Music & Gender: K-Pop

As we already know, gender roles and expectations are unavoidable even in the world of music. Even in different countries' musical cultures, there's always some form of gender roles or tendencies laced within them.

This very much includes the K-pop culture. As a person who's been invested in this genre for years (especially during my high school years), I figured I'd touch upon it specifically. 

In K-pop culture, there are firm standards as to how men and women portray themselves. While men tend to have a more masculine, edgier vibe, women tend to have a sexier, less edgier vibe. This is especially notable in their choreography - where men tends to have sharper, rougher movements, while women tends to have smoother, sexier movements. Similar traits reflect in their vocals, raps, and songs' musical arrangements, too. These differences are actually most noticeable in the K-pop group, KARD - which also happens to be one of the very few co-ed K-pop groups in the field. For reference, here's the videos of both the MV and choreography to one of their most notable songs:

I included both of these versions since the female choreography is strangely not shown much in the original MV. The MV's cinematography, outfits, and etc. also highlight the differences I mentioned earlier so well, though.

Now personally, I'm not much of a fan of these kind of gender-coded patterns in K-pop. Especially due to the kind of vague messages they can deliver to impressionable audiences, like with men being masculine/rough and women being sexy/beautiful. However, I still find the visible gender differences in this specific choreography incredibly fascinating to watch. Both styles are also honestly fun to dance to as well! The differences between the dance styles feel very obvious once you try them out with your own body.

Besides, these kinds of patterns are only what's most common in K-pop - not what only ever happens in it. There are still some occasions where male artists will go for a more melancholic, lighthearted/cutesy vibe instead - mostly to diversify their discography and better attract/delight audiences. Female artists, too, may sometimes go for a more melancholic or lighthearted/girly vibe instead as well - essentially for the same reasons. 

Even with the lighthearted songs, though, there's still some gender differences. For male artists - especially the debuting and teenage ones - they tend to throw gender norms out of the window and act cutesy and young. They'd smile and hop around like little kids or girls; wearing cutesy or casual clothes and acting like they're having the time of their life with each other. They'd also act like close friends and carry out exaggerated mannerisms in general. Kind of like this:

For female artists, they also act cute, young, having lots of fun, and exaggerated whenever doing lighthearted themes. Although more in a girly sense than a childlike one. It also seems to be more common for female lighthearted songs to include less realistic visual aspects (i.e. supernatural, graphics, cartoonish environments, sped-up choppy movements) and a listener-centric narration - often, though not always, in a romantic way. Here's a good example of a lighthearted female K-pop song, even despite not including much unrealism: 

Still remember that anything other than edgy and sexy still isn't all that common in comparison, though. K-pop audiences just simply prefer edgy and sexy concepts, after all. That's common knowledge in the K-pop world. K-pop groups hardly ever have freedom to act that far beyond their companies' control or audience's expectations, too. Especially thanks to Korea's strict standards and overly vast competition in the K-pop industry. 

 

It's also worth noting that male K-pop artists are typically more popular and successful than female ones are. This is due to how most K-pop fans, especially in Korea, are female and heterosexual (or at least male-leaning in attraction). So if you have ever wondered why there are more popular male K-pop groups than there are of female ones, then now you know why.