The Grand Narrative

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1) The difference between “sexuality” and “sexualization”

Angry K-pop Fan and I both love a recent post at Sociological Images for so succinctly explaining that:

I’m no prude.  I think that children are – and have a right to be – sexual beings.  However, there is a difference between sexuality (feeling sexual) and sexualization (being seen as sexy). I (and many other like-minded feminists) believe that girls should be sexual; but, sexualization (and its concomitant focus on appearance instead of desire) is bad because it denies girls’ sexual subjectivity in favor of sexual objectification.

2) International AIDS conference in Busan this weekend

See Busan Haps or the conference website for more details. Unfortunately though, it’s not really aimed at the public (it’s much too late to register, and was prohibitively expensive anyway).

Meanwhile, to any foreign readers that may be under the understandable but false impression that the Korean public doesn’t believe that AIDS exists here, let me point you to this eye-opening experience I had about that back in 2005 (scroll down to just before the “Lesbos” picture).

3) More babies!

- Congratulations to Roboseyo and Wifeoseyo, who are having a Miniseyo in October.

- Congratulations again to Shotgun Korea, who had Desmond William Wolfie Kim on August 18.

- And finally belated congratulations to Going Places, having a baby in November.

- Dragon Korea, having a boy next March February (see last week’s post), ponders how to give a kid solid White-Western and Korean identities. And her husband designer diaper bags!

- Over at Busan Haps, Roy Early ponders how to keep strangers from constantly touching his children. I can’t say that I’ve had that problem myself, but we are both tired of our children constantly being given candy, which non-parents may be amazed to learn just how many Koreans seem to always have on their person.

(Source. It is just me, or does A-ran’s {아란} face on the far left seem very badly photoshopped?)

4) Please objectify us! Pleeease……

Hey, I’ve always maintained that it’s largely the current glut of girl-groups that is driving their increasing sexualization. So, to play Devil’s Advocate, Swing Girls (스윙걸즈) differentiating themselves on the basis of all members having D-cup breasts(!) are really just being explicit about something that other girl-groups have already been doing for years.

And boy-bands too of course. Two weeks ago for instance, Lee Joon (이준) of MBLAQ (엠블랙) helpfully reminded us of what’s really needed for a guy to succeed in K-pop these days:

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Update: Angry K-pop Fan provides a more comprehensive analysis of the Swing Girl’s branding plans here.

5) Does Jung Ryo-won (정려원) have anorexia, or are netizens overreacting?

I’d be one of those netizens I guess, mentioning those anorexia speculations back in March and May 2009 (see #3 here), and adding that I wasn’t personally convinced by her explanation that she lost the weight for a movie role. While I do sympathize with her frustration with netizens though, I’m afraid that 2 years later I’m similarly unconvinced by her new explanation that she’s one of those voracious eaters that never seems to put on weight, especially as I used to be one myself (albeit 20 years ago!).

6) Singles eclipse nuclear families in Seoul

It’s a slightly inaccurate headline – two parents and any number of children constitutes a nuclear family, not just two – but it’s certainly true that more and more people are living alone: 24.4% in Seoul according to the JoongAng Daily, and 23.9% nationally according to Real Time Korea. These are only slightly below rates for Western developed countries, as this graph from 2006 indicates (I have more detailed statistics in my bookcase, but most are over a decade old sorry!).

See here for more background, and here for more on the industries that were already springing up to cater to the increasing numbers of singles way back in 2009. (The latter also happened to have that handy graph on the right)

7) Korean students with make-up

Under fear of being sued by parents, at least one teacher is no longer enforcing school rules that require them to wash it off (via: Yahae!)

For some context, see here.

8) Taiwanese woman sexually assaulted in Hahoe Folk Village

See the details at Asian Correspondent here. Also in Taiwan-related news, Gender Across Borders reports that a mass same-sex wedding is planned there later this month.

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9) Korea not ready for a group like Chocolat (쇼콜라)?

An interesting angle on them from Gord Sellar:

…Whereas the media hypersexualization of children is pretty much accepted — if not admitted — in Korean society, and the media hypersexualization of white women is all but de rigeur now, I think the idea that the media sexualization of biracially white/Korean children might not turn out to be as profitable an enterprise in Korea.

The band seems to be getting a pretty negative reception online, and it’s not hard to see why: the particular anxieties regarding race in Korea that the group’s promoters are trying to exploit — ambiguities of race, and the permissible exoticism of the non-Korean female — take on a life of their own when there is not a Korean male in the picture to “own” her (and, likewise, to “pwn” her)…

See here for the full post, and here (and possibly here) for my own on the issues Gord alludes to with that last sentence. Also, Angry K-pop Fan makes some interesting comparisons between Chocolat and pan-Asian band Blush.

10) 16 year-old Suzy (수지) of Miss A (미쓰에이) endorses French Lolita Lempicka perfume

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A friend of mine, a close watcher of K-pop, believes that manager JYP has tended to make Suzy wear more conservative costumes and do slightly less risque dances than her adult co-members of Miss A, nor made her the focus of the group, all quite unlike what he did for So-hee of the Wondergirls when she was a minor (a practice replicated by other entertainment companies, such as: SM Entertainment with Sulli of f(x); Cube Entertainment with HyunA of 4Minute; and indeed Paramount Music of {at least} Tia of Chocolat in #8 above). With this loaded endorsement however, that may all be about to change, as indeed a similar one (“Lolita Sexy”) early last year arguably symbolized a great deal about his past and future marketing of the Wondergirls.