Korean Sociological Image #15: Gendered Health Drinks

( Source: left, right )

What is the first thing that goes through your mind when you hear of a “power drink” for men?

If you live in Korea, then I’d wager some form of aphrodisiac, testament to the large number of drinks claiming to improve “men’s power” or “men’s stamina” that are available here. In the particular case of the advertisement on the left though, that would be quite wrong, as Huksaeng (흑생) is the name of a health drink from Hyundai Pharm (현대약품) made with huksam (흑삼), or black-red ginseng (흑삼), and it has no prior history of being marketed to men specifically. Here you can see a women’s taekwondo team extolling its virtues for instance, albeit that of a different company.

But compare that with Hyundai Pharm’s other product Miero Fiber (미에로화이바) on the right, which in its 20-year history has only ever been marketed towards women. Currently placed alongside each other at the Busan Ad Stars 2009 website, the accidental juxtaposition of the two advertisements provides an interesting contrast. And given Koreans’ overwhelming preference for health drinks over multivitamin pills also, then the insights to be gained have more relevance to Koreans’ body images than may at first appear to overseas observers.

My own first reaction was that I was at a loss to think of an Korean advertisement for a health drink aimed at women that uses the analogy of recharging one’s batteries. This is a minor point though, and by no means do I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Korean advertisements, so I would be grateful if readers could pass on any examples that I may have missed. But with the proviso that Huksaeng is supposed to provide more of a mental and general health boost rather than improving one’s body per se, both that and any counter-examples from readers would not detract from the obvious and correct inference that Korean advertisements for “men’s drinks” generally feature men as sporty, active participants in the process of achieving that perfect body and/or losing weight. With those for women however, it’s genuinely difficult to find any that don’t promote the idea that drinking the product is the only step required.

( Source )

Don’t just take my word for it though. Consider recent popular commercials with girl-group Girls’ Generation (소녀시대) for Miero Beauty N (미에로뷰티엔) here and here for instance, and more importantly the evidence provided by the journal article “Content Analysis of Diet Advertisements: A Cross-National Comparison of Korean and U.S. Women’s Magazines” (Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, October 2006), by Minjeong Kim and Sharron Lennon, which I discuss in great detail in parts One, Two, and Three of my series on Korean women’s body images from last year. More recently, I discuss it in passing in this post about an advertisement for a diet clinic and this one about the advertisement below for a slimming tea-drink also:

Unfortunately the article is no longer freely available at the link above, and I’ve long since lost my own copy of the original PDF file. I can scan my copy if anybody requests it though, but in the meantime hopefully the abstract will suffice:

Content analysis of diet advertisements was performed to examinehow diet advertisements portray the Western ideal of femininebeauty and promote dieting in Korean women’s magazines in comparisonwith U.S. women’s magazines. Results showed that the Westerncultural ideal of feminine beauty and dieting were prevalentin Korean women’s magazines. Diet advertisements in Korean magazinesappear to promote more passive dieting methods (e.g., diet pills,aroma therapy, diet crème, or diet drinks) than activedieting methods (e.g., exercise). Results further indicatedthat women may be misled to believe that dieting is simple,easy, quick, and effective without pain, if they consume theadvertised product. This study suggests that there is an urgentneed to establish government regulations or policies about dietproducts and their claims in Korea. Magazine publishers alsoneed to recognize their role in societal well-being and acceptsome responsibility for advertisements in their magazines.

In especially part Two of that series above I discuss that passivity in more detail and extend it to Korean exercise culture, further continued in this recent post about a device that electrically massages breasts in order to make them grow bigger. No, really:

Let me also pass on this post at Sociological Images about the similar gendering of energy drinks in the US, with more of a focus on those targeted towards men, and this one at Feministing about the fact that laxatives there are almost exclusively marketed towards women, with the implicit purposes of losing weight. To which I’d add that their Korean equivalents are both ubiquitous and completely lacking of the usual euphemisms, instead providing computer graphics of bowel movements that leave little to the imagination. Rather than continuing in that vein though(!), let me close with a question prompted by the latter post: what is the reason that products like these are marketed specifically towards women?

