By Stephanie Yang

Dredge Kang, in “The Softening of Butches: The Adoption of Korean “Soft” Masculinity among Thai Toms”, discusses the evolution of queer culture in Thailand through his focus on Thai toms. Kang also investigates how the rise of soft masculinity, as exemplified by Korean flowerboys and gender-bending tropes in K-media, has led to a flourishing and growing production of queer cultural products in Thailand and “queered effeminacies” in the country. Kang coins the term Asian Regionalism to explain how Thailand is both consumer and producer, “increasingly recognized for its role in “inter” (international) queer popular culture areas such as film and music,” (Kang 23). I experienced these new “queered effeminacies” and the manifestation of such “cutesy boy” representations on my first trip to Thailand this winter break.

For the very first time, I got to meet my distant cousins who lived their entire lives in Thailand. While my cousins and I share great-grandparents, we seemed to lead extremely different lives. Leading up to the actual trip, my mom’s sister, Chinese, was explaining to me what my cousins were like. She said men in Thailand are very girly, and that my male cousins were no exception. While I was skeptical at what seemed to be ignorant comments in my head, I kept an open mind and hopped on the plane to Thailand not thinking much of her description of my cousins.

My first stop in Thailand was a small city called Khon Kaen, where I met my two cousins, brothers. Popo is a recently-married trauma surgeon, and Yong works at an exotic zoo, both in their twenties. At dinner, I couldn’t help but notice their somewhat “cute” mannerisms, towards even their much older father, as well as their high-pitched voices. Interestingly, Popo’s middle name on Facebook is “Kittycat”, a cute nickname that one would never see from a straight, married trauma surgeon in the United States. While both my male cousins are heterosexual, they exuded a “soft masculinity” through their mannerisms and behavior I saw so rarely in the United States from straight Asian men.

After meeting Popo and Yong, I headed to Bangkok to meet another set of relatives for the first time. During my stay with my cousins, two males and one female in their twenties and thirties, another difference stuck out to me: their morning routines. Both my male cousins and my female cousin took almost an hour to get ready before work, applying different creams, powders, and cosmetics to their faces–many of them Korean brands or K-beauty knockoffs.

My experience meeting my Thai cousins makes it clear that soft masculinity manifests so differently from person to person. My cousins in Khon Kaen do not wear makeup or use beauty products, but act “cute” through physical gestures and language. On the other hand, my male cousins in Bangkok diligently apply layers of makeup every morning, but show no attempt to act cute or feminine in how they behave.

By reading Kang’s article on the convergence of heterosexual soft masculinity and Thai tom culture, I can better understand why male cousins choose to don makeup every morning, or act like “cutesy boys” in-person and online. Whether my cousins believe that Thai women view desirable men as those embodying feminized masculine aesthetics, or just plain enjoy wearing makeup and acting more cute–makes little difference. At the end of the day, the normalization of these non-traditional masculine aesthetics demonstrates the influence of flowerboy tropes in Korean pop culture–either directly to Thai viewers of K-dramas, and indirectly to everyday Thai men who may not even consume Korean cultural products.

By Stephanie Yang

In “A Leveraged Playing Field: U.S. Multiculturalism and Korean Athletes,”, Rachael Miyung Joo discusses the use of Korean athletes as both a tool for Korean nationalist interests and the representation of “Americanness” to consumers in Korea and abroad. In “Playing Hard Ball: the athletic Body and Korean/American Masculinities,” Joo goes on to discuss how the shift towards exposing the male Korean body redefines Asian American masculinity within the traditional values system of hard work, while also legitimizing Korean male power. I argue that while the U.S. sports industry and the growth of exposed Korean male bodies may in parallel help challenge stereotypes of Asian masculinity, Korea’s fixation on beauty and makeup complicate the masculinity issue.

Joo asserts in “A Leveraged Playing Field” that Korean athletes and athletes of other minorities are subject to U.S. ideology when working within the U.S. sporting complex. The commodification of a minority athlete’s body, on full display in U.S. sporting events, produces a symbolism that Joo argues furthers U.S. soft power. For example, Hawaiian surfer Duke Kahanamoku’s performance demonstrated “America’s colonial beneficence” and through his “indigenous uniqueness”, symbolized the benefits of U.S. colonialism. Kahanamoku’s athletic performances, however, do little to benefit his own heritage’s interests, instead attributing his talents to individual hard work isolated from his minority status–also seen through the successes of Michael Jordan and O.J. Simpson who publicly side-stepped racially-charged rhetoric.

Additionally, in “Playing Hard Ball”, Joo analyzes the role of shifting displays of Asian masculinity through the athlete–using the exposed body to express physical power and dominance. She cites examples of soccer players taking off shirts during goal ceremonies, undressing scenes in Korean film and television, as well as shirtless idols performing on-stage. Towards the end of the chapter, Joo asks whether or not this new masculinized Asian male body results from a growing group of middle-class Asian American men “reclaiming their masculinity”, rightly so.

While Joo’s points further the conversation around the geopolitics of the U.S. sports industry and the redefining of Asian masculinity through male athletes, the attached BuzzFeed video does much to complicate the plot. In the video produced by Buzzfeed, a mainstream American media outlet, two Korean men answer commonly asked questions about themselves. Throughout the video, the discussion fixates around Korean male appearances, the use of makeup, and even wearing face masks as a fashion trend.

We see this focus through the very first question posed in the video: “Why do Korean men wear makeup?” The pair’s discussion around the prevalence of Korean men who wear makeup, alongside the growing cosmetics market targeted towards men, seem to instantly complicate the question of Asian male masculinity Joo has analyzed. As discussed in class, Hallyu has expanded beyond Korean pop music to include Korean beauty, Korean cuisine, among other “K-” culture industries. So while Korean-American athletes or shirtless K-pop idols may be shifting perceptions of Asian American masculinity, the Korean beauty industry may be starkly reversing such trends. The video continues to focus on perceptions of Korean male femininity, style, and even flirting tactics towards women. And while the video does address traditionally masculine practices such as enlisting in the Korean army or smoking cigarettes, the conversation around Korean male beauty indeed exists.

As a YouTube video with over 1.5 million views, produced by an American media giant, it is clear that interest in Korean men exists in the U.S. However, their masculinity, or lack thereof, does come into question throughout the video. In “A Leveraged Playing Field”, it is clear throughout history that minorities in the U.S. sports industry have been commodified and leveraged in order to further U.S. ideologies. And while the rise of exposed Korean male bodies may enhance the legitimacy of Asian American masculinity, the 2018 BuzzFeed video demonstrates that Korean culture may self-sabotage this effort through the growing Korean beauty industry and its own male consumers.

Video: Korean Men Answer Commonly Googled Questions About Themselves