Photo from SHINee (@shinee)
Korean pop music, so-called Kpop, has become a well-known musical and cultural genre in the world now. In recent years, the influence of Kpop has spread through all over the world, even in Western countries. Many fans of Kpop groups would upload their dance cover video of Kpop songs to show their respect and affection to them. Fans would dress like the Kpop groups to imitate those idols’ dressing style for stage performances on broadcast station, for example, Music Bank, Inkigayo, and M Countdown.
However, what comes to my notice is that no matter the songs are from a girl group or a boy group, both female and male fans would dress like them. Especially male fans, they tend to wear make-up and dress in the style girl groups have presented in their music video. However, not only does the impact of the concept of the songs from girl groups influence the representations of masculinity, but also the boy groups themselves become fashion icons for men to follow by changing their hair colors, wearing foundations, and leaving heavy bangs.
Photo from KEY (@bumkeyk)
Los Angelas Times in 2019 reports Kpop has expanded the generation gap of viewing masculinity in China. Some elders have been concerned with the socially ideological breakdown of masculinity, which confers the idea of men with responsibility, strengths, and a nation’s prosperity. Kpop entertainment companies package their artists with vibrant images, for example, wearing delicate clothes, dyeing their hair into pink, and putting up heavy eyeshadows, which conflicts with what a typical and stereotyped man should look like. Therefore, the essay is to focus on the media representation on the stereotyped masculinity and adverse masculinity performed by Kpop male artists.
In general, sexes are referring to DNA assigned sex—female or male, while gender is how the person identifies himself/herself as a woman or a man. Manietta, J. (2010) also views that the binary indexation to distinguish men and women is constructed by the societal knowledges, therefore the conflicts between masculinity and femininity are constituted. (p.5) Gender is more of a style of performances. Gender becomes fluid, and these K-pop stars are not classified to any types of representation of masculinity. In order to maximize profits from worldwide audiences, a boy band is formed as a masculinity spectrum. (Song, K.Y. and Velding, V., 2020, p.5)
Photo from KAI (@zkdlin)
Not only Seonbi, which is the masculinity focusing more on politeness, warmth and generosity of men, but also the phenomenon of patriarchy, “men as money-earners while women as household-chores-performers,” will have soft masculine artists more support doing feminine jobs, for example, taking care of babies. (Manietta, J., 2010, p.8-9) The term, queer, is used to describe people such as drag queens who play within the confusion of femininity and masculinity yet are no more confined to heteronormativity. (Almqvist-Ingersoll, P., 2019, p.10) “Queer” is not an appropriate term applied to Kpop boy bands because they are imparted with the image of “wholesome role models” by conservative parents to ensure that their kids’ could follow gender norms. (Gauntlett, D., 2005, p.161) Even though Korean masculinities could be viewed as female-friendly, consumerism and neoliberalism among entertainment industry is why gender norms could not vary. If those male members were not protected under heteronormative agenda, economic markets in China and Malaysia could not be expanded. Furthermore, it could cause authoritarian restrictions. (Almqvist-Ingersoll, P., 2019, p.35-36) Gender discourses negotiated through dancing performance are more common in countries, such as Thailand, where the phenomenon of gender transformation are normal. (Milania, M.K. & Mutiono, D.I., 2014, p.99)
