Creative Korean Advertising #6: Monsieur J (뮤슈제이) and New Male-centered Narratives in Cosmetics Advertisements
As I discussed last week, it turns out that women find the feeling of confidence that a man gets from wearing his own favorite cologne or deodorant much sexier than the actual scents themselves, rating the attractiveness of men in videos wearing them much higher than those men wearing brands that the men themselves didn’t personally like or none at all. Naturally, this has many implications that are by no means just confined to gift-giving and the “smelly” industries, but by applying that new knowledge to Korea specifically I realized that most cosmetics for men at least were still advertised here as if the consumers were women, for whom commercials tend to focus on the act of applying the product and seeing the effects on their skin and so forth rather on than the supposed effects on the opposite sex. To put it mildly, after regularly seeing the ensuing images of half-naked men caressing and smelling each other’s skins on television, then I and most other expats can hardly be blamed for being left with stereotypes of Korean men as being somewhat effeminate as a result.
But this dominant narrative from the industry does seem to be finally changing, the most recent commercial I looked at in that post giving viewers the impression that, well, using the product would get the man laid, a message that most male consumers are familiar with and can easily relate to. I don’t how far behind the curve Korean cosmetic brands are compared to larger international brands in this regard – if at all – but they do seem to be making up for last time, the Korean actor Jung Woo-sung (정우성) launching his own brand called “Monsieur J” (무슈제이) last month with advertisements and commercials that…how to put it? They are masculine enough that, although I won’t be rushing out to buy any bottles of the stuff myself (I’m married), I still would not personally be embarrassed to have my Western male friends know that I use it, which is literally the first time I’ve been able to say that of any Korean cosmetic product for males after 8 years of living here.
Being so revolutionary in its own right then, naturally I find the following commercial to be quite creative too, although its overall style would probably be quite familiar to Western viewers (so maybe Korean brands are indeed catching up):
If you liked that, then you’ll probably like this 60-second version even more:
True, the commercial isn’t without its flaws, my own personal criticisms being the somewhat gormless look on Jung Woo-sung’s face above the water towards the end, and particularly the suspended bottle of the cologne in the closing scene: you can virtually feel the string holding up it up. I think a much more serious general criticism though, is the combined launching with G-Market, an online Korean auction site that looks like a hyperreal version of a webpage from 1997, complete with at least 40 rapidly flashing GIFs. Not only that, but it has all the class and sophistication that one might expect from a site offering everything from, say, dildos and staplers to hearing aids and socks, the combined effect of which is to *cough* somewhat detract from the classy, Hugh Grant-like image Jung Woo-sung himself is promoting, with many more pictures like those in this post available here, here, here, and here if you’re so inclined.
Note that those are only photobookish pictorials though, with advertisements like this one below (source) being like what most people would ever actually see. True, the G-market logo and web-address in this particular example seem quite minimalist, but still…it’s G-market! My wife bought decidedly unsexy bibs for our baby daughter from there just yesterday! Was an arrangement with the company really necessary for physically selling the product?
In contrast to the pictorials though, images of the launching event itself leave me feeling somewhat cold (and puzzled) myself, and I don’t just mean because of the season:
There was actually a woman wearing lingerie amongst those models too (see here), who may have (literally) appeared somewhat out of place but in all seriousness may actually have been more important to the event than many of her male counterparts, her two roles there possibly being to: first, maintain the attention of male reporters, no matter how interested in fashion already (or not), the event to all intents and purposes seeming to consist of little more then men walking around in their underwear holding examples of the Monsieur J line (which certainly sounds somewhat tedious to me); and secondly, to also provide eye-candy for reporters from “sports” newspapers especially, providing free advertising for the product via captions to pictures of her. In this second role however, she probably proved quite superfluous given the other celebrity celebrities that also attended, including Jessica Gomes on the right (source); for more on her them, see PopSeoul’s report on the event here.
(For all posts in my “Creative Korean Advertising” series, see here)
Why do so Many Korean Children Wear Glasses?
If I’d been asked this question yesterday, then I too would have answered that it was because they were always hunched over their books or staring at computer screens, but the surprising result of this Australian study was that those are only correlated but not causative factors: in fact, its because they don’t get enough exposure to sunlight.