(For all posts in the “Korean Sociological Image” series, see here)

Korean Sociological Image #9: The Secret to Bigger Breasts?

( The title reads: “A message of hope to all women!” )

If someone had told me years ago that I’d be writing about a Korean infomercial at some point, then I would have wagered good money that it would have been about one for bidets actually, for nothing quite gives you that “We’re not in Kansas anymore” feeling as switching the television on and seeing attractive women holding perspex buttocks over jets of water, waxing lyrical about how well they cleared a strategically placed brown-yellow paste. I could mention the looks of ecstasy and relief on various actors’ faces as they supposedly use the bidets later too…but you get the idea.

Lest I give the wrong impression though, there are certainly many advantages to Koreans’ no-nonsense attitudes to bodily functions, and actually I much prefer them to many Americans’ delicate sensibilities. But what to make of these – for want of a better term – electric breast enlargers?

If you can forgive the pun, then two things really stick out about this infomercial and its accompanying website for me (beware a loud video if you click on the latter):

First, needless to say, since writing this post on the subject a year ago I’ve still seen absolutely no evidence to suggest that doing fuck all is an effective way to lose weight and gain muscle tone and so on, let alone enlarge any specific body part. But while Korea by no means has a monopoly on misleading advertising, it is also true that various loopholes in advertising legislation here mean that there is little to stop producers of “diet-related” products from, well, basically completely lying about the efficacy of their products. For more on this, see the second half of this post where I discuss Minjeong Kim’s and Sharron Lennon’s “Content Analysis of Diet Advertisements: A Cross-National Comparison of Korean and U.S. Women’s Magazines” (Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, October 2006)¹ from which I first learned of it, and if it sounds like I’m exaggerating, then consider the fact that despite supposedly far stricter standards for “normal” food that over 88% of food labeled as organic isn’t, for instance, or that the KFDA is not empowered to tell you, say, which Vitamin C drinks contain carcinogens, but only (and uselessly) how many (see #14 here).

And second, in the strange event that you didn’t look closely enough to notice, then let me point out that it is only the Caucasian model above that you can see in lingerie, whereas her Korean counterparts are all fully clothed. True, that may sound like a strange way to describe a woman in a crop-top, but the difference is more than mere semantics, as many Korean porn stars worked as lingerie models before bans on foreign models working in Korea were lifted in the mid-1990s. This means that even today lingerie modeling still has a certain stigma that even bikini-modeling lacks, and despite the bikinis themselves obviously being just as (if not more) revealing. For more information, see #1 here for the most recent of many posts on that.

Still, Koreans are notoriously savvy consumers, so while I confess that I haven’t bothered to look at this late hour, I imagine that there will be many scathing reviews of this product available online. And, with obvious parallels in many other (more important) aspects of life in a democracy as young as Korea’s, to a certain extent this vibrancy of online Korean life is the result of and compensates for deficient legislation, although on the other hand in this particular case it is also stymieing the development of a healthy Korean consumer culture.

Tempting as it is to continue this post in that vein, let me wisely close here by pointing out that in the product’s defense, it can simply be returned with your money back before 2 weeks. And I seem to recall from my 2 viewings of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story that actor Jason Scott Lee playing Bruce Lee had two similar things strapped to his pecs in a scene where he was working on a script at home (i.e. not exercising, just like the women in this infomercial). Can anybody enlighten me? Am I dismissing…er…electric shock treatment(?) unfairly? As far as I know though, and to many teenage girls’ chagrin, the size of a woman’s pectoral muscles still has little effect on the ultimate size and look of her breasts, which are mostly connective tissue, “lobules,” and fat.

(For all posts in my “Korean Sociological Image” series, see here)

1. On a technical note, since I wrote that post the PDF of the article is no longer free to download I’m afraid, so I would be grateful if anyone that knows of a free link an/or a copy themselves could pass it on for me to provide to others here. Alternatively, serendipitously my printer broke last week and I’m buying a printer/scanner to replace it, so I’ll be able to scan the copy I printed if anybody asks!

Ladies: Stay Slim with Soju?

