How K-pop fashion might be destroying the way the whole world sees gender roles.
Since time and memorial, the so-called organic produce that is the music we listen to has been lab made specifically to suit our needs, creating a chicken and egg scenario where we are left confused as to whether girl power sprung up in the hearts and minds of twelve-year-olds, inspired by “wannabe” or whether it was coldly brewed by a record company, as they shook in just the right amount of ginger and sporty spice into the recipe for success.
K-pop, with its glorious fashion and flawless dance moves, has swept teens off their feet across the world within the last decade. Since their debut album in 2013 (2 cool 4 skool), BTS has risen to become one of the most influential bands in South Korean culture. It is well known that these bands are carefully created and curated by record companies to appeal to teens across the country, but looking at the sugar-coated product, it begs the question: is this a bad thing? In my opinion quite the opposite. I think it is a revolution.
The band’s name, BTS, stands for Bangtan Sonyeondan which translates to literally Bulletproof Boy Scouts. The concept being here that the teenagers will not be shot down by the expectations and stereotypes thrown at them. They are “bulletproof”. Of course, the idea that teens will stand up against stereotypes has been born afresh with every generation. Anyone remember the song We’re not gonna take it? Well, that one was played in a congress hearing over whether rock music was poisoning the minds of “the kids”. Nothing has changed except perhaps the jackets. The expectations have also changed. What teenage boys are railing against in 2021 is the expectation to be just that –boys –in the way we have always taught them to be. The fact that BTS is helping to crack open that mysterious egg of what modern masculinity is, is in itself a small revolution, dressed in pastel eyeshadow.
At the start of the band’s fame, they were dressed in dark colour palettes, with an aggressive tone to the music and a militaristic aesthetic. But coming into the summer of 2020, they have progressed, as shown in the YouTube compilation, 6 years with BTS. Their look has softened, giving them a harder job: standing strong against patriarchal criticism and gender roles. Although their look has remained distinctly 1980’s in feel, it is now providing nostalgia for Saturday afternoons watching Miami Vice, rather than rap battles on MTV. 1980’s nostalgia has been so prevalent amongst the 2010’s that it seems to have created a pervading “Sehnsucht” (nostalgia for something that happened before the person was born) in generation Z. This feeling has evoked a trend of young girls seeking soft colours and softened edges in their poster boys. To my mind, this acceptance of sweetness being represented more in fashion can only be positive. This means that teenage girls in Korea and perhaps beyond might be open to a less aggressive dynamic in what they expect from their own relationships (should they choose to peruse them) with boys.
The emergence of this is bleeding into western fashion, with the king of British Boybands, Harry Styles, being featured in Vogue’s December 2020 cover in a delightful pastel blue dress by Gucci. The brand verged into neo-romantic in their tour collaboration with Florence Welch. Where their soft chiffons and princess pleating were described as “hard to describe, I just feel like our aesthetics are so intertwined” for PAPERMAG (2020).
Florence has always been seen as the relatable witchy fantasy of many a pre-teen girl seeking to find someone who “understands what she is going through”. However, what is so fabulous about someone like Harry Styles taking a gender-bending mysterious persona, is that girls who love Harry will start to look for aspects of him in the relationships they tentatively step into. This feeds into a general trend of less aggression expected from heterosexual relationships, which benefits everyone.
In previous years, masculinity has been so rigid in what it expects of men, and what heterosexual women are allowed to find attractive in them. Back in the early 2010s, there seemed to be less of a threat. The fantasy of a “real man” was a physically strong, aggressive hero, fresh from the fight. In 2020, with a global pandemic and a political climate that seems to dance along a razor’s edge, our fantasies have become the desire for kindness. Kind to the soul and kind to the eyes. In one of their most recent music videos, “Dynamite” BTS display a late 70’s/early 80’s dreamland, where the Tellytubby backdrop gives one the sense of being welcomed into the resting place of ABBA and Barney the dinosaur all at once. It is glorious, gloriously safe. What is so interesting to wonder, is whether this is in response to a demand for comfort and compassion from a teenage girl audience, or whether it has been handed to them through advertising, like a Greggs sausage roll on a cold day, placed in the mind like an idea in Inception-like layers of a dream?
In reality, it does not seem to matter, either way, it is all progress. The wants and desires of teenage girls have been mocked and brushed off as ridiculous ever since the 1950’s when the market of “teens” was accepted as existing. Elvis was seen as a rhinestone covered threat to morality. One of the greatest cinematic masterpieces of the 1990s, Titanic, was tossed aside, deemed frivolous because teenage girls had an interest in Leonardo DiCaprio’s luscious hair, as well as historical events. Twilight and Taylor Swift got the same treatment –used as a benchmark of ridicule rather than appreciated for how lucrative they were; their power ignored. Finally, in 2020, huge businesses like the record industries of South Korea, are not only taking an interest in the dreams of the teenage girl but have decided to put their money where their mouth is in terms of taking a sledgehammer to gender roles.
Yes, the industry is problematic, plastic, “cold, shiny, hard, plastic” (Mean Girls, 2004), but the demand for softness has created a plastic sledgehammer of money that is slowly destroying the concrete gender box. BTS are bulletproof, but their armour is baby blue and made of tulle. Take up arms, paint your nails, long live millennial pink.