I confess, before I read the details of the survey I was very sympathetic to such a result: young Korean women, for instance, have among the lowest Vitamin D levels in the world because of avoiding the sun for the sake of light skins, and given how the required behavior and body images that lead to such extremes are inculcated very early in Korean children’s lives, then if a lack of sunlight does indeed lead to myopia (short-sightedness) I’d wager money on rates being higher among Korean teenage girls than boys. Not much higher, no, but I’d still expect a statistically significant difference between them.
But technically the study never looked at Korean children specifically, and while Korea certainly shares other developed East Asian countries’ skyrocketing rates of myopia among children – virtually all my middle-school students wear glasses or contact lenses, and I bet yours do too – I was confused when I heard that the study was primarily based on Singaporean children: how on Earth do children that live on the equator not get enough sun?
Actually, partially it’s precisely because they live there. As head researcher Dr. Ian Morgan explains in an Australian radio interview, the heat meant that:
The children in Singapore were spending about three hours a week outside, so very, very limited periods of time outside, excluding the school hours. Basically they went to school, they went home, they did their homework and then they watched television and that was life.
But this issue of climate wouldn’t apply so much to children in other East Asian countries, where the same education culture of going to school during the day and then cram schools in the evenings prevails, although that does also mean that they’re not outdoors of course. But how to tease apart the effects of that lifestyle from a lack of sunlight specifically? Things like diet, and, say, the not insignificant fact that Korean children get the least sleep in the world would presumably have some effect too.
Here’s the key part of the radio interview that reveals how and why researchers did that. Without it, basic summaries of the study like this and this that are all over the news wires are good introductions, but raise more questions than answers really:
DR IAN MORGAN:….we have been able to compare the prevalence of myopia in Chinese kids in Singapore, as compared to kids of Chinese origin growing up in Sydney. And at the age of six, the kids in Singapore — the Chinese kids in Singapore are ten times more myopic than the kids of Chinese origin in Australia.
INTERVIWER: But did the Singaporean children spend more time in near-work activity than the Sydney children?
DR IAN MORGAN: If anything, they spent a little bit less and this is what led in part to us looking for what other factors could be important. And the striking difference that came across was that these kids — remember they’re matched for age and they’re matched for ethnicity, they’re all of Chinese origin. The kids of Chinese origin in Sydney were spending a lot more time outdoors than the kids of Chinese origin in Singapore.
For more details, including the debunking of alternative theories that there is some genetic susceptibility to myopia among East Asian populations, and why it is specifically light intensity that is important, then I highly recommend reading the radio interview in full.
I don’t have the time to translate anything myself unfortunately, but it’ll be interesting to see how the Korea media interprets the results of this study. While it would be just one of a very long list of serious social and health problems among young Koreans resulting from Korea’s after-school institute or hagwon (학원) culture, and so unlikely to lead to any huge changes overnight, all the various English-language articles on the study point out that governments across the region already do have serious concerns about the issue, and so this may well provide just enough of a shove for Korean schools to, say, provide more outdoor physical education and field trips for students. Granted that it’s rather cold at the moment though!
Update – In hindsight, I didn’t cover this subject thoroughly enough here, leaving some questions unanswered: for a more comprehensive overview, see this article I wrote for the Korea Times.
( Image Sources: infinteny, hitmanreborn, 나만의 행복 )
Korean Medical Association: Don’t Take the Pill!
Why not? Well, because Korean women are stupid apparently, unable to do so much as read the instructions and numerous warnings about possible side-effects that come with the product, let alone do their own research and make their own choice about what contraception is best for them personally.
Or at least, that is the more benign reading of this warning from the KMA, and to be fair, given such factors as: Koreans’ general reluctance to self-diagnose and be proactive about treating any medical condition that they might have themselves; the discouragement of critical-thinking in the Korean education system; and many Korean women’s complete reliance on men to use contraception, then at first glance there is nothing to distinguish the top-down, patronizing but also paternalistic tone of the KMA in the warning as any different from any other Korean institution’s relationship with the Korean public. In reality however, in its bias and scare-mongering it demonstrates an explicit and almost sinister vested interest in maintaining the huge abortion industry here.
