Growing up: Kpop, soft masculinity, and a new male ideal in Southeast Asia
Can soft masculinity reshape gender identities in Southeast Asia?
“Growing Up” is a series that explores issues that Southeast Asia’s youths - and politics - grapple with.
What does it mean to “be a man?”
Southeast Asia may be a cultural hotchpotch, but we seem to want our men cut from the same cloth: being decisive and dominant; financially independent; having success with women, and a good body.
Not everyone embraces those ideals. Seeking alternatives, some youths are drawn to K-pop’s soft masculinity. They embrace its anti-macho, anti-sexist, and more emotionally intelligent approach to being a man– a protest against what they perceive as narrow views of masculinity forced upon them by binary gender traditions.
To be a “soft” man is to love oneself
Their message is simple: It’s ok to be yourself, even if it means going against the grain.
That’s a call to action that’s heavily embodied by K-idols. Korean boyband BTS, for example, shifted their aesthetic from heavy gold bling and rough-cut looks in their debut days to bolder, more androgynous looks in recent years. K-pop singer Holland also once quipped that makeup in Korea has no gender or sexuality.
Of course, soft masculinity is more than just an aesthetic. It’s a mode of self-expression that tells men to meet their emotional needs and be more connected to their feelings.
As Professor Joanna Elfving-Hwang from the University of Western Australia observed in a 2018 interview with the BBC, the way K-pop stars play with masculinity “opens up possibilities” for the average male and “makes it more acceptable” for them to express themselves differently.
Just stage effect or real change?
But that’s also a tall order in Southeast Asia, where fixed gender notions still prevail and manhood is so closely intertwined with nation-building.
Case in point: Singaporean men desire equality with the fairer sex, but are pressured to conform to traditional standards of masculinity for fear of being socially ostracized for being “less male.” When it comes to parenting, Singaporean fathers are also pushed to the wayside by social norms that place mothers as primary caregivers for children.
In societies where masculinity is often equated with dominance and stoicism, male expressions of vulnerability are seen as deviations from the norm.
In Indonesia, where patriarchal norms still hold sway, soft masculinity is derided as “feminized” portrayals of men. Vietnamese mainstream media have also criticized the “out-of-control” behaviors of K-pop fans, labeling them “water buffalo youth” and “mixed-race” - the latter perhaps out of fear that K-pop as a foreign cultural force is usurping Vietnam’s own values of community and patriotism.
But more strikingly, Southeast Asian men aren’t embracing K-pop’s soft masculinity. Even though it could be a template for expressing themselves more openly, it’s not striking the right chords with them. Maybe that’s because men comprise just 10% to 30% of the global K-pop fanbase, but it also suggests that men see soft masculinity as purely performative - out of touch with “real” manhood.
Towards a broader masculinity
Naturally, gender conversations remain awkward - and sometimes even lift-threatening - across Southeast Asia.
The good news: K-pop has already become a key driving force in Southeast Asian youth politics. Fandoms double as spaces for fans to connect with other like-minded peers on other issues and topics that they feel strongly about. In Myanmar, fan accounts of K-pop acts like BTS and Twice are a key source of information on protests and death tolls; Over in Thailand, K-pop fans are also among the biggest donors to Thailand’s pro-democracy movement.
That momentum hasn’t gripped ideals of masculinity in Southeast Asia yet. Still, young Singaporeans are stepping away from old ideas of manhood that saw them grow up with absent fathers, while Thai Gen Z consumers are more open towards men’s use of cosmetics and makeup. Change is already in the air, and soft masculinity can still offer a way forward.