Reading Korean Instagram: Histories of Violence
The prompt, in a recent chat:
Q: “Btw what’s up with the bondage theme in recent years photos? Do Korean women want to be dominated? I thought feminism was on the rise?”
— AngelA: “it’s a kinda “i do my thing and get off the way i like” kinda feminism — “men are just accessories” kinda thing.”
— me
“Here, the concept was like a straitjacket, and she was being constrained like in a crazy house, so we did that I think pretty OK, and I added the part with the Off — White brand, to kind of suggest she was being constrained by notions of fashion and brands.”
“It’s funny in this picture , a few American friends were like “is this promoting a kind of domestic violence as an aesthetic?” Actually, her story was basically she put on a school uniform and was like “I’m a tough girl who just got out of a fight and I kicked the other girl’s ass.”
It’s funny — Americans tend to assume domestic violence, as well as weakness with these kind of pictures, but the Korean girls are doing these concepts out of a notion of projecting strength and badassery.”
“If you’ve been paying attention, bondage gear and a bondage motif has been a part of Korean street fashion since like 2014, with chokers of varying degrees of hardcoreness, leather, chains, stirrups, etc.”
Korean Instagram, via its models and themes, is going through a from-the-ground-up kind of aspirational badass aesthetic revolution. Everybody wants to be a badass, a 쎈 언니. And this aspirational badassery is being projected through the body, via the easy, tropish images of smoking girls, tattoos, and Women Doing Bad Things™, such as one-fisting a bottle of $2 soju and/or walking through the street sexily and with reckless abandon, with the grain slider up to 3/4 max in the picture editing app, and prrojected through old tropes (“heroin chic” of the 1990s) with new names (#퇴폐미, the “beauty of decay” today).
It’s interesting what people from different sides of the world see. In a Korea going through a kind of Genderwar through screens right now, blood and guts on a woman reads as “domestic violence”, whereas on the Korean side, it seems to be meant in terms of an expression of resistance or coming fresh from the fight. A lot of this is finding clearest expression through BIBI right now, who seems to be about kicking ass and taking names these days. For her, blood, bruises, and the wet of sweat and tears don’t spell weakness.
What are your thoughts on these visual trends in Korea?