No, really. That may sound like hyperbole, but then the Korean state already has a long history as an extremely invasive and coercive force in Koreans’ reproductive lives, its population policy in the 1960s and 1970s only slightly less draconian than that of China’s today, at many points having soldiers withdrawn from the DMZ at the height of the Cold War to deliver IUDs and perform abortions in the Korean countryside for instance (see this book for more on that). And such industry-related claims are also widely acknowledged of Japanese health authorities (albeit not so much in Japan itself), which banned the pill for three decades and which Japanese women are still scared of using, so why not of Korea ones too?
But regardless of that background, how else are we to interpret the evidence from just the KMA’s warning alone? Consider that:
- It provides no information about possible side-effects that I didn’t already know about 10 years ago (and I’m a guy remember), which begs the question of why the Korea Times considered it “news” exactly.
- It literally doesn’t provide a single positive medical benefit of using them, and naturally the Korea Times fails its most basic of journalistic duties by not providing them either.
- It implies that somehow there is somehow something unique to contraceptive pills and not, say…amphetamines that makes women’s access to them in much more urgent need of being restricted.
- And finally, that in a country where double-standards, moralistic pharmacists and medical staff, virtually non-existent sex education, and a lack of access already combine to severely limit women’s sexual confidence and choices of contraception in practice (see here)…surely it is telling that the most senior medical institution in the country is literally scaring women away from using the single safest and most effective contraceptive in human history?
Actually, I do agree that there are some benefits to women of, say, requiring a prescription from a doctor to get the pill, one poster in this forum (which I give a hat tip to for some of the above) pointing out that it means many women will usually get gynecological examinations at the same time, wheres they wouldn’t have bothered otherwise. But, one should always be very careful to acknowledge the different contexts in which they occur, and I dare say that most young British women buying contraceptives, for instance, are not asked by pharmacists if they’re married, or alternatively the same by doctors and nurses rather than a more neutral, non-judgmental inquiry as to if they are sexually active. To require a prescription in those circumstances would surely mean that many women simply wouldn’t go to get them all, which renders quick and easy access to the pill, albeit online if you don’t look 25 or older, one of the very few positives about Korean sexual culture.
Ending on another positive note, all trends in Korea point to continued increased use of the pill over time, and I’m not merely seeking brownie points among my readers when I say that I do have confidence in Korean women even just considering the pill not to be swayed by “warnings” like this. Given how, as I explained in my last post on the subject, half the battle is getting many Korean women to take an active role in using contraception at all, then merely thinking about all the pros and cons of the options available is an important first step. And of those that have done so, then I dare say that from that point on they will apply a more discerning eye to the ravings of groups like the KMA!
( Image Sources: unknown; Newsis )
Update: In case anyone wants it, here is the original warning in Korean too.
Semi-Nude Photos of 14-Year Old Draw Controversy
No, despite my reputation I’m not going to weigh in with heavy commentary on these pictures of 14-year old female student Park Seo-jin (박서진) for the Mnet reality show I Am A Model, my plan to translate one of the numerous news articles about them rendered unnecessary by the wealth of context and extra information provided over at Coolsmurf Domain instead. One thing I will add that blog author Alvin Lim didn’t though, is the fact that for all the recent and historical mania about protecting underage Korean females against foreign pedophiles, the Korean public seems strangely reluctant to respect their own laws banning the nude photos of minors that would (presumably) encourage them, this and this one with Kwak Ji-min (곽지민) advertising the 2004 movie Samaria/Samaritan Girl (사마리아) for instance instantly coming to mind when I read about this latest case. While it’s true that she was three years or so older than Park Seo-jin was when they were taken, she was still definitely a minor, and with this being Korea …then naturally there’s even full screen wallpapers of the former still available here and here too.
I’ve heard that that movie is actually a much needed and hard-hitting social critique of the teenage prostitution industry here, and if so then I highly recommend watching it, but that marketing in the links above is both hypocritical and somewhat telling of the industry’s causes. Regardless of the moral rights or wrongs of what is really quite an arbitrary age for banning nudity though, the fact remains that – just like so much else in Korea – no-one is likely to ever be prosecuted for breaking the law for Park Seo-jin’s photos, but on the positive side they do seem to be creating a controversy that the posters for Samaria never did, albeit most likely simply because she is just sooo young.
In case of any confusion, note that while she’s 16 according to the strange Korean age system, her birth date is actually 11 March 1994.
Update: I later reviewed the movie Samaria/Samaritan Girl (사마리아) here.
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