Faced with the unenviable task of somehow making soju cool, Jinro (진로) did a pretty good job with the launching of its new “J” (제이) brand back in October, but its latest efforts to associate the brand with losing weight may well require too big a suspension of disbelief from most consumers!

Or at least, that was my first gut reaction. But then if faced with a choice of two equally priced and similar brands of any strong alcohol, probably I would indeed choose the slightly weaker one: I am slightly overweight, and it’s not like 5 per cent less alcohol wouldn’t still have the desired effect on me. How about you?

As you’ll soon see though, it’s not that which made me first notice the ad:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Look familiar? To put it mildly, commercials featuring female celebrities lounging around in their underwear aren’t exactly common on Korean television, and so I don’t think the similarities with this advertisement with Han Ji-hye (한지혜) from March – actually, the only other example – are any coincidence. Here, the actress and model featured is Shin Min-a (신민아), as it happens in the entertainment news a great deal as I write this for her first screen kiss with Won bin (원빈), and as you can probably tell, the idea is that a 1 per cent reduction in alcohol content (from 19.5 to 18.5) somehow results in the following:

Admittedly I don’t like high heels in the first place, but that last is probably overdoing it, as I can’t see how drinking less alcohol than normal somehow makes you taller as well as thinner? Regardless, below is a accompanying poster for the new, weaker soju that you may have seen around, and for the sake of adding to my conversation with commentator Seamus about Koreans’ (relative) lack of awareness of the amount of photoshopping in everyday advertisements and magazine images, would be grateful if you could show it to your Korean friends, students, colleagues, and/or lovers and so on: among other things, do they think Min-a’s legs have been lengthened and made thinner in it or not?

Update: Sorry, but in hindsight it was sloppy and quite strange of me to write about this ad without translating the voiceover first, and if I had then what I wrote above would have been quite different:

1kg 빠져도, 다른데?

If you lose 1kg, are you different?

1인치만 줄어도, 좋은데

[Even] if you shorten your skirt by only one inch, it looks better.

1cm만 낮아도, 편한데

[Even] if you reduce the length of your high heels by only 1 cm, they’re more comfortable.

그리고 1도만 더 부드러워져도

처음보다 1도 더 부드럽다

And also if you soften [soju] by only one degree, it’s one degree softer from the first sip.

18.5도 진로제이

진로제이처럼 더 부드러워지세요

18.5% Alcohol Jinro J

Like Jinro, please make your life a little softer.

Placing the ad in a wider perspective, as much as 90 per cent of all alcohol consumed in Korea is soju, and Jinro sells 50 per cent of that, so this latest marketing drive may well reflect the saturation of the market more than anything else (no pun intended). In such circumstances, a company can either start selling in new markets or repackage its product in different varieties if it wants to increase profits (or to ensure that they don’t decrease: examples like this are how I learned about the Marxian “inevitable tendency of the rate of profit to fall” at university), a good example of which is the number of different Coca-cola drinks available and their (very very) rough correlation with an economy’s level of capitalistic development and competition, as evidenced by, say, the precisely two available in New Zealand when I entered university in the mid-1990s against the plethora available in the US decades earlier.

And so with equivalents in other Northeast-Asian countries, and little appeal outside of the region, diversification is probably the most logical path for soju producers. True, the above ads in particular reflect a desire to create a new market before reaching that stage – only 30 per cent of soju drinkers are women – but given that…

The word soju to most Korean women produces something approaching a mild panic – an explosive squeal of disgust, a deeply pained expression, head shaking, hand waving. That’s not to say they don’t drink it. It’s just they don’t seem particularly like it, even as they pour it down their throats (source).

…then I have my doubts as to whether that figure will ever go up to 50 per cent. Here’s hoping that the Korean alcohol industry is indeed on the verge of offering more choices and variety then!

Update: Here is a related graphic showing decreases in soju’s alcohol strength over time. For more information (in Korean), see here.

Soju's Strength Decreasing Over Time

(Image Sources: first, second-fourth, fifth, last)

Korean Women Are Not Alphabets!

