“Female empowerment is being commercialized”: online reception of girl crush trend among feminist K-pop fans

ABSTRACT

This paper critically analyses the newly emerging girl crush concept in the K-pop scene, exploring how this new claimed female-empowering trend interplays with K-pop fans’ perception of feminism and empowerment. Discourse analysis reveals that K-pop fans perceive the girl crush concept as a highly commodified form of feminism that essentially safeguards the patriarchal status quo and underlying gender power relations of the K-pop industry. Although few fans celebrate this girl group concept as potentially empowering, several fans indulge in counter-discourses critically reflecting on the presence of internalized Misogyny among K-pop fandoms while also calling for a need to embrace feminist values to achieve changes within the K-pop music industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Commodified feminism
• K-pop
• girl crush concept
• feminist fandoms
• female empowerment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Girl crush in Hangul (Korean alphabet) becomes “걸크러쉬,” which consists in what is commonly addressed as Konglish, an English word written in Hangul.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Qingyue Sun

Qingyue Sun is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Communication, Culture and Media (CCM) Department at Drexel University. Her current research interests include female empowerment, social media influencing, and women representation/gender performativity on media. Her previous study was about the new women’s representations in Rural China and the depoliticization of global feminism. Email: [email protected]

Dacia Paje’

Dacia Pajé, M.A., is a PhD Candidate in the Communication, Culture and Media (CCM) Department at Drexel University. Her research focuses on the construction and reception of sexual violence in television/streaming series and movies, and on their influence on and intersection with legal settings and the law. She also works on the representation of women and marginalized groups on media. Email: [email protected]

Hyunmin Lee

Hyunmin “Min”Lee (Ph.D.) is an associate professor at Drexel University, where she teaches courses in PR and communication theory. Her research focuses on the impact of social media on relationship management and human behavior. She has received top paper awards from the National Communication Association, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass communication, American Academy of Advertising, and International Public Relations Research Conference. You can find her work in top peer-reviewed journals including New Media and Society, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly and more. Email: [email protected]