Androgyny in K-pop 

Introduction: The Fashion Icon

G-Dragon is the leader of boy band Big Bang from YG Entertainment. He is also the music composer and lyricist of a number of Big Bang’s major hits such as Haru Haru (2008), Tonight (2011) and Fantastic Baby (2012). G-Dragon attracts a lot of attention by his fashion sense and his fluid image. Back in 2009 when he released his first solo album ‘Heartbreaker’, he dyed his hair blonde which caught a lot of attention, and it was about that time when his distinct fashion sense started to be recognized by the public. He is praised for his ability to carry almost all styles and he is deemed the fashion icon in K-pop. He was picked as the ‘ultimate fashion icon’ by 14564 fans in a poll organized by Korea Star Daily in 2011, he was selected as the style icon in Style Icon Awards 2013, and he was invited to Paris Fashion Week 2014 as celebrity guest.

 

Different from other male stars who has a rather unambiguous masculine gender image, G-Dragon frequently takes on gender ambiguity concept when he appears in the mainstream media - music videos, live shows, and magazine shoot. Because of his repeated use of androgyny concept in media, I categorize G-Dragon as performative androgynous. His constructs his androgynous image in media by incorporating feminine elements in his style and adding a layer of gender ambiguity on his look.

 

Clothing

In terms of clothing, he very often wears skirts, and he usually wears it on top of his pants rather than just wearing it alone. Since pants are typically associated to men while skirts to women, G-Dragon fuses masculinity and femininity by wearing the two pieces of clothing at the same time, creating an androgynous look. As Joanne Entwistle mentioned, “clothes draw attention to the sex of the wearer so that one can tell, usually at first glance, whether they are a man or a woman.”(140) However, putting on pants and skirts all together at the same time, one plays with gender boundary, making viewers confused and not being able to tell right away the gender of the wearer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hairstyle

As for his hairstyle, G-Dragon has attempted a wide variety of styles. A fan has made a compilation of the 222 kinds of hairstyle G-Dragon has had since young and posted it on a Chinese online community. Among all the hairstyles, the most eye-catching ones are his pink hair and the ‘seaweed’ hairstyle (미역머리) that is deemed to be his most unique hairstyle. Despite the fact that nowadays, the colour pink is not rigidly defined as the girl’s colour and a lot men wear pink clothes, the idea that pink is more associated to femininity is still in our mind because of the culturally constructed gender-color association (Wolchova). By dying his hair pink, G-Dragon gives an effeminate and soft image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On top of that, in Big Bang’s song ‘Fantastic Baby’, G-Dragon introduced his unique ‘seaweed’ hairstyle which immediately caught the attention of people, and some media has commented the hairstyle as unconventional (파격). This ‘seaweed’ hairstyle- with all hair gather on one side and the other side shaved, is in some way feminine so it is used by some female artists as well. One example is 2NE1’s Dara using ‘seaweed hairstyle’ in 2NE1’s song ‘I Love You’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Besides the ‘seaweed’ hairstyle, G-Dragon sometimes puts on long hair wig for magazine shoots like Vogue. In these photos, his look is highly androgynous - his long hair, delicate facial features and slender body make him look really effeminate, making his gender identity ambiguous. These gender ambiguous hairstyles do contribute much to G-Dragon’s androgynous look.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Make-up

On top of clothing and hairstyle, G-Dragon enhances the femininity in his look also by heavy make-up. Because of his ability to carry feminine concepts, he even endorsed red lipstick for the cosmetic brand ‘The Saem’, becoming the first male idol to endorse lipstick. Had it been other male idols, it would have been very weird for them to endorse for a female product; yet, being a fashionista whose androgynous look is widely accepted by K-pop fans, G-Dragon is able to pull it off quite well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Analysis: Breaking the Convention

"Everyone knows me, I’m number one trouble maker in the celebrity world; because I’m different, because that’s just me" - G-Dragon (One of a Kind)

 

Fluidity in Image

Given a lot of freedom by his company YG Entertainment in creating and experimenting new styles both musically and visually, G-Dragon is daring enough to step out into androgyny style and challenge the dichotomy of gender, and he has done it with success. Similar to Andrej Pejic who has a pretty face and a slender boy that allow him to carry an androgynous look, G-Dragon has certain physical qualities that enable him to carry androgynous concept with ease - his slender body allows him to wear women’s clothing easily and his high-pitched voice naturally places him on the borderline between two gender categories. G-Dragon’s adoption of an androgynous image enables him to explore or experiment new styles as ‘an androgynous body is … innately unstable; it always possesses the capacity for mutability and transformation’ (ctd in McLaughlin 279), so his image is not as definite, or I would say, boring, as other male stars. His willingness to try different styles by exploring the unconventional androgynous style have gained him much praises from young fans; fans have spoken highly of G-Dragon’s following his heart in doing things he likes with a couldn’t-care-less attitude.

 

 

Going beyond the Boundary

Sun Jung has mentioned that South Korean idol boy bands embody a ‘versatile manufactured masculinity’, a multi-layered masculinity in which sometimes the different layers may simultaneously contradicting each other (165). Having a look at other popular boy bands such as TVXQ, Beast and Infinite, one may notice the common formula of manufacturing a multi-layered masculine gender image. On one hand, the male idols show a hard, masculine image through showing off their strong and muscled arms and abs, rendering female audience as the subject of gaze on their body; on the other hand, they display a ‘soft masculinity’ through their kkonminam appearance, appealing to female audience through their seemingly tender and gentle image.

G-Dragon seems to have gone beyond this formula and as a result, he placed himself at a distinct position in the K-pop scene. Just as what he said in his lyrics of ‘One of a Kind’, ‘everyone knows me, I’m number one trouble maker in the celebrity world; because I’m different, because that’s just me’, he has positioned himself differently from other K-pop idols and he takes pride in it. The main difference between G-Dragon and other male idols is his gender image; compared to other male idols, G-Dragon has a very fluid image, for he keeps moving back and forth between a masculine image and the gender ambiguous image. Judith Butler has brought forward the concept of gender performativity; gender is ‘an identity tenuously constituted in time - an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts’ (519). In simpler terms, she explained that "we act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman” (Big Think, “Judith Butler”). Since gender is constructed by repeating certain performances of gender, by repeating a different kind of act from previous ones, one may reconstruct a different gender identity (Butler 520). Expanding this idea, we can say that by repeatedly putting on androgynous look in magazines, music videos and stage performances, G-Dragon acts in a way that sometimes makes his gender identity a combination of both men and women.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference

 

Butler, Judith “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”. Theatre Journal 49. 1 (1988): 519-531.

 

 

Entwistle, Joanne. The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory. Malden: Blackwell Publishers Inc, 2000.

 

Jung, Sun. Korean masculinities and transcultural consumption Yonsama, Rain, Oldboy, K-Pop idols. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011.

 

McLaughlin, Noel. ‘Rock, Fashion and Performativity’, from Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis , London: Routledge, 2011.

 

Wolchover, Natalie. ‘Why is Pink for Girls and Blue for Boys?’ Live Science, 1 August, 2012, accessed 10 May, 2014, http://www.livescience.com/22037-pink-girls-blue-boys.html