Update, February 2013: Please see here, here, and many other posts in my “Revealing the Korean Body Politic” series for my considerably updated, hopefully much more nuanced thoughts on Korea’s alphabetization trend, especially in light of what I’ve learned about historical Western precedents!

The original version of my article for today’s Korea Times:

Well known for donning corsets on stage since her comeback in May last year, few can deny that there is much to find cute in singer Son Dam-bi (손담비) tightening a miniature one around a bottle of ‘Today’s Tea’ in her latest commercial.

But while modern corsets lack the uncomfortable body-shaping functions of their Victorian counterparts, they remain an enduring symbol of the pressures women can be under to conform to often impossible ideals of appearance. And despite its lightheartedness, this commercial provides an excellent illustration of a distinctly Korean spin on this (source, right: kjutaeng3)

Beverage producer Lotte Chilsung invented the term ‘bellyline’ for use in this commercial, and it is this that the corset and supposedly the drink help with slimming. In itself, doing so is not at all worthy of any criticism, nor is the term dissimilar to, say, the English equivalent of ‘waistline,’ which would actually have been a much more appropriate choice here. But with that perfectly good term existing already, then why invent a new one?

The reason is that the term is merely the latest in a spate of naming particularly female body parts after English letters in recent years, a very curious fashion that seems unique to Korea so far. Consider the following best known examples of this:

M-line (abdominals, for men)
S-line (breasts and buttocks, viewed from the side)
U-line (exposed lower back)
V-line (one for face, and another for the line in-between breasts)
W-line (breasts)
X-line (long legs and arms, with a narrow waist)

(Source: Dark Roasted Blend)

And so integral to Korean pop culture are S-lines and V-lines in particular, that within five minutes of turning on a television you are likely to see either female celebrities strutting them on talk-shows, or prominent ‘S’s and ‘V’s displayed in commercials. Indeed, such is the current mania surrounding them that you can even come across examples completely unrelated to the original body parts involved, including in commercials for cell-phones, school uniforms, and even gas boilers!

Although this practice seems frivolous on the surface, says blogger Javabeans “it actually belies much more pernicious trends in society at large,” and something is surely seriously amiss when, rather than the media, you have a majority of female celebrities “vocally espousing their alphabet-lines and therefore actually objectifying themselves as a conglomeration of “perfect” body parts rather than as whole, genuine people.” But, why their alacrity in doing so? (source, left: 여자가 좋다. 남자는 필요없다.)

A clue is that this quote was made in the context of a breast cancer fund-raising party in October last year, the producers of which saw absolutely no irony in naming ‘Love Your W.’ And if nothing is viewed as untoward in doing so for an event supposedly about empowering women by encouraging them to respect more and take better care of their bodies, then you can imagine that there are few inhibitions for promoting the use of ‘lines’ to teenagers and young girls either.

Accordingly, there are even educational videos that promote healthy food such as fermented bean paste (dwenjang/된장) to elementary-school children that mention that eating it will be good for their S-lines and V-lines also. And one probably direct effect of this is the fact that many Korean middle-school girls have ‘face rollers,’ the repeated application of which is supposed to flatten one’s face towards a desired, angular, ‘V’ shape.

To be sure, the Korean media is not unique in placing undue emphasis on women’s appearances rather than their intelligence — the American media obsession with Michelle Obama’s fashion choices being a notorious recent example — nor is it in providing often unobtainable and unnatural role models and body ideals for women and girls. But the contexts in which those are received are important, and whereas videos like the above would rapidly be banned in schools in many other developed countries, and/or educators that criticized children because of their appearance rapidly fired, unfortunately both are par for the course in Korea.

(Han Ye-seul demonstrates yet another “V-line.” Source: Naver Photo Gallery)

To an extent, this lack of awareness and/or concern is understandable when a child’s entire life prospects are almost entirely determined by a single exam: parents have other priorities. But on the other hand, when a majority of netizens did not take pride in astronaut Yi Soyeon for being the first Korean to go into space last year, but instead criticized her for her appearance during the flight, then teenage girls will hardly be encouraged to study harder.

