but sometimes all boy groups need to do is like a hip thrust and everyone's like
"that is so powerful, immaculate, talented wow" \ because idols do go through so
much for having their weight fluctuate and i'm gonna tell you something right
now...
hi welcome my name is angelina and today we're going to be talking about
itzy most notably recent things that have been said in regards to the
misogyny that they face as a girl group as well as Ryujin's recent comments about
body image so if you're interested in this type of
content make sure you subscribe like comment and share this video
with friends you don't have because i don't either! you can also follow me on
instagram because i am almost done my rainbow
now itzy have recently released a video called letters to midzy where they get
very personal and quite honest about how they feel
and i definitely applaud their level of transparency
so in this 17 minute video each member gives a raw
insight into their perspective on things whether it's about the pressures of
being in a dance-based group, or the pressures of keeping your
emotions bottled up, to even backhanded misogynistic compliments
"compliments" which was highlighted by Ryujin in her segment and i definitely
wanted to touch on that so it seems a lot of people are praising her
for her words and for calling it out as it is,
not actually a compliment. so she starts off by saying
"i'm not sure if you'd call this a bias we practice for performances
a lot" she then goes on to say that "when the audiences
watch the performance we prepared hard for people complimenting us saying your
performance seems difficult for a girl group
it looks too straining for a girl group too cool to be a girl group" and this is
obviously in reference to itzy's signature choreography
that is very intricate and very difficult in my opinion
and it is really sad that oftentimes we would associate
such a choreography with boy group choreography and this is definitely
something that i unfortunately see a lot of
in my comment section, that you know girl group dances are just you know
easier and no shade to boy groups i mean one of my ults
is a boy group... I know! this really must be a simulation
but sometimes all boy groups need to do is like a hip thrust and everyone's like
"that is so powerful immaculate talented wow" *for legal
reasons i need to point out that that's a joke*
but we'll get into those types of comments a little bit later and so she
continues by saying "but these don't exactly
sound like compliments to me for a girl group feels like it's implying we're a
little bit better than expected" she then expresses how she
accepts the compliment regardless because she understands that
maybe these people aren't coming from a malicious place but
obviously it is quite bothersome she then continues on saying
that they don't go into practice thinking "that'll do
because we're girls" and then says "i hope that they could just appreciate it as
it is" she's basically saying she would rather be complimented for
being cool or having their choreographies look cool or having their
performances look powerful rather than only being all of
those things in the shadows of boy groups
and there's a hundred percent double standards when it comes to
choreographies from boy groups versus choreographies from girl groups
and if you'd like a little bit more of my thoughts on that i have part 1 and
part 2 of double standards in k-pop which touches on that a little bit but
essentially it's not a new concept that there are things that boy groups
can get away with that girl groups simply cannot for example showing
too much skin, so historically boy groups have been
praised for you know ab reveals for ripping their shirts off
for doing things that are very suggestive
and they have been given so much leniency in regards to this
while girl groups have had entire music videos and performances
banned for doing things that are honestly a lot
tamer, an example i bring up quite often is hyuna's bubble pop which
was banned on kbs, the korean communications standard commission
saying that "Hyuna dancing with male dancers while dressed in short revealing
outfits was too suggestive and it was
considered to be highly inappropriate"
which caused a lot of backlash especially
since Lee Joon who was actually in the music video, called this out on an episode of
radio star "i get sad because i think people are
really hard on female celebrities when male celebrities take their shirts
off people say oh they're so cool but when female
celebrities do it people say she looks so cheap" and i think it is
safe to say that we don't see this happening as much anymore
but then again we definitely also don't see sexy concepts done as much
nearly as much anymore, honestly it seems that sexy concepts were both
so incredibly stigmatized yet simultaneously
so in demand but regardless have been almost entirely phased out of kpop by
now, and the thing is girl groups just get
sh*t on so much for simply existing within the entertainment industry and i
honestly commend Ryujin for calling that out and we've
definitely seen a shift in recent times for concepts in kpop because back in the
day sexy concepts were a lot more common as
i've expressed before however if we fast forward to now we
still kind of see the same issue except for now instead of more
sexy concepts we see that girl groups have taken on
more powerful concepts and yet still within the context of these powerful
concepts we still see these belittling comments
there is just no winning! and itzy are having such
amazing performances, just the other day they released a stage practice
video where they are singing live i mean i had to stan after that, i was
blown away, i was like "those live vocals!" i actually did a listening party for
their new album on my vlog channel which should be up by sunday
and i shit you not i almost cried at their live vocals
ah did you hear that? I feel- a little tangent - third gen was
more dance-based and then gen 3.5 took it a little too far with the
dance based things, but i feel like fourth gen and coming is going to be
the perfect mix i'm predicting it this performance is absolutely
what i love about kpop it doesn't need to be perfect it just needs to feel
authentic for me, i felt something from the stage practice. but i was so in love
with the stage practice performance and i really wanted
to share it with you guys because it's really rare that you see idols
practicing singing and dancing at the same time that is such....