Song and Velding conducted a quantitative research to understand how young Americans view the hybrid masculinities of Kpop. The respondents define masculinity dependent on what women would do and do have, for example, the light hair color and dancing styles that shows gracefulness and flexibility. (p.15) However, the Asian American male respondents extraordinarily focus on the hard-working personalities of Kpop men because western masculinity norms tend to ignore that skinniness, vulnerability, and cuteness could also make a man man as long as they do not overly cross masculine line. (p.6) More specifically, “hegemonic masculinity” is followed by Western definition, focusing on competitiveness, strengths, confidence and independence. Hegemonic masculinity also allows the ideology of men’s dominance over women, which is how men become real men. (Ayuningtyas, P., 2017, p.54) Asian men are thus considered feminine by stereotypes because they do not stick to hegemonic masculinity. (Anderson, C. S., 2014, p.214)
There are two main reasons why the negotiation between Western and Asian is malfunctioning. One, areas like U.S., where have comparatively less Kpop fans, tend to neglect their profession in reproducing the realness of genres of songs, thereby binary opposition between gender identities could not be overturned. (Milania, M.K. & Mutiono, D.I., 2014, p.100) However, for example, Kpop fans worldwide think that women are better than men taking care of children. Due to traditional sexuality objectified by Korean media for economic development, views towards gender roles in workplace and households are more conservative by younger Kpop fans, compared to those women and older respondents in a research conducted by Li, X. (2017, p.23)
Photo from Minho (@choiminho_1209)
Aegyo
Aegyo is a term used to describe the concept of cuteness in Korean. It has been a trend in entertainment field, where TV shows, such as Weekly Idol, tend to ask all the members of a group to undergo an Aegyo contest against members or even cross-group members. Suggested by Manietta, on local Korean search engine, for example, Naver, many trendy search results related to aegyo would be shown. Women are learning some instructions through these online aegyo discussions, in order to improve their femininity as to make themselves look more attractive to men. However, the trend has shifted to men in recent year. Many more male members are requested by the hosts of the TV shows to do aegyo contest to satisfy female fans. (p. 66)
Photo from Lee Know (@realstraykids)
In fact, as mentioned above, soft South Korean masculinity, also named as seonbi masculinity, is the most favorable type of masculinity by fans, which could earn them more money from. (p. 12) The sociocultural ideology of “tough men,” who are expected to protect women yet fail to do so in reality, has those women in turn refused to conform to the gender inequality in marriage, workplace, and society. (Maliangkay, R., 2014, p.7) In other words, the rising awareness of women facing up the inequality issues, the marketing strategies of those entertainment companies, and the consideration of profits maximization are the reasons of the shift.
I will take the aegyo compilation video of SHINee, a well-known Kpop boy band lasting for more than 10 years, as an example for analysis. It is easy to see that all members are required by fans or the hosts of the show to show their aegyo performance, even though they feel embarrassing. Aegyo performance has its linguistic and semiotic values, which could prove that women are subordinate to men and nonproductive due to their childishness. First, the member, Key, performs his aegyo to another memeber, Minho. He says with his mouth pouting, baby talk and hands laying on Minho’s shoulder, “BoMi is hungry! What should I do?”
In the second aegyo performance, he changes his deep vocal into a baby sound while acting himself as a baby who is starving to tears. For this battle, Key wins because he not only attacks the host’s thigh, but also represents his helplessness more for getting no food.
