I’ve been into kpop for almost a decade now and I remember back when “Korean beauty standards” (KBS) first became a common talking point among international fans. Back then, it seemed more like they were only brought up to make light digs on their silly shallowness and toxicity (paired with general critique of broader East Asian beauty standards). But attitude seemed to slowly shift more and more accepting of KBS until now where kpop fans talk about them like a real objective measurement of beauty. And for some reason my thoughts about this subject are keeping me up tonight.
Anyways, for example, we’ve probably all come across discussions of who are the “top idols” for whatever category. For top visuals (female idols, sorry I’m not super familiar w BGs) there are always the typical answers: Wonyoung, Karina, Sullyoon, etc. But what I find interesting is that, in my day to day life there are some idols who, IMO, seemed to generate significant attention/hype for their looks but never get brought up in these discussions (for context: I’m Asian-American and grew up very involved with that community, so I’ve experienced a lot of people casually talk about these things). The idols that particularly come to mind for me, personally, are Chaewon, Yeji, and Jennie. And I think most kpop fans would agree that each of those idols are visually captivating. Despite that, the only reason I can think of as for why they never get brought up in these “top visual” conversations is because they don’t have the highest KBS percentages. (note: maybe some people would argue that those idols’ appeal is largely due to their charisma, but idk that’s not rlly convincing to me)
On the topic of KBS percentages though, something else I find interesting is that South Koreans don’t even use such a thing! You never hear idols promoting this hyper-specific criteria of beauty. And whenever a “KBS score analysis” post makes it to SK netizens, you’ll see Korean comments are filled with statements like “what even is this” and general offense at the depiction of their culture as like… THAT shallow. So it seems that this resonance with KBS and the propaganda pedaling it primarily comes from international fans.
So onto my theory on why this is. The first thing is the general age demographic of Kpop fans, that being a lot of tweens, teens, and young adults. I think this may be evidenced by conversations around KBS tending to focus on idols in 4th gen and later, despite famously being based on a 2nd gen idol (Yoona). I also think that this systematized ranking of beauty appeals to the same insecurities that give rise to things like looksmaxxing in a similar age demographic.
But why has criticism of KBS seemed to have dimmed so much at the same time that (deserved) criticism of looksmaxxing is so rampant? Idk really, this is kinda one of the things I’d like to see discussed. My personal guess is Orientalism, but that may just be me being biased.
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