that is such a 2NE1 thing to do
and we should be able to appreciate these types of performances
without comparing them to boy groups and without acting so surprised that they
can perform like that only if it's because you associate that
with boy groups, see i'm surprised because live vocals
are my thing not my thing i like live vocals i mean you'll get to see my live
vocals when 2NE2 debuts but that's not for another two years
our debut date is 22.22.22 mark it in your calendars
but i mean it's okay to be surprised and to be taken aback by the performances
but if you're watching their performance and you're like
super surprised you're like "isn't that a little hard for a
girl group?" that's where it gets problematic
because fun fact anyone from any gender and actually any size can give
amazing performances which brings us to the second part of this video
so within this specific video she also did make comments
about weight body image and essentially the pressures of idols needing to stay
thin and honestly this is something that i'm gonna touch on very carefully
for a multitude of reasons, number one the content can be a little triggering
for some people so here is your content warning
we'll be talking about body image, weight stigma and so on
and number two this is based on translations right i can't get a really
good feel of what she was really saying given my level of korean and honestly
i've seen quite a few different interpretations of
what she has said so my interpretation might be totally different
from what you got from that video so we're going to look into different
interpretations and honestly some clarifications that i
would like to make. so i just need you to know that i
understand that there's a little bit of a lack of context,
so i do want to talk about it all so she basically said
"our jobs require us to strive for aesthetic beauty
and to stay thin but it's not like idol stars
have to be thin just because it's about performance
being on the thinner side will make the dancing better to look at
and you can wear a broader spectrum of costumes
these are the kind of reasons we stay thin it's not so much
focused on being thin no matter what because it's prettier shouldn't be the
reason why" so i can definitely appreciate that she
is saying that being thin does not equate to being
pretty, because i feel like a lot of us can kind of relate to
growing up in a society that kind of teaches you to hate your body
that teaches you that being thin equates to being
morally superior, and that's that's wrong! and some people are interpreting her
comment as a commentary on how kpop values
thinness a little too much and the pressures that she
feels however i did want to talk about the performance comment just a little
bit about how she said that being on the thinner side can make a
performance quote-unquote look better... what she said about being
thin and having dancing look better is
not a fact, it's purely an opinion because i know
so many dancers who are in bigger bodies who give
such amazing performances however it's also an opinion that jyp himself
shares and unfortunately i think there is a flaw in the same argument that he's
used and been called out for in the past notably against jihyo from
twice and a trainee from nizi project. when it
comes to jihyo on an episode of SIXTEEN he told her
that her dance "looks slow" and expressed that weight
gain was the reason, and then continued with "while the other girls practiced
their singing you have to lose weight" and more
recently he has come under fire for his criticism towards a nizy project
trainee where he expressed a similar idea in
regards to body weight and dancing alleging that one has an impact on the
other and he told her "when you were dancing your body was
heavy and slow" and i mean criticism is criticism we should be open to criticism
but it just doesn't make sense to me and it's a little ironic to me
that someone could say that a bigger body looks slower
but on the other end of that spectrum if your idols are only eating
one meal a day or maybe they're not eating at all, maybe they feel really
weak and then consequently their movements
would still be slow either way, so at the end of the day, the message
that i'm getting is that it's not actually about performance
because if it was, you would encourage people
to eat enough to sustain those activities, so really it
always just ends up coming back to aesthetics anyways no matter
how we try to get around this because if you're really claiming that it's
just about the performance of it all, but then go on to say
that the performance just looks better if you're thinner or if you lose weight,
i mean we essentially just did a whole circle around an argument to make
ourselves feel better about preferring thin bodies. so the fact that jyp is so
vocal about this doesn't surprise me especially given the
fact that his idols have a similar way of thinking as well
even if this has the potential to bring up concerns from
fans, and i don't think this comes from a malicious place
whatsoever i mean she literally said "because it's pretty
shouldn't be a reason why idols want to be thin" so we already see that
disconnect you know she is not equating being thin to being pretty,
and of course i appreciate that so much that is an incredible message
to send to people and she's literally calling out society
for what it is, society is incredibly fixated