In aegyo, we can see childishness. In childishness, we can see femininity. When people perform aegyo, they tend to disguise themselves as a younger character talking and begging for something from elders. Women must call older men “oppa,” and men must call older women “nuna.” South Korea particularly value social position by age and sexes, thus they need different appellations to call people older or younger than themselves. With the impact of the linguistic system of social position, the format and the performance of aegyo means that women are subordinate to men due to their incompetence, helplessness, and lack of productivity as a baby. (Manietta, p.68)
Furthermore, aegyo demonstrates that women are required to manipulate their emotion in excess and deliberately alter their social positions to negotiate and exchange some conditions with people in power. (Puzar, A. & Hong, Y., 2018, p.337) However, boy bands’ aegyo performances would not be considered as an overturn on gender inequality because the styles of thier music and music videos are still sticking to masculine. Concluded by Almqvist-Ingersoll, aegyo performances for boys should be viewed as the representation of feminine masculinity. (p.26)
Analysis: Boy Band— BTS
We can see from the picture of their recent music video, Boy With Luv, that all the boys are doing aegyo and wearing pink, which is the color more connected with femininity. The music video and the song itself compared to their past songs, such as War of Hormone, is equipped with tenderness, kindness and soft masculinity. For example, V is wearing a pink fluffy scarf around his neck. From the comparison of these two figures, we can see that, with the research result indicated by Almqvist-Ingersoll, traditional masculinity is much connected with dirt, black, and heavy eyeliner. (p.25) The transformation of masculinity of BTS is redefining that men are not always bad type of masculinity. Besides, men do not have to suppress their happiness, hide their discomfort, and to maintain their toughness, which in contrast is called “toxic masculinity.” Value-added on Song and Velding’s research, male Americans tend to view toxic masculinity as real masculinity, nonetheless, in South Korea, male are happy with the term kkonminam, meaning that a man is as beautiful as a flower, being applied to them. (Pham, J., 2019)
Another article written by Pereira, M.(2019) reveals that the reality TV show focusing on the everyday lives of BTS displays the rare phenomenon—men loving men by having physical without sexual intimacy, for example, cuddling up to other band members. The intimacy is about taking care of and supporting each other with tenderness and warmth. The author thinks this is healthy because men are no more oppressed or feel embarrassed to express their inner emotions. Explicitly showing love or vulnerability to other men could unite men together by understanding and accepting types of masculinities.
Analysis: Challenging Stereotypes—Taemin
Taemin has an interview with allure.com to explore the concept of his new song, Want, and to probe into how the concept is related to himself. In the picture, we can see that Taemin is wearing a delicate red suit, a red lace gloves, silver accessories and thick makeup. He is equipped with femininity because of the color, the makeup and the eye contact he has made with the audience. He sends a message which is embedded not only with sexuality, charisma, and helplessness, but also with confidence, danger and power of control. Taemin in the interview reveals that his would ascribe the message of androgyny to his makeup. These cosmetics become the most important material in his life because they give him as if a mask which allows him to dance to the dark and sensual genre of music he loves.
“It felt like my attitude changed as my looks changed,” corresponding to what I have mentioned above, gender is a performance. Different colors of eyeshadows sends different messages and builds different concept of his music. However, wearing makeup, to him, should not be excluded from the realm of masculinity. One reason is that it’s only a layer of his performance, the other is that his sexual appeal is completed with it.
The song, Want, and its choreography have both demonstrated the hybrid masculinity defined by Taemin. The song is about the desire of Taemin and the girl who sexually wants more from him. With the style of dressing and his smoky eyes, he shows that his masculinity, which is often considered feminine by tradition, makes him more attractive to women. Furthermore, according to the lyrics, women are even harder to resist their sexual impulse. Although his performance of masculinity could subvert the narrowly defined masculinity, we should also be concerned with the fact that the different masculinity performance, such as aegyo and hybrid masculinity, would indirectly commodify women, who come actively flirting with them. Nevertheless, if the Western-defined masculinity and K-pop newly constructed masculinity are building their bases on devaluing women and no improvement on elevating gender inequality, in essence, the patriarchy and gender inequality would never be solved.
Conclusion
Kpop masculinity at the surface level may be viewed as a newly introduced concept where male artists are able to express themselves through different genre of songs, attending different TV shows, and wearing much stereotyped women-related accessories. However, considering the tradition, such as patriarchy in South Korea and different appellations to call men or women at different ages, as well as the relationship between sexes and aegyo, different representations of masculinities have fallen into a strategy for companies to maximize their profits from countries. We should remember that gender is a performance, even though the commercial considerations may devalue the male artists’ true intentions to challenge stereotypes towards masculinities. When those celebrities are on TV shows, they are presenting a concept, instead of completely abolishing patriarchy and elevating women’s social position. At least, what we can learn from them is that the concepts, such as soft masculinity, feminine masculinity, hybrid masculinity and toxic masculinity, are providing chances to men to reconsider what a real man is about.
Text/ Nick Hsu
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