IT’S ME – KAHI (가희) ~

#I’m so bad girl, I’m so cool girl, I’m so sexy sexy sexy girl.#

I am so over sex selling everything. I don’t mean I want everyone to be covered up Amish style and be ashamed of their bodies, I’m just over companies thinking they can slap a pair of perky breasts and hard abs being next to a product and I’ll buy it. I am human, and so there are times when I purchase an item mentally hoping that it will transform me into a goddess with long tresses and a rock hard body that Fonda would kill for. But for the most part, I’m bored of tits and ass jiggling next to a bottle of cider, or a girl with a low cut top selling  me toothpaste or a guy wearing no shirt selling me soft drinks. Why? Because all the overt sexiness is now a little bit well tacky. I can see what their doing, I feel like they think I’m stupid. I think that’s the root of my problem with sex being used to sell everything. Not only do I feel a little insulted, I feel that it’s lazy, but when done poorly can reduce the person portrayed into a 2D prop. They are no longer a multidimensional or multifaceted organism, they become an object for our pleasure and that makes me uncomfortable.

I want to believe that I am more than my base human instincts. I’m evolved damnit!

I say all of this because while I love K-Pop, it’s gratuitous sexiness and overt cuteness (aegyo) can at times be really grating. When I went to Music Bank I remember watching Hyuna from 4Minute offstage trying to adjust her outfit so it would cover more of her body. This dress was so short that if she moved too quickly you could probably see what she had for lunch. I couldn’t find it sexy, for most of her performance I felt uncomfortable for her, and that feeling of uncomfortable translates to the majority of the girl groups I see with impossibly short outfits. I wonder if they’re really comfortable, and who’s idea the outfit was. Sinead O’Connor’s open letter to Miley Cyrus actually resurfaced that memory, and it helped me put to words how entirely uncomfortable I am with the phenomena.

I think that’s why I like Crayon Pop so much, they’re attractive young women, but they’re a bit more than just pretty faces parading around on a stage. They’re fun, they have personalities that their company allows to shine through, I don’t look at them and think that they’re cardboard cutouts that get injected with concepts to perform. They seem like actual people. Knowing how I feel about the whole scene, it’s no surprised that when I saw Kahi perform ‘It’s Me’ I was blown away.

HOLY GOSH! This song is amazing and that is largely due to the choreography. It’s a sexy song and as a result the dance moves are  highly suggestive. But what drew me to it is that it isn’t sexy for the sake of sexy. They haven’t shoehorned sex into the song or choreography, she’s a sexy performer and it shines through even though for the most part she’s pretty covered up. As an observer, I feel like she’s in control of her sexuality, and she’s using it as an expression of herself rather than putting herself on display.

I can’t deny that sex sells, but if it’s everywhere all the time at irrelevant places, does it still work? For me, that’s a no.