Music and Gender
I wasn't a really big fan of K-pop until my sophomore year of high school. One day, I randomly decided to look up K-pop music videos and I came across a group called BTS (Any Army fans in the house?!) and I became highly obsessed to say the least. I would stay up and watch all of their music videos (sometimes one too many), look up the lyrics and practice so I could sing along, and I even managed to learn all seven of their names in one day - like I said I was obsessed - and I still am, haha!
When I was watching their music videos, I noticed that they wore makeup but they weren't wearing a full set of makeup, just eyeliner. This necessarily didn’t imply that they were gay but as a way of showing that men can be confident and wear makeup too! I didn't think anything of it because I thought it was pretty cool to see a boy group break the social norms and wear eyeliner and given the fact it was 2016, I thought everyone normalized men wearing makeup by then. Well, was I WRONG.
I remember sitting in bed and I saw this 2013 interview with two of the BTS members, which happened to be the rappers of the group, pop up on my recommendations list on YouTube. (A little background information: BTS debuted in 2013 so they were still a little new when being interviewed for this session). I decided to give it a watch and couldn’t believe I was hearing. The interviewer was basically close minded and made a lot of snarky comments indicating that because they wear makeup, it made them look girly and it wasn’t manly to do such things. He also said other nasty things, claiming they weren’t real musicians because they left the hip hop industry to join the K-pop industry. Although the interview was a really tough one to sit through, the two men handled the interview well and made a diss track a year later, respectfully (My Army fans know what I’m talking about).
I’ll be honest, I haven’t listened to K-pop music for a little over a year now but I’ve seen on other social media platforms that not only does BTS still wear makeup in their music videos but a lot more Korean male idols are wearing makeup as well and their confidence overflows! I hope this encourages all men who are afraid to express themselves to come out of their shells and share their beauty with the rest of the world!
Here is the video I first discovered when looking up BTS:
Here is another video of the interview I mentioned (There are subtitles enabled):
This post was so interesting to read! I don't know much about K Pop, so I had no idea that not only did male idols wear makeup, but that they're also bashed for it. I am all for feminine men or men that use feminine products, because gender roles are so unnecessary most of the time. Thankfully it's starting to become more normalized and especially in fields such as art and music, but we need to start making it universally acceptable until gender roles and labels are no longer oppressing anyone anymore. Really great concept!
ReplyDeleteHey Tisha! I don't know a whole bunch about K Pop so I never realized what all they went through for just wearing eyeliner. I'm completely for guys wearing makeup if they want to and if it makes them happy with themselves. I actually have always enjoyed watching male makeup artists over females. There's definitely a lot of backlash around this today but I do think that more and more people are starting to accept it. Thank you so much for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this post Tisha. You bring up a good point about how makeup doesn't have to apply to just one specific gender. I didn't know that they were looked down on for wearing makeup, but I'm glad that they stuck with wearing makeup despite rude comments. I love seeing different ways people break away from gender norms.
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