Loving Yourself and the Politics of BTS
I keep waiting for a review of a BTS concert or album that doesn’t first comment on screaming fans, often describing them as manic, crazy teenage girls, or dismissing BTS’s music as canned pop music, or pointing out that 6 out of 7 members don’t speak perfect English. Even reviews that point out the positive message of BTS’s latest Love Yourself series of albums miss what’s really going on in those words.
The thing that these reviewers miss, that maybe even a lot of fans miss, is that there is something inherently political and radical in this idea of loving yourself.
It’s easy to interpret self-love as selfish. You could love yourself at the expense of others, but that isn’t what BTS is getting at. Loving yourself isn’t the same as the Parks and Rec motto of “treat yo’ self” or the burgeoning “self-care” industry. That’s not what Kim Namjoon, a.k.a. RM, was pointing to when he said in his ending statement at the October 6, 2018, concert at Citi Field, “And loving myself is my whole life goal ’til my death. And what is loving myself? What is loving yourself? I don’t know. Who can define their own method and the way of loving myself?”
It’s not entirely clear to me, a philosopher by training, what RM means when he refers to the “self,” but it’s pretty clear he’s not referring to the ego or to an external persona. And you do get a sense of what he means if you pair it with other things BTS has said in interviews and in their song lyrics, especially those co-written by RM.
During his final words at Citi Field, RM also pointed out that it was special to him to be in New York, because New York was the birthplace of hip-hop, the music that saved his life, inspired him, and made him want to do what he does.
To see people write BTS off as a frivolous boyband is to ignore the fact that they are rooted in hip-hop. And it’s easy to be skeptical of hip-hop in Korean pop music, and you probably should be, because there is a lot of imitation, appropriation, and fetishization, a lot of stealing the aesthetic of hip-hop.
BTS was definitely guilty of this in their early career, particularly with their style. But the thing people tend to ignore is that hip-hop is often intentionally political. And when you ask the rappers of BTS who their musical influences are, particularly RM and Min Yoongi, a.k.a. Suga, they are well-versed in the history of hip-hop. Suga frequently mentions Pulitzer-Prize-winning Kendrick Lamar in interviews and includes Lupe Fiasco among his influences. RM has consciously changed his views of hip-hop, seems aware that in his early days he was wrongfully appropriating Blackness, and has said that he has gotten guidance from Warren G, who told him that hip-hop is open to everyone.
Just because BTS has a positive message and just because they create trendy pop music that isn’t always musically innovative doesn’t mean it isn’t political and valuable for more than sheer entertainment (though they are also really good performers).
RM frequently uses inclusive language when he speaks. In the speech he gave to the UN for the launch of the Youth 2030 campaign in September 2018, he explicitly said, “I want to hear your voice, and I want to hear your conviction. No matter who you are, where you’re from, your skin color, your gender identity, just speak yourself.”
In a February 2018 interview with Billboard, Suga said very plainly in the context of discussing the song “Same Love” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis that, “There is nothing wrong. Everyone is equal.” And in response to the 2017 protests of then-president Park Geun-hye, “Moving past right and wrong, truth and falsehood, citizens coming together and raising their voice is something that I actively support.”
BTS is diplomatic in their interviews, but they aren’t apolitical.
Second-wave feminists in the 1960s used the slogan: “the personal is political.” And what that means is that your personhood, your self, your identity is inherently political. Your personal experience matters within larger social structures.
This idea is particularly apparent for people at the intersections of identity — Black women, gay trans men, queer people of color — but also for anyone at the margins. The often visible things about your identity are made to fit into hierarchical categories created and used to oppress you (or market to you).
In capitalist, democratic societies based on the liberalist model of the autonomous self (which, though it varies from culture to culture, has been forced on much of the world by imperialism and colonialism, including South Korea), personal responsibility is emphasized when it comes to financial or career “success.” But systemically your “identity” is actually what holds you unfairly accountable — in the U.S., Black men are automatically guilty, women are automatically liars, and foreigners are automatically suspect.
The dominant global norm has been defined in a particular way, with a particular identity (white, cis, male, heterosexual) at the top, and anyone else is at the margins. Even though that identity at the top is a numerical minority, and even though people within that identity can also be marginalized, everyone is forced through social practices to try to stay within those norms. And they will still be treated as inferior even if they manage to stay within them.
