-skirts ever seen.

They’re sex objects for pedophiles. Just look at Production 101 Pick me up song and see 101 girls wearing school uniforms while they, without real identities or visible personalities, dance sexily to the audience. They did have the same concept with boys, one year later, which was maybe the first time ever such objectification was also projected on males, but those boys at least didn’t let anyone have see what was under their skirts.

Girl group choreographies look bland to many fans because they’re not supposed to show great talent or skill (even though all these beautiful, hardworking women could slay us with all their personal talents) - they’re just supposed to look pretty and do cutesy movements in front of the cameras. It took me a long time to realize why there was such a huge difference in difficulty when you compared boy group choreographies to girl group choreographies. It wasn’t just my imagination and it wasn’t just because me, as a straight person grown up under patriarchal society, was more inclined to recognize men’s talent and ignore everything women did. They do assume I do just that, though. They do assume male and female gaze are different, and that makes them believe boy groups not only are able, but have to perform more difficult things. Girls can focus on singing and shaking their butts - that’s the stereotype. Girls “can’t” do the same stuff, because they’re “weaker” and “less talented in general”, but they can show their butt more, because oh don’t the male fans just love it. Girls are of course also given backlash because of that, but in the end it doesn’t really matter, because sex, porn, eroticism and traditionally feminine assets sell. With all of their connotations of feminine weakness, fragility (skinny bodies) and submissiveness.

Yes, I do acknowledge that in kpop, male bodies are also very much objectified, and I do know that some girl groups are also sharing their stances on female empowerment, and even feminism. 

But when these boy groups are already in position of power, their actions are deemed worthy nonetheless. Girl groups, on the other hand, not only face the sexist double standard, also have to fight with the fact that they are not given as much space, opportunities, attention and, what’s relevant in this topic, effort as the boy groups. 

So when some fans complain about girl groups, they might mean that they in general have internalized the misogyny and don’t want to acknowledge anything these talented, hard-working female idols have done. But they might, perhaps unknowingly, also protest and dislike the idea where these girls are deemed less worthy, are flattened to mere sex objects spreading their legs in front of the cameras, doing it much more often and in much more concepts/music videos than boy groups altogether. Because it’s true. 

And that’s not because these girls haven’t worked just as hard as any other boy idol. But it’s because they are not given the chance to show their real capabilities, their real competence, their actual wide variety of skills.

So yes, so many of the girl group music videos I watch only remind me of how cheaply Korean music industry treats these wonderful women. Watching them is not pleasurable, because it also reminds me of how tight are the standards I should be able to fit into to please this so-called male gaze. It reminds me of my own oppression as a woman.  

___

Ok so that was all for today, maybe I’ll talk about it more someday. I don’t feel like checking this for typos and other pathetic non-English speaker mistakes but I hope the main point gets through.