A Troubling Trend

Introduction

I practically live under a rock. I didn't really understand what K-pop was about because I essentially live under a boulder. That was pretty much all I understood—I knew it had something to do with music, I knew it had something to do with Korea, and I knew the females were stunning. Then, I started receiving a ton of comments on my YouTube videos requesting that I make a film specifically about K-pop and the inflated ideals of beauty that K-pop promotes. What do you know, I said. Just have to get into it, I guess.

Let's get started for those of you who live with me beneath my Boulder. What exactly is K-Pop? K-pop is an abbreviation for Korean popular music, a genre that originated in South Korea and quickly spread throughout the world. K-pop is a huge dominating TV drama, influencing the skincare industry, and blowing up the music charts globally, and I can see why. The music is upbeat and catchy, and the K-pop stars are ridiculously talented; they can sing, dance, and act to perfection, and they are stunning.

Worldwide recognition of K-pop

There is a lot of good in K-pop, and as a result, K-pop has billions of fans worldwide who literally live and breathe K-pop and are super immersed in the entire culture of K-pop, but in this article, we focus on beauty standards and breaking through, so that is what we're going to focus on in this video. Let's start with the obvious: what I uncovered about K-pop and beauty standards creeped me out.

Idols

Let's start with K-pop Idols. A K-pop Idol is an artist within the K-pop industry and usually, these Idols can do everything so they model, act, sing, and dance and they are extremely talented people. Now here's where things get interesting and essentially it's at the very start of the K-pop Idol career in order to be a K-pop Idol young hopeful and I'm talking like very young children. These children who want to one day be a K-pop Idol live in these pop star Factory houses where they learn to sing, dance, act, and do all of these things for brutally long hours every single day. They are under strict contracts so they can't always see their parents when they want to and they can't just leave when they want to.

I'll get right to the bad stuff. Now, beauty standards are intertwined with K-pop Idol culture. Unlike other musical genres, where bands may contain a bassist, guitarist, lead vocalist, and drummer, K-pop bands have an additional job known as the visual as visual. According to articles, K-pop entertainment companies recognized that the key to a successful K-pop band was to ensure that each band had a good mix of individuals with different characteristics and fan appeal, so you'd have the good singer, the good dancer, the nice one, and the good looking one.

The role of the visual in K-pop is to be the group's face, which usually means that the most attractive band member is chosen for this role. To be fair, even though the role of visual isn't exactly official in Western culture, it is still a thing, as Nick Carter in the Backstreet Boys demonstrates. NSync's Justin Timberlake and Beyonce was a member of Destiny's Child. Nicole Scherzinger is a model and actress. The Pussycat Dolls Mr. Harry Styles Only One Direction would all be examples of visuals in a band to me, so it's not only a K-pop thing.

As an example of visuals in K-pop bands, Jisoo is a visual of BlackPink, and she certainly gets her fair share of campaign endorsements, such as becoming a Dior Ambassador. Suyu is a visual of the band twice, and Salyun is a visual of the band and mix. Have you noticed anything strange about all these admittedly beautiful K-pop Idols that I've just shown you? All these admittedly beautiful K-pop Idols also looked totally different naturally but then as they pursued Fame they also began to transform their looks into the coveted K-pop look that is so famous today.

K-pop idols or persons who aspired to be K-pop idols today have major body image problems According to people who have been through the K-pop training programs, it isn't uncommon for children to pass out during training either from exhaustion or basically starvation.

Conclusion

It just seems like although they will get the fame and the adoration of so many fans at what cost and who is looking after their health both mentally and physically of these K-Pop Stars huh I don't know any way that's my thoughts on it, and I feel so bad for these K-pop idols and and potential K-pop Idols these children in these training companies.