Korean Sociological Image #12: Gender Socialization
Always sensitive to the concerns of my readers, I admit that I do tend to indulge myself a little *cough* in the choice of images I use on this blog, and so if you ask for more of half-naked men as a balance then I am only too happy to provide. But as for why I present you with something more akin to a cross between a snowman and a kiwifruit than the eye-candy you’d expect though, then blame my 3 year-old daughter, who – sans our intellectual baggage and cultural norms – draws her idol simply as he looks, including his chest-hair. Indeed, I’m quite impressed with her level of detail!
Slightly more seriously though, the instant she presented the above to me my wife happened to be changing my other 8 month-old daughter, singing the song below as she did so. And as you’ll soon see why, the combination proved to be a curious and amusing juxtaposition:
곰 세마리/ 3 Bears
곰 세마리가 한 집에 있어: 아빠곰, 엄마곰, 아기곰~
3 bears have/live in a house: Daddy bear, Mother bear, and Baby Bear~
아빠곰은 뚱뚱해~ 엄마곤은 날씬해~ 아기곰은 너무 귀여워~~ 으쓱으쓱 (히쭉히쭉) 잘 한다
Daddy Bear is fat~ Mother Bear is slim~ Baby Bear is very very cute~~ Uss-suk, Uss-suk (or hee-jook, hee-jook: both are just amusing sounds) Well done!
If you know the song well then my apologies, but if you’ve haven’t ever spent time with Korean parents then you’re probably unaware that Korean mothers at least frequently sing this song as they change their babies’ diapers, and also when they’re much older as they try to soothe them to sleep and so on. So much so in fact, that you may well be surprised at how readily Koreans of any age can recall it: particularly 20-something women too, albeit whom already often affect childish or “coquettish” behaviors:
Yes, I realize that those women were actually Chinese, and I’m also aware of the hypocrisy irony of using a video of svelte, attractive women in their lingerie in the process of – as I’m sure you’ve anticipated – drawing your attention to how telling it is that Korean children learn literally from Day 1 that the natural state of affairs is that men are fat and women are slim. But this isn’t *cough* intended to be a serious post, so let me say that I’m not for a moment claiming that Korean women have the problems with their body image that they do simply because of an almost painfully cute children’s nursery rhyme. Still, now that I’m thinking about it for the first time (in my defense, when I change my daughter’s diapers I don’t so much sing as try not to breathe!), given how health-food is promoted to 8 year-old girls on the basis that it will make their breasts and buttocks stand out better, or alternatively that they are encouraged to use “face rollers” for that perfect V-shaped face, then I do think it all ultimately adds up. Moreover, recall that Korean middle-school social studies textbooks only stopped extolling Korea’s ethnic homogeneity as a source of pride and national strength as late as 2006 for instance, so by no means has the Korean education system (and children’s popular culture) fully received the politically-correct “purge” that has occurred in most Western countries, and indeed depictions of gender roles in Korean textbooks are several decades behind the times, despite a great deal of attention supposedly having been recently given to this specific issue (see #1 here).
Lest I be singling Korean society out for criticism though, then by all means please tell me of similar problematic children’s nursery rhymes and songs and so on from other countries: unfortunately all that’s coming to mind as I type this are pre-PC versions of Eeny, Meeny, Mineey, Moe, and which in turn makes me realize how lax I’ve been with singing English to my own daughters. Something to work on during what looks like yet another rainy weekend then!
p.s. For the record, my wife thinks I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. Sniff.
(For all posts in my “Korean Sociological Images” series, see here)
I just think it’s a very cute song for little kids..and adults in my case..yeah, blame it on my first korean drama Full House where to adults sang it…and the dance is fun
the picture cracks me up so much hahah
Oh, don’t get me wrong: it’s as cute as hell!ㅋㅋ
(2 min think)
Well, to be more accurate, to both of us it’s not so much the song that is cute as who’s singing it really, yes? So I’m sure we’d still enjoy them doing so if, say, a more modern version with different adjectives for the Daddy and Mummy bears was used.
given how health-food is promoted to 8 year-old girls on the basis that it will make their breasts and buttocks stand out better
What?!? You gotta be kidding me.
As I read this post I feel that particular sense of dread that creeps over me whenever my married friends talk about their kids and other joys of domesticated life. As Chris Rock aptly put it, married couples…like neutered adults.
But, seriously, in response to your concern, I am not sure what impact, if any, identity-shaping influences have during the age of innocence so much as after that.
@Netizen Kim: Identity-shaping influences are everything in the formative years of children. Girls in Western countries don’t naturally like the color pink – It’s made their favorite color by all of the adults around them lauding them with frilly pink clothes and telling them how beautiful they are in it. (I’m the father of an almost 3-year-old daughter, and we let her choose her own clothes.)