You see this everywhere. In ranges of “healthy” weights to stay within a normal. Or people trying to lighten their skin color to stay within a beauty standard. Or the racially stratified gender pay gap. Or pathologizing or criminalizing homosexuality and other forms of queerness. Or restricted access for people with disabilities. Or even social patterns like 9-to-5 jobs, marriage and kids, going college.
Sure, you need some norms to have a society. But those norms don’t have to organize life in such a rigid, hierarchical way that purposefully and intentionally makes people feel bad about themselves. Because if you don’t fit into the norm, you’re often pathologized, told you’re sick, told you’re worthless. You’re told you have to fix yourself, and you can do so for three easy payments of $99.99.
The contradiction in the liberalist tradition of the autonomous self is that we’re also told that if you work hard, if you are exceptional, that you’ll be successful within this norm. And it’s presented as a generic message, an inspirational quote. BTS comments directly on this pressure in their music.
We’re a fame-obsessed and wealth-obsessed culture that perpetuates the idea of “success” within the norm, while ignoring things like the inherent racism in intergenerational wealth, limited access to opportunities and resources, nepotism, cronyism, and glass ceilings. We’ve made accumulation the only goal and actively prevent all but a few from getting there.
And maybe we need to change the goal. Maybe RM isn’t being trite when he says he wants happiness.
Because the thing of it is, most people just want to live without suffering.
And that’s why the personal is political. Why all politics are identity politics. But also why it matters that you have musicians writing songs about not feeling bad about who you are. About recognizing that someone else gave you most of your identity and you have to figure out what parts are you and what parts aren’t and what you want to do with this you. About why it’s okay to reject the norms rooted in liberalism and not feel compelled to push yourself to a level of exception that you can’t meet without hierarchy being on your side in the first place.
From the song “Paradise,” which BTS sadly doesn’t include in their current tour set list:
It’s alright to stop
There’s no need to run without even knowing the reason
It’s alright to not have a dream
If you have moments where you feel happiness for a while
We borrow dreams from others (Like a debt)
We learn that we need to become great (Like a light)
Your dream is actually a burden
Who says a dream must be something grand
Just become anybody
We deserve a life
Whatever big or small, you are you after all
“Love yourself” is a political statement. It’s a loud one that somehow people keep dismissing. Many BTS fans are women, girls, and they are the ones who particularly need this message. And the younger they get it, the better. Because it’s counter to every other message women get from the world: Your ideas don’t matter. Your voice doesn’t matter. Your consent doesn’t matter. Your bodily autonomy doesn’t matter. Your labor doesn’t matter. And these messages get far worse and demeaning for women of color.
If you’re a queer person on the margins, or a person with an “invisible” disability, your identity might not even be recognized by other people at all, and you may feel constantly alienated by who you are.
But even if no one else thinks you matter or loves you in the way you need to be loved in a society that forces us to be individuals, loving yourself is one of the only revolutionary acts you can do.
RM has said in interviews that you have to love yourself before you can love others, and I think people tend to interpret that romantically. Sure, the next step might be loving another in that way, but it might also be recognizing others.
If you matter from your place on the margins, then others on the margins matter, too.
I’m not naive. I don’t at all believe that love will heal the world or that love wins. But I do think if you understand yourself and value yourself and your identity, then you can also recognize that it is systems and social norms that want you to hate yourself so you feel disempowered, disenfranchised, and easily taken advantage of.
I think RM’s point when he says to speak yourself is that if you keep speaking yourself, then other people will at some point have to recognize that you exist, that your voice exists, and that you refuse to be silenced.
If you can navigate BTS’s lyrics and what the members say in interviews, you can piece together that this isn’t a frivolous message or hollow inspiration. By writing personal lyrics, by encouraging an inward turn with outward effects, they are explicitly being political with a message for a fanbase of predominantly silenced voices.
And I think they recognize that.
When RM said “use me, use us, use BTS to love yourself” to a crowd of more than 40,000 at Citi Field, he is recognizing the universal need to be validated. He is also recognizing that BTS’s music, like hip-hop, can be for everyone if they are open to it.
And that’s why to dismiss BTS, to dismiss their voices, to dismiss the voices of their fans, is to dismiss something radically political and vitally important.
