It’s Not the Wondergirls, it’s What They Represent…

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Like PopSeoul! says, no matter how much leopard print the Wondergirls are wearing to promote their new single, it doesn’t mean that they are suddenly sexually attractive. I’d also add that having them do so is to conflate sexiness with a certain kind of clothing or the amount of skin a woman is showing, whereas any guy can tell you that a woman’s sexiness is ultimately about her attitude. So to me, putting those kinds of clothes on 15 year-old girls that manifestly lack that only serves to highlight how young they really are.

Which is what I was trying to point out in this earlier post on an advert for pizzas of theirs, but which merely gave me an online reputation as dogmatic, naive and/or as a complete prude instead (this and this post didn’t help either). In reality, I fully acknowledge that of course 15 year-old girls can and do have sexual feelings and that many act on them, and also the essential arbitrariness and lack of historical precedent for, say, the age of consent. I could say more on that, but as I happen to be a teacher of 15 year-old girls then I’ll wisely restrain myself. Besides which, I’m still largely for the already existing system of age limits on sexual activities and/or pornography, and not just because I have a daughter myself, a fact which I’m tired of sometimes having my thoughts and opinions reduced to.

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Another way in which I think I (and other commentators) have been misinterpreted is in people thinking I have a particular beef with the Wondergirls themselves, although sometimes people are reacting because they’re (justifiably) simply tired of hearing the name. But it’s never been the girls themselves, for whom I have virtually no opinions about, and what I’ve said about them has always been about what they represent instead. In particular, some expats here seem to want to deny me of my right to discuss them at all, but I’ll still blog about them so long as most Koreans and some expats have this strange myopia preventing them from admitting that their sexuality is being used to sell. I’ll simply never understand how a dance move from them blatantly designed to turn me on is rendered cute and innocent by virtue of their age, whereas its sexual nature would be instantly acknowledged for what it is if it was performed by, say, Lee Hyori instead. Isn’t it telling enough that their images and videos appear in porn sites? Seriously, what is it with people? Most of the time I’ve written on them it’s been with a sense of shock and incredulity that even some people are not seeing what I’m seeing.

Consider their new music video, which is what brought this admittedly somewhat unplanned post about. I found out about it via the oh-so-family friendly Korean version of Windows Live Today, which opens automatically when I turn on Windows Live Messenger. Here’s the first thing I saw on it when I turned on my computer this morning:

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Why GIFS of those parts of the video? To show off how cute and adorable they are? My ass. Well, their asses to be precise. But no matter how unbelievable it sounds, the majority of Koreans will still maintain that I’m perverted for so much as suggesting that there might be something sexual to the above.

With attitudes of avoidance and denial of in-your-face sexuality like that, is it any wonder that a recent program of much needed sexual violence prevention classes was discontinued for being too blunt and to the point? And this in a culture of sexual violence where, amongst other things, it’s socially acceptable for nightclub owners to literally physically drag attractive women into their clubs, so that their presence might attract more male customers? I take it back…maybe all this does stem from me being a father, because no way in hell are my daughters growing up in a society that treats women like this.

Like I said, this is why the Wondergirls matter. Find me another symbol of Korea’s sexual ills so ubiquitous, so blatant, and yet so unacknowledged for what it is, and I’ll happily move on to that instead.

(Update May 24: ShenYuePop has a good post about the even more blatant sexual marketing of similar teenage group Girls’ Generation (소녀시대) here)

(Update May 28: It’s only ever so loosely related with the Wondergirls, but it did come up in the comments, as it tends to do (my fault in this case). See here (NSFW) for an interesting discussion of Bill Henson’s photography exhibition in Australia, recently closed down by the police because some photos featured child nudity. Hypocritically, I don’t recall Germaine Greer’s book The Beautiful Boy likewise being banned in 2003)

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