Even something that adults take so innocently, like saying “Good girl” (and also, of course, “Good boy”) can have an impact on gender identity and the association of roles with gender. On top of that, consider what presents parents typically buy their kids – Dolls, tea sets, or a kitchen play set for girls (the “caretakers”), and cars, robots, or blocks for boys (the “workers”). These sorts of gender roles aren’t natural – They’re passed down from parents to children. Again, we let our daughter choose what she wants to play with, and she typically picks books, blocks, or paints.
Netizen Kim–Just see the video in the link. Sure, it doesn’t directly say that fermented bean-paste will make their breasts and buttocks stand out better, but at roughly 0:49 it does say that eating it will give them an S-line, which is basically the same thing.
I hear you about life as a parent by the way…but a “neutered” adult isn’t exactly the best description though ;-)
Alex–Naturally you have have a sympathetic audience with me, and I too always try to buy a unisex toy and/or a unisex version of it for my own 3 year-old, like a doctor’s set with a color scheme that a boy wouldn’t be hassled by his friends for, unlike the pink and pastel one next to it (not to imply that girl’s preference for those colors aren’t very much culturally determined like you said, but I think by no means entirely – see the article at the end of this post), and I’m really split about my wife’s desire to buy some kind of doll-house for her. In the meantime though, she too mostly plays with books, blocks, and balls, and – as you can see – really enjoys drawing, albeit usually all over every bloody wall and piece of furniture in the apartment rather than actual paper.
Although she likes her cars and trains at the moment, I wonder how she might respond in a few years especially to traditionally boy’s gifts like those. Not that it’s the only word on the subject by any means, but most of my own opinions on this sort of thing come from The New Sexual Revolution by Robert Poole that I read over 10 years ago, in which he recounted how so many well-meaning parents had their daughters reject such toys for them and ultimately gave them to their brothers instead, “who were more than willing to take them off their hands.” They despairingly spoke of a “truck gene.”
That book from 1994 has been sitting in storage for the last 9 years though, so I’m more than happy to be pointed in the direction of more recent work on the subject available online!
I have several gender-equality minded parent friends who tried and failed with the unisex approach to child-raising.
As for girls being primed to like the color pink, there is research evidence that the color preference may be hard-wired. I don’t have a link handy, but as I recall, females across cultures prefer colors in pink and rose hues. The suggested explanation in the study was that berries are often pink, rose, or red, so hunter-gatherer women and girls who preferred that color were lured to nutritious, ripe fruits.
Well, I have do have links handy that state that, according to research, gender-specific colors are not natural and are rather recent trends. And it’s in books as well. (Which I talk about in this thread.)
Consider this trend to be like the names Ashley and Kelly – Names we now associate with women. But that hasn’t always been the case. (And my good friend Ashley, who is a man, will definitely have something to say about you assuming he is a woman!)
good point.
the goldilocks story springs to mind in what can relate to the three bears song. Although, I really think the supposed gender issues in the song are too vague to be substantial.
and also, apropos children’s toys: since when were dolls, dollhouses, fake make up sets, pink teddy bears, etc, sexist? is being feminine sexist? Girls obviously like playing with dolls, it’s a part of why women like shopping, the industry is aimed at what girls like, not parents, so it doesn’t mean she’s going to grow up to be a sexist monster scarred by barbie, bratz and plastic saucepans.
I never said they were sexist – I said they influenced gender-roles (The woman is supposed to be a housewife, cook, clean, etc.)
Also, I feel compelled to ask why you think shopping is feminine.
The pink vs. blue thing drives me insane because people talk about it as though it were a Fact of Life, when in China boys and girls alike are dressed in red, and in Victorian England boys were dressed in pink, as I recall! None of the neurological research I have read on this topic (or on the toy division) has impressed me in the least, either, because it seems to reflect the modern (usually American) researchers’ biases too much. On top of that, there’s ample research indicating that hospital nurses handle and talk to male and female babies differently IMMEDIATELY, so how you’re going to find infants to study that haven’t been socialized differently right off the bat is a pretty tough question.
My mom used to sing a song to me at bed time that went like this:
You’ll learn to cook and to sew
What’s more, you’ll love it, I know
When you’re a stay-at home, play-at-home
Eight-o-clock sleepy-time gal.
Lovely, eh? I was born in the late 70s. The song is from the late 50s and although it’s not a traditional children’s song, I’m sure not the only girl whose mom sang it to her.
Personally I’m more inclined to the view that there is a biological basis for for sex-based differences in color preferences, but that doesn’t preclude a very great scope for variation on the way those bases are manifested and expressed culturally and historically.
An article on the study Whatsonthemenu refers to, by the way, is available in this post I wrote 2 years ago. As I note in the comments to that though, I’ve learnt a great deal and considerably modified my views on the subject since writing that, largely in response to readers comments in fact(!), and so for a more recent and much more nuanced an involved discussion please see the comments to this post, which run to several thousand words in themselves!
[...] Once again, I’m very impressed with my daughter’s attention to detail! [...]