by Jenny Sim
In light of our Keep it Real challenge with Miss Rep, LoveSocial, and I Am That Girl, and Seventeen’s recent promise to never alter the faces or bodies of its models, I wanted to dedicate my first blog to talking about advertising in East Asian countries.
The Korean community is heavily celebrity-focused: from clothing to presidential elections, there isn’t a single thing in Korea that is not advertised by celebrities. Teen celebs model for school uniforms, while the most popular girl groups hold up a chicken drumstick and dance to their latest hit single. I don’t believe that this is a bad thing. I mean, it’s what celebrities do, right? The problem, however, is the sexualization of women and gender stereotypes that most of this advertising nails into people’s minds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nVPboUOPx8
Here’s an example featuring Girls’ Generation, the most hip, most loved girl band in Korea. In this advertisement, all nine girls, with the same hairstyle, the same big eyes, the same 21-inch waist, and the same long, slim legs in shorts are dressed like a little toy marching band. During this thirty-second television ad, the girls are dancing! Yay, right? Don’t we all want to see nine of what are advertised as the most beautiful girls in Korea dance for thirty straight seconds? But, is it just me, or is there something missing from this ad?
Oh yeah. The pizza. There is NO pizza in this advertisement of one of the biggest PIZZA STORES. No biggie, right?
How about this commercial for Chocolate phones? Again, it’s an advertisement starring Girls Generation. Throughout the ad, the girls are dancing in white booty shorts and short tops AND, the phone constantly shows off its super-AMOLED screen, implying that if you buy this phone, then you can see Girl’s Generation dancing anytime and anywhere. Sigh.
On an unfortunately not completely different note, the presidential election is coming up in Korea. Here’s a celeb endorsement: a topless photo of an actress, where she’s covering her breast with a poster, encouraging people to vote. Another actress was featured in a series of photos at the beach with the name of the candidate she supports written across her boobs. Really? Is that what it’s gonna take to have people go VOTE?
So what are the young girls and boys supposed to learn from these advertisements? People today definitely spend more time on media than they did ten years ago and when youth see advertisements like this every day, every time they are wired in, what are they supposed to learn? For my generation who saw these advertisements ever since they can remember, what are they supposed to get out of these images? According to Miss Representation, an average girl, by the time they turn twelve, would have seen up to 77,546 advertisements and spend ten hours and forty-five minutes on media consumption. Furthermore, a study by the SF Environment shows that teenagers see about 3,000 advertisements (on and off line) daily and these teenagers are considered the largest consumers.
Well, what much of Korean media is enforcing is that girls should lose weight and have 21-in waist and super thin
legs. And at the same time, you should be tall. But make sure you don’t over-feed yourself! Oh, and make sure you have big boobs and a round butt, so that your body looks like a glass Coca-cola bottle. Why? Because it’s becoming the norm in Korean media, and anything outside that…well, it must not be beautiful.
But that’s not true: tall, short, small eyes, freckles, dimples, red hair, black hair, light skin, dark skin; everyone has their own beauty. What these advertisements are doing is portraying one type of body, a narrow ideal of beauty. The advertisements are portraying an image that will benefit their product, not real people, ignoring the fact that there are infinitely many kinds of beauty in this world.
As the Korean entertainment industry grows, it’s affecting youth drastically. Both boys and girls are starting to become anorexic; the number of students skipping meals is increasing exponentially and it’s heart aching to see my friends and families becoming part of that population. What’s worse is when I go to school and see my foreign friends telling me how pretty and gorgeous Korean celebrities are. I don’t understand their definition of beauty. Since when did “beauty” become dependent on being unhealthy? Oh… that’s right. Since media made it the norm, years ago. Knowing this, I worry: what will media images of women look like in the next decade?
Unfortunately, media’s narrow representation of beauty exists outside of the U.S. and Korea; it has become a global issue. With any luck, we’ll be able to turn these unhealthy media into something actually beautiful. SPARK and our partner organizations are constantly fighting to find ways to represent the true variety of beauty, whether it’s through petitions (like our current petition to Teen Vogue), or through promoting awesome magazines like Teen Voices and New Moon Girls. Only by challenging unhealthy standards of beauty can we eliminate them.
You could have mentioned the males as well, I mean if males take their shirt off for some ad then why can’t the girls wear some shorts or a bikini. Regarding the presidential election and bikini/shirtless girls, may I direct you to the Obama girl (yes there is no link between her and Obama’s election race but it’s unfair to judge a whole culture like that when the whole we live in is like already. )
Valid points, but I don’t think the blogger’s intention was to condemn wearing bikinis. I mean, they’re just bathing suits. Nothing inherently oppressive about that. But it’s the idea of scantily-clad women and how the female form is used to sell products, because advertising agencies seem to think that sex is what sells. The blogger does address this quite well, with the pizza commercial where we find out basically nothing about the pizza. The blogger is trying to show the pervasiveness of commercialization of the female body and its toxic effect in shaping our cultural understanding of our bodies, sexuality, and identity.
Also, I’d like to contend your argument that “it’s unfair to judge a whole culture” when the world we live in has similar problems. What the blogger does here is quite different. She’s showing how Western beauty ideals interact with the Korean media to mirror sexist values that we happen to have in the U.S. as well. This is particularly important because, in this age of globalization, gender-based oppression takes a global form when Western imperialism interacts with native patriarchal values. I’d argue that both the bikini girl here and the Obama girl both reflect sexist values of their respective cultures. As the blogger writes, the notion that “going topless” will get people to vote is rather disheartening and very problematic. And this comparison is possible because both women reflect yet another way the female body can be commodified, in this case, for political motivation.
Discussing sexism in different cultures is challenging. But, sexism is global and its toxic impact is intensified by Western imperialism and capitalism. It’s important to discuss the interconnectedness of oppressions. Many thanks to the blogger for bringing this to our attention.
a very good article. however, i think in regards to korean female oppression through sexualization and celebrities, we need to compare males and females through a another lens. the degrees of objectification for both men AND women are quite incredible. so the “beauty” problem is not just a problem of women but also of men. there is a higher level of plastic surgery/make-up etc. for women (compared to men), but there has been a social concern about many men getting plastic surgery/make-up etc. well, i guess this “concern” itself is representative of this unequal expectation. of course i think there is some other expectation/rhetoric that make women “suffer” more from this expectation of beauty/handsomeness etc., but it requires deeper inspection.
very good post!
South Korean apparently has the highest level of plastic surgery in the world, due to the unattainable standards mentioned in your article. This South Korean ad for plastic surgery, using cutesy emoticons to make women feel less than perfect is a great example:
http://brandwashed.ca/post/26530437315/plastic-surgery-ad
People foolish enough to allow marketing to influence their choices are deserving of all the consequences. Encourage people to think critically, and advertisements will become the white noise that they are.
Only someone with a complete lack of self awareness thinks that marketing has no effect on them.
Marketing influences everyone, whether or not you realize it.