Girl Life Is a Drag
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE WE GO
Today, I’m going to lead you down into The Rabbit Hole. Literally. And I’m going to do something unusual for me and cut right to the chase. I’m using my picture/social commentary/Visual Sociology column slot this week to talk about the Korean Girl, fashion, and gender codes in Korea. And like in all my columns so far, the picture is part illustration, but also the data in the argument, while also being the springboard for conversation and (hopefully) some critical thought that might make you enjoy that afternoon cup of coffee you’re sipping on while in front whatever screen you’re using more enjoyable.
Simply put, gender is a social construction. And while that while that assertion might seem obvious for some, I’m going to keep going. The Girl is also a construction. In the same way that the “teenager” is also a recent invention of late modernity, as a commercially useful category in the nebulous region between child and adult. Back before certain market forces decided to focus consumption through this new demographic, one was a child and then quickly became an adult, usually by dint of marriage. The average of marriage for a young female in both Puritan Mass Bay Colony and Joseon Korea was thirteen. You were a child until you weren’t. In the same way, the idea of a Girl who wasn’t a woman nor a child was the result of formations of capital. Without teenagers, girls, or teenaged girls, you can’t have a demographic around which to market things. Without the social category, you can’t create a lever of social control. So, that being said, in a neo-Confucian society such as Joseon==>Chosen==>Korea, the Girl is an especially useful social category.
That all being said, one thing important to understand is that one’s gender status, one’s Boyness or Girlness, is not an inherent state of being one occupies without thinking or effort. Gender theorist/academician Judith Butler says that gender is performed. It is conveyed/signified to oneself and others as a series of performative acts. And people are encouraged to stay within their categories, to stay in their lanes, because doing so is socially beneficial, necessary, and possibly even fun. Yes, we are all told, being a Girl is supposed to be fun! It can be fabulous, and in that regard liberating. But it’s hard work being a “good” Girl, as most women who were once girls and most drag queens know and will tell you. And, as those living here might have noticed, nowhere on earth is it harder to be a girl than in SOUTH KOREA. The Girl game here is on point and en pointe on a level that can be bone grinding, soul crushingly intense.
MAKING SENSE OF ALL THIS
The point of all this is to tell you that I, as a photographer, thinker, and sociologist, been trying to make sense of the extremely intense level of gender performativity visually — photographically. Being a street, then street fashion, then fashion photographer has certainly helped. But to this point, it’s been difficult to make sense of this in the Korean context, no matter what the picture, what the project. And like all things worthy of closer critical inspection in Korean society, there is the question of whether the phenomenon is unique to this place. Indeed, performance of the Girl certainly isn’t. But again, like most things Korean that are socially interesting, it isn’t a matter of uniqueness in kind, but rather in degree. From the pictures required on resumes to the plastic surgery and obesity ads that tell women here that to weigh over 120 lbs is a cardinal sin, to just out-and-out “fat shaming”, being a Korean Girl means a non-stop barrage of social pressure.
OK, this all may seem somewhat obvious. But I do have a point here, a plan of action to deal with this social fact in a creative and constructive way. I am making a “magazine” focused on the performative “Girl Act.” The reason I’ve decided to do so has to do with the fact that the “fashion magazine” — ostensibly for girls — has always been a really flawed concept to begin with. The magazine has always been a really efficient medium with which to focus (and define in the first place) actions around what were considered to be of particular concern to certain groups of people. And for Girls, from cooking and sewing (not fishing nor spelunking), to fashion and celebrity gossip, the “fashion magazine” in particular has been a way to define what a woman should be concerned about, what she should be doing or not doing, and what the boundaries of gender and sexuality even were. But without getting into a dry history, let’s just suffice it to say that it is kind of weird that fashion magazines solidified into the main conduit for focusing significant amounts of female attention and leisure energies. It could have been sewing, but that seemed far too specific and prone to changing with the times and the social roles of women; it could have been cooking, but that is similarly narrow. But fashion seems broad yet deceptively narrow, specific yet vaguely broad enough to include pretty much anything. Indeed, fashion magazines are changing their focii and meanings as fast as women are rapidly changing their demographics, types of leisurely pursuits, and recreational proclivities.
FEMININE INTERESTS
I therefore submit to you that fashion as a concept with which to focus the interests and social actions of young women is no longer really relevant, especially in a time when the majority of young women at or below college age in say, the US or Europe wear makeup occasionally at best, consider heels a literal drag and a pain, and would possibly even take great offense at even being characterized by a socially category in terms of sexual preferences and proclivities, gender identifications within the category of women, let alone being argued as sharing a certain kind of temperament. But if a putative interest in fashion has gone the way of the dodo, cooking, and sewing, then what else is there?
I say the best thing to do is simply call it what it is. Make a magazine about exactly what the Girl is defined by, while also doing a bit of redefining ourself: How about a magazine about gender performance, fashion, and social critique? Really, isn’t that what so-called the actually successful “fashion magazines” are really about, anyway? I think that as a Visual Sociologist, photographer, and academic possessed of certain skills, I should be able to not only reactively analyze, critique, and make theoretical sense of cultural texts, but produce them as well. Hence, I decided, on a recent trip to The Rabbit Hole arcade/lounge in Haebangchon, Seoul, to start shooting and befriending the fabulous drag queens who perform there on the weekends, as part of the effort to launch the best kind of multimedia magazine possible, featuring the most successful performers of the Girl there is — drag queens. And since I don’t especially relish the idea of likely losing money hand-over-fist, our multimedia magazine — our “multizine”, if you will — will not be based on expensive, bespoke platforms but based on free media channels through which to get the content out. And it will also include some newer (and older) media platforms as well. We’re off to an auspicious start, I dare say.
MODEL: Erica Balenciaga (Instagram @ericabalenciaga96)
MAKEUP/HAIR: Erica Balenciaga
PHOTO: Michael Hurt (Site: Seoul Street Studios, Instagram: @seoulstreetstudios)
ASSISTANT: Nitzah Vazquez
LOCATION: The Rabbit Hole Arcade/Lounge
To keep up with our new MultiZine, go to our long-form article on Medium and/or follow us on Instagram @thegirlact_official.
This story will be reprinted in The Korea Times.
