Recently, I had watched called “Girl Group Stans Are Not Feminists” that was posted by Sonyeonstan on YouTube in which she criticizes fans of girl groups using feminism to criticize people and dodge accountability whenever a female idol is receiving criticism for her actions. While I was going to the comment section, I had noticed one comment that had caught my eye into which this comment states “gg stans throw around the words feminists and misogyny at bg stans and bg groups at ever little fan war, meanwhile bgs and bg stans have more female empowerment moments than them.” This commenter cites how J-hope have more feminist songs than a supposedly feminist girl group likely referencing Blackpink. When I had seen this comment, I tend to think that girl groups and female idols are expected to do more when it comes to having female empowering songs in K-pop. There are plenty of female acts that have songs centered around women a female empowerment with groups like SNSD (Into the New World (2016)), Idle (NXDE (2022)), Blackpink (Tally, (2022)), Twice (Girls Like Us (2019)), and more.
Despite this, women often ignore these instances because in their eyes it’s not enough and that at the end of the day girl groups are working for corporations run by men. In comparisons, with boy groups, women will praise boy groups and male idols for releasing songs appreciating women and engaging in feminine style like make-up and wearing skirts. Not only that, but male idols are praise for protecting female idols from creeps, not putting their hand on a woman’s waste, and turning away when a female idol is doing a bold part in a performance. I had mentioned that in one of my deleted unpopular opinions posts about K-pop fans not being ready for confident women as it takes one song and all of a sudden everyone is calling her a “pick me” and “misogynist”. In my opinion, Blackpink is a perfect example of this as during the Born Pink era (2022-2023), there were posts, videos, and comments criticizing the group for their lyrics in Pretty Savage (2020), Shut Down (2022), and Typa Girl (2022) with some comments even calling the members “pick mes”, “misogynists”, and “narcissists”. The fact is that Blackpink has a song call Tally (2022) which was written by a woman discussing society expectations on women and the gendered double standards when it comes to dating.
However, non-fans had mad misconceptions about the group’s discography by reducing it to just flexing and putting women down when the group has songs about love, heartbreak, leaving toxic relationships, judgement, self-empowerment and female empowerment. Just a few years back, there was a post on a K-pop Reddit forum discussing girl groups not being a good representation of feminism due to their songs that centers around women being written by men. Even though Tally (2022) was written by a woman, non-fans continue to call Blackpink all sorts of names despite male acts like G-dragon, T.O.P., Bobby, BTS, NCT 127, and GOT7 having similar lyrics in some of their songs. In my opinion, I think that it is hypocritical for a lot of women to dismiss female empowerment songs by girl groups due to working in these huge corporations when boy groups are working at the same corporations as these girl groups. I just think that women put such higher standards on girl groups when it comes to female empowering songs in K-pop while giving a pass towards boy groups for being “allies” for women.
submitted by /u/Professional_Set2863
[link] [comments]
