Kpop Women

The first impression one would usually get after watching K-pop music videos that it feels very commercial. Commercial not in the sense that is a profitable business, which indeed it is. In fact, Hallyu, also known as K-pop is becoming one of South Korea’s largest exports (Leong). Therefore, there is a national effort to maintain this profitable brand. First, it is important to understand that K-pop is not just lyrics and melody, it is also about the beautiful people who perform these lyrics. So, having a “genre” of music that is heavily relied on the visual aspect of it (music video) is an assertion of the importance of the image in K-pop (Unger). This reliance on the image have certainly created standards and types of images that is preferred …show more content…
It is not a look into the personalities of every group member, rather the types of femininity that is presented in these music videos. Especially in its second wave, or what is known as hallyu 2.0. Hallyu 2.0 which used social media as a podium and allowed K-pop to have an increasing number of followers and fans all around the world (Jin). This paper is not about creating unexciting meanings to a commodity that many argue that it did not have any deep meanings (Lie, 141). It is more of encoding to the signifiers that is carried in these images, which a product of a certain culture. Also, this paper is not about the investigation whether women are objectified in K-pop or not? The truth is the question of objectification became trivial when talking about selling a commodity, especially when it is through one’s physical appearance. Trivial not in the sense that it does not matter, but more of that will be just stating the obvious. Moreover, this paper will not discuss the legal or ethical issues that some may see in these music videos, and in the K-pop industry as a …show more content…
Therefore, you would expect all these stars to meet certain beauty standards such as: slim figure, light skin and small face feature (Dobke). For example, it is widely known that in the world of K-pop groups, the group is more of an organization, where it is not about the individuals in these groups. It is rather about the identity of this one entity that represented under one name. In fact, every element in the group can change from the music “genre” to group members, as long as the group name remains the same. Somehow, K-pop service the same purpose for these stars, as a catwalk does for fashion models. They have to be pretty enough to enter the world of K-pop, but not quite distinguishable to cast over the South Korean cultural phenomenon. Furthermore, they should be easy to replace. Which means they should not have faces that you would remember for a long time. Nor the personality that would make them more important than the other elements of the