And on a wider scale, as Korea again faces an economic crisis, in order to recover it is worth pondering what lies behind Korea long having one of the lowest rates of working women in the OECD. Surely a good start to using this underutilized human resource, one of the best-educated in the world, would be to encourage both sexes to stop judging women, and women expecting to be judged, entirely on their appearance?

Korean Sociological Image #2: Son Dambi, The Perfect Woman

(Source: Paranzui)

Updated, October 2013

My previous commentary on this “Today’s Tea” commercial was woefully out of date, so it’s since been mercifully deleted(!). But many of the themes expressed remain just as potent in the Korean media today, including the encouraging of teenage girls and children to be dissatisfied with their bodies; the constant invention of new, often impossible, body shapes and “lines” for females of all ages to strive for; the over-reliance on celebrity endorsements, to the extent that the one chosen here, Son Dam-bi, is portrayed as somehow having a superior body and face to an equally-attractive, almost identical woman; and finally, albeit admittedly minor here, the reinforcement of gendered dieting roles by portraying the (single) male humorously—confirming that dieting is something only women need should be serious about.

Think I’m exaggerating? Just see for yourself:

Those problems aside, note that the “34-쏙/ssok-34” is a clever wordplay on women’s “vital statistics” (bust/waist/hip measurements), with one use of the word “ssok” being to stress how concave something is. In fairness, it’s quite apt for a slimming product.

(For more posts in the “Korean Sociological Image” series, see here)

Because a woman’s legs can NEVER be too thin…

After all, why settle for mere sausage legs when you can have drumsticks instead?

Found in passing while flicking through a discarded copy of the Korean version of the Metro International, a free daily newspaper. While it’s obvious what it’s advertising, I was sufficiently curious to find out what it was saying exactly:

나는 원래 윤아보다 다리가 섹시했다

다만 쥬비스 관리를 몰랐을 뿐!

Originally my legs were sexier than Yoona’s, but the only problem was I didn’t know about the care that Juvis (the name of the diet clinic) could provide.

내 다리는 원레 백만불짜리 다리,

세월의 무게를 견디기위해

점점 두꺼워져 갔지

이제 쥬비스로 관리받아

예전의 각선미를 되찾을거야!

Originally my legs looked like a million dollars, but in order to get through life my legs got thicker and thicker. Now, through Juvis I am going to receive a service that will restore my legs to their former beauty!

더 즐거워진 쥬비스 체험 EVENT

A more enjoyable Juvis experience event

3월부터 쥬비스의 다양한, 관리시스템이 새롭게 시작됩니다! 이벤트 기간 동안 신규 패키지를 동록하시는 고객께 새로운 관리시스템 중 2개의 이벤트 프로그램을 무료로 체험할 수 있는 혜택을 드립니다.

From March, Juvis will introduce a more varied body care system. For those that register, you will receive the benefits of experiencing two event programs for no extra charge.

여자가 꿈꾸던 라인

쥬비스에서 관리하세요 몸이 즐겨운 다이어트

The line that women have dreamt about

Get the care and a diet enjoyable for your body at Juvis

쥬비스 다이어트가 즐거운 이유:

몸이 힘들지 않아서 즐겁다
요요를 완벽히 잡아서 즐겁다
부작용이 없어서 즐겁다
탄력까지 살려줘서 즐겁다
원하는 부위가 빠져서 즐겁다
추가 부담이 없어서 즐겁다

Reasons why a Juvis diet is enjoyable:

It is not tiring for the body
Your weight will not go up and down like a yoyo
There are no side-effects
You will revive your body’s elasticity and bounce
You can lose weight from the body parts you want to
There are no additional charges

Sigh…

Are Korea’s Women Boxers Good Enough for Adidas?

kim-ji-young-two Writing earlier this month, I was very impressed by the rhetoric of the launch of Adidas Korea’s “Me, Myself” campaign, and especially by the healthy-looking models used. But one fair criticism by frequent commenter Sonagi was that while on the one hand they definitely weren’t “the gaunt-looking models of most fashion shows,” were all “healthy and glowing,” and may well have shown “that women could look stylish while working out at the gym, doing complicated yoga moves or swimming in the pool,” on the other hand they certainly didn’t appear to have anything at all like the physiques of actual athletes either, somewhat diluting the campaign’s supposed message (source, left: Yonhap News).

