aespa’s Giselle
When aespa was preparing for the most recent comeback Savage, a behind-the-scenes video
of theirs was uploaded just like every other group did after the release of the title track.
However, it was also because of this video that soon after that, Giselle was dragged into a
huge mess where she was accused of being rac*st for mouthing the N-word in Love Galore by SZA.
Since racial issues have always been a sensitive topic, especially in the States—aka
the country where Giselle had many years of her childhood there, she quickly became
the bullseye of criticism among not only domestical but also international netizens.
According to them, Giselle was so ill-educated of such a serious social concern that despite
being a famous idol, she still failed to keep the manner and the responsibility toward young fans.
Plus, as mentioned that she had spent lots of time in the States and even went to school there,
some also had more solid reasons to believe Giselle was being racist,
at least to some extent, and was arrogant.
Apparently there were also fans that took the stance beside Giselle, saying that she wasn’t
fluent enough to know it was a racial slur and was unaware how serious that one word could hurt
others. However, as disagreed by many people, as Giselle once did a cover of Tia Tamera and
smoothly replaced the N-word to not offend anyone, it was nonsensical to protect her at this point.
Plus, for anyone who was saying that she was unaware of the lyrics' meanings, some also
fired back that Giselle was lip syncing to almost the whole song and even excitedly leaned forward
after mouthing that slur. The scandal got so big that when you happened to search for her name on
Google at the time, the top two suggestions would be “giselle n word aepsa” and “giselle n word.”
Fortunately, the issue quickly cooled down because Giselle released an apology just one
day after the incident and SM Entertainment also took down the controversial video.
Yet life is full of expectations and recently,
Giselle once again made a half-witted and controversial statement.
After aespa visited New York for their performance at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade a while ago,
a video about their trip around the town titled 24 Hours with aespa was uploaded by Vogue.
While that could have been a memorable milestone for the group and a prideful moment for MYs,
the video unfortunately gave rise to another wave of criticism toward Giselle
after she said “I'm really going to commit s**cide if my phone drops.”
Yes, the subtitle that Vogue put in was “I would die,” which was literally a
normal expression that everyone use when something bad happened
but according to K-netizens, as her words actually meant “commit s**cide” in Korean,
and s**cide has always been a sensitive topic in the country due to the social pressures on
young people, many believed Giselle derserved to be criticized this time.
The anger soon grew out of the comment section on Youtube and expanded onto
many forums like Nate Pann and Instiz. On theqoo, there was also a long post titled
“Is this something an idol should say in a video posted for fans to watch?”.
Here, this person said even though Giselle has always been her bias,
and the proof was a bunch of photos she saved since the very beginning of October this year, she
still could defend how mindless and irresponsible of Giselle to pull that suicide joke.
On the other hand, some said that normal people pulled that joke all the time when
they faced something bad so it was kinda too much to hate Giselle for doing the same thing.
Others also said now that they had known why being a female idol was an exhausting job
and probably Giselle must have kept her mouth shut forever to plead the public.
However, lots of people found these reasons unacceptable because at the end of the day,
Giselle was still an idol with lots of influence over young people,
and so, what ordinary people would do didn’t mean she should also do.
aespa’s Winter
Besides Giselle, netizens also believe Winter should also watch her words, and probably should
have SM Entertainment go over everything, before speaking because despite having just debuted for
around a year, she was already caught up in four scandals deriving from what she shared online.
Most recently, Winter became the center of criticism, again,
for using a controversial slang in disguise of her Gyeongsangdo dialect.
FYI, many Kpop idols weren't initially born in Seoul, came from various different areas and so,
there were many local language variations and dialects that would be interpreted completely
differently by the public. That’s also the situation here and according to many Knets,
Winter was using this difference to use negative slang when texting with fans on Bubble.
In her Bubble conversation, aespa Winter's Gyeongsangdo dialect uses '노' (pronounced as “no”)
at the end of some of her messages. However, as South Korea has a community called ilbe
which has been created by online users to spread their angry and misogynistic views,
and these people often use “no-che” in their dialect to mock the former South Korean president,
Winter was accused of disrespecting this president and being a misogynistic.
While many fans had come to her defense and even wrote a long post on theqoo
about situations where Winter used the exact “no” verbiage without malicious intentions,
lots of people still believed Winter was bad in nature for some things she did previously.
Here, they brought up the story where Winter recommended a Youtube channel by Jun Woo
that has long been infamous for toxic contents to fans, really young fans to be exact. As some
pointed out, though this Youtuber was always criticized for provocative titles and contents,
such as testing women’s tendency to cheat on their boyfriends,
they found it annoying to see Winter excitedly say this was her go-to channel to relieve stress.
Then came another incident where Winter said that Ningning’s pet lizard, whose name was Poopy, was
so stinky the other day that she almost gave up on taking care of the reptile for Ningning.
While netizens didn’t pay much attention to the comment at the time,
many have now seen it in a far more different light after Winter’s alleged
animal abusing scandals broke out. Basically, there was a video of Winter playing with a cat
and as some noticed, she scared the cat away by suddenly screaming at him.
With such controversies, people believed Winter would probably be better off either by speaking
less or paying more attention to her words. However, many fans went to defend her saying that
she was just a rookie and the public should have greater mercy on her. Plus, the fact that netizens
have always been “well-known” for exaggerating everything related to idols also shows that
Winter's scandals are not really scandals but just the result of netizens being too aggressive.
Red Velvet’s Yeri
Way before Winter and Giselle, there was also another female idol that has been
caught up in a bunch of scandals regarding her questionable words, that was Yeri.
Literally 2 years in a row starting from 2018,
there was none that she wasn’t criticized for saying something weird and in time,
netizens also became more and more strict with every word she said.
It all started in 2018 where Red Velvet was assigned to visit North Korea to perform Red
Flavor and Bad Boy in the country. Though the visit was done to push the positive relationship
between two nations, many South Korean people still couldn't forget the painful history
and thus, weren’t completely happy with North Korea’s president Kim Jong Un.
That’s also why when Yeri used the word “honor” to describe the meeting with this president
and emphasized the word twice, she immediately became the bullseye of criticism among K-netizens.
Yeri was said to be ill-educated and reckless for using the word ‘honor’ to talk about the man who,
according to some, slaughtered many South Korean officers and soldiers.
Then in 2019, Yeri received another backlash for speaking mindlessly on an Inkigayo live stream.
When she was asked if she would go back to law of the Jungle again, she said there were members
she would want to send there instead. While things could have ended on a bright note had Yeri stopped
at saying “I want to send Irene unnie to a sea” and “I want to send Wendy unnie to a mountain,”
she took the worst turn ever by ending with the wish to send Joy to a “devastating place with
no food or anything.” When Joy asked if Yeri was holding a grudge against her or anything,
Yeri replied she just wanted Joy to suffer for a long time. Though it was just a joke between
besties and Yeri sure didn’t mean anything bad, Joy’s solo-fans couldn’t view things the same way.
So, do you think these idols are at fault or netizens are making a big fuss over nothing?
Comment down below to share your thoughts with us. Also, remember to like, share and
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