on physical appearance over anything else which often becomes a conversation
about health but that conversation about health often
excludes the accessibility to health and ableism
within that, and of course that also brings up the argument of you know how
healthy does someone need to be for you to give them basic respect? and
i'm also going to link some instagram accounts below
that have helped me unlearn a lot of things and that have honestly made me
question so many things in my life so if you're interested they will be linked in
the description as well but regardless of all this
regardless of the intention behind the comment,
regardless of people's interpretations of those comments,
i do absolutely need to point out that if you are fat, if you are in a
bigger body if you do not fit society's ideal body type you are
valid. if you are a dancer a performer and you
are in a bigger body you are valid, your art is not any less
because of the way that you look. we have so much proof
of so many different body types giving amazing performances and we also have
proof that bigger clothing can be made if we're going to touch on
the comment about wearing a broader spectrum of clothing that she made
i see it as a commentary on society, as a commentary on kpop itself
that, yes, bigger bodies can give amazing performances
clothing can be made for bigger bodies but
we do live in a society that stigmatizes those same bodies and we also know for a
fact that if an idol's weight fluctuates in any capacity that they will get
dragged to filth so Ryujin isn't inherently wrong
with what she's saying, we live exactly in that type of society
that she is describing a society that would value thinner
bodies within a performance a society that
wouldn't want to make different sizes of clothing to accommodate more people
a society that would have you believe that there is only one
body type that is acceptable but just because that's the type of world we live
in, doesn't mean that we can't question that,
doesn't mean that we can't challenge that!
and maybe that's a stretch i don't know i don't really know how exactly to
interpret this especially again given this kind of lack of context
so i definitely would love to know how you guys interpreted this
what you guys thought of this and so on because idols do go through
so much sh*t for having their weight fluctuate
and i'm gonna tell you something right now if your weight fluctuates
it does not at all reflect how good of a person you are and i'm not
going to give specific examples for this part of the video because it seems a
little hypocritical to put certain idols bodies on display
to then call out how putting their bodies on display is problematic
but i'm sure we can all think of an example of an idol's body
whose weight fluctuated and was dragged to filth by the media,
by news articles, by fans for simply not fitting into the ideal body type
despite the ideal body type literally changing every 10 years...
and these idols no matter how talented they were, no matter how much
good they did in this world, were reduced to nothing but their aesthetics
and that's obviously disgusting, so i applaud
Ryujin for not equating being beautiful to being thin, we need more idols to
spread messages like that but i don't agree
with the logic that bigger bodies don't perform as
nicely because that stigmatizes people who can simultaneously be super super
talented but they just don't fit what society
deems as aesthetically pleasing which has
absolutely nothing to do with actual talent because when i was
younger i remember one of my idols literally said women
need to stay thin but i can be fat because i'm a man and
let me tell you that kind of message is damaging and as a content
creator who is like literally so irrelevant i still have
people who think i'm the worst person in the world just
by looking at my body just by looking at how
fat I am, and it's the most ironic thing in the world
because that is weight stigma, when you constantly go at someone's mental health
and try to deteriorate their mental health because you don't like the way
their body looks, it can actually have effects on their
body so if you actually care about people's quote-unquote health which by
the way health is subjective and often inaccessible
then you would actually just shut up about people's weight because that is a
lot less detrimental than contributing to weight stigma which is one of the
highest factors for people getting ed's so to conclude
it is not inherently about performances right? watching and enjoying a
performance is so subjective but what you're conditioned to think
about the bodies who are performing is a different story and we need to
challenge that a lot more so yeah that is basically it for this
video let me know what you think in the comments down below
don't forget to subscribe like comment and share this video with friends you
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all of that jazz these are the current individuals who support my channel every
single month thank you for all of your support i also
have a playlist on spotify that's called magical kpop that i made for you guys if
you want to check it out and if you find any songs that are new to you that
you vibe with then definitely let me know
and also go subscribe to my second channel because i'm uploading an itzy
album listening party as for me i'm gonna get going and
prepare myself for all the people who are gonna call me fat on this video
bye