And it’s not hard to think of attractive athletes who could have—nay, should have—taken their place instead, a point which I was suddenly reminded of earlier today when I was flicking channels and happened to come across IFBA Bantamweight Champion Kim Ji-Young (김지영) in action, her—let’s face it—feminine appearance being so in contrast to the bulk of her counterparts (in both senses of the phrase!) that I immediately sat up and took notice. As it happens, she was in her hometown of Yeongdong City, successfully defending her title for the fourth time (against Dennapa Sukruaangrueng of Thailand).

(Update, September 2014: Reading over this post five years later, I’m cringing at—among other things—my implication that women with bulky physiques are any less feminine than Kim Ji-Young, and the notion that they could never be accepted as endorsement models for sports clothing companies).

Unfortunately, as images of female athletes tend to be unflattering, taken as they are at instants of extreme pain, anger, passion or even all three (not that those of male athletes aren’t either) then in lieu of a video of the fight I saw then that photo of her above and this on the right from 2005 (source: Yonhap News) will have to do for my purpose, which is to ask you if she could realistically be a model for Adidas or any other clothing company? Why or why not? Yes, granted, she does has bigger arms than average (naturally), but although this is not to say that people of either sex can only find athletic role models in those of a similar (or desired) size to them, her diminutive height and weight (“bantamweight” means 51-54 kg) and small bust do make her very similar physically to a lot of Korean women, albeit having muscle where they usually have fat. Moreover, given that the notions that models “have to” be tall and thin would supposedly be the very antithesis of the Me, Myself campaign, then I can’t think of any reason to reject her for something like that especially.

As it happens, there is already a Korean female boxer who makes a great deal of money through sponsorship, commercial and TV appearances: Choi Shin-hui (최신희), whom I found about via this slightly old but otherwise excellent introduction to female boxing in Korea over at Korea Beat, and it turns out that two years ago at least there was quite a boom in the sport, with Korea having several world champions. I’m almost a little reluctant to post any pictures of her however, as with the vast majority available being modeling shots (including this one below for Vogue magazine in 2004 for example; see here for the article), then they’re naturally going to present her in a much better light than the few and quite frankly rather hideous ones of Kim Ji-young in action out there. So I include a link to this and this other one (scroll down) of Choi Shin-hui from that period too, not to imply that she’s ugly in them—quite the opposite—but more to demonstrate that they’re certainly less flattering than those to be found in advertisements, which just again goes to show that however unglamorous they—or you and I for that matter—can appear in photos of them grunting away at their sport(s) can be, surely Kim Ji-young and/or other athletes like her should have been in consideration for even a one-off, token appearance at a launch for products that are supposedly aimed at athletic women? Even just the minimal consideration towards the campaign’s professed message that that would have demonstrated would have been much better than none at all.

(Source: DBSD Boxing)

Or am I making too much of it? Do you think athletes weren’t used simply (and perhaps quite legitimately) because of their inexperience with a catwalk? Or is there another simple reason I’m overlooking?

Regardless, if you’ve read this far then you’ll probably also be quite interested in and inspired by this story of 18 year-old Choi Hyun-Mi, who defected with her family from North Korea in 2004 and on whose boxing success they now entirely rely on for financial support (Update: Sorry that the link has died; instead here’s a video below). And I have one final request too: somewhere on this list of expat blogs is one I used to read by a woman in Seoul who happens to be a female boxer and very active in the boxing scene, but I’ve completely forgotten both its and her name, it being a long time since this blog you’re reading turned my own reading of other blogs from pleasure into business (sigh). Writing this post has made me interested again though, and I may well want to pick her brains about some of the issues raised in it too, so if anyone knows who I’m talking about, please pass on her blog address!

Adidas’ “Me, Myself Campaign”: Refreshing Body Images for Korean Women?

아디다스의-2009-우먼스-캠페인-미, 마이셀프 And here’s the other reason I have the focus on the blog that I do!

Seriously though, while I am never lacking for pictures of attractive Korean women in sportswear and bikinis to attract “readers” to the blog with if I do so choose, there is still reason to single out this week’s Korean launch of the global Adidas ”Me, Myself” (미,마이셀프) campaign here. Consider its claimed raison d’être, however perfunctory its sentiments may be in practice (source, right: Naver):

Impossible standards of beauty continue to be foisted on young women today. Flip through any fashion magazine, and you’ll find super skinny supermodels on almost every page. Not to mention on billboards, on television and movies and the Internet. Young women feel pressured to live up to this standard of beauty, often to the detriment of their mental and physical well being.

Instead of pressuring women to conform to this impossible standard of beauty, sportswear giant Adidas wants to inspire women to be themselves.

With its new campaign philosophy, ”Me, Myself,” women are encouraged to be healthy, happy, fit, full of life and be true to who they are. It celebrates women’s individuality, confidence and motivation.

To launch the ”Me, Myself” campaign in Korea, adidas staged a unique fashion show featuring its spring/summer women’s wear line at Kring, Daechi-dong, southern Seoul, Wednesday. Korean celebrities like singer Solbi and girl group Afterschool were spotted at the event.

And crucially (my emphasis):

Unlike in most fashion shows with gaunt-looking models, the Adidas models were healthy and glowing. They showed that women could look stylish while working out at the gym, doing complicated yoga moves or swimming in the pool.

Granted, it comes from a blatant advertorial, but that last is much more important than it may sound at first. As while on the surface modern Korean exercise culture is very similar to its Western counterpart(s), albeit naturally with more of an emphasis on hill-walking and, in turn, free open-air facilities in those hills for its rapidly aging population to use, in practice Korean women have generally interpreted the modern Western imports of gym culture and health consciousness through their preexisting notions of consumption and feminine passivity (see here, here and here), often with quite startling and absurd results. Indeed, one could argue that their gym-going merely serves to allow many Korean women to feel a certain sweet self-satisfaction in the mere act of doing so, never actually having to face the challenge of exercising to the extent that, say, sweat interferes with the cosmetics that many wear while doing so, or that it burns off excess fat. Instead, a vast and unregulated industry of passive dieting methods (e.g. diet pills, aroma therapy, diet crème, and diet drinks) takes that place, overall giving the impression that dieting is simple, easy, quick, and effective without pain, so long as women consume various products.

아디다스의-2009-우먼스-캠페인-미,마이셀프-tracksuit-bikini

(Sources: 아이뉴스; Artsnews Paran)

Which is not to say that all Western women (or men) don’t also waste a lot of time at gyms, nor that the act of attending one isn’t also de rigeur for the trendy modern urban professional, and much less the quality of the exercise done there. But…well, as those links above make clear, these things — like so many other trappings of modernity here — are just so magnified here, almost like a hyperreal parody of the goals of modernity itself. In this particular case though, lacking an educational background of critical thinking, Korean women are to a certain extent its victims, which again renders any alternative message of self-agency and of being proactive in naturally achieving one’s desired body image worthy of getting out to as wide an audience as possible.

I dare say, however, that that message could have been done somewhat more effectively had anything at all about the campaign been included on Adidas’ Korean website (let alone in Korean), especially as news coverage seems to have concentrated rather more on the celebrities that attended instead. Being in the job-market myself soon though, then I’ll gladly take on that responsibility of ensuring that the site is regularly updated from now on (there’s my contact details in the top-left corner!), but until that point then I guess that this post and these Korean videos of the event will have to do.

Update: I’m afraid those videos didn’t embed very well: try watching here instead.

Update 2: Thanks to commenters, I now realize that the choice of models (specifically, their body types) should have been much more diverse, preferably with some real athletes included. See here for a follow-up post exploring precisely that, focusing on female boxers.

( Source: left, right )

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(Source: Dark Roasted Blend)

(Han Ye-seul demonstrates yet another “V-line.” Source: Naver Photo Gallery)

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(Source: Paranzui)

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(Source: DBSD Boxing)

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(Sources: 아이뉴스; Artsnews Paran)

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