Intro – What is K-pop?
K-pop is a global phenonium that has been on the rise of popularity. K-pop which stands for Korean pop, is a genre of music originating from South Korea. It is known to experiment with different music styles from around the world ranging from, Hip Hop, Jazz, Tropical House, R&B and many more. It has reached the height of commercial success with the rise and help of groups such as BTS, Blackpink, Itzy, Aespa, NCT and Loona.
How does K-pop influence fans?
As expected, with K-pop’s large and rapidly growing fanbase almost every day, fans are easily lured and pushed into spending thousands on things such as albums, photocards of their favourite idols and light sticks. Fans also tend to use a lot of K-pop idols as style and makeup inspiration. Some venture to find the exact clothing their favourite idols was wearing or resort to buying replicas of them online. Some would even go to extreme extents to look and practically mimic their favourite idols. With the likes of people such as Oli London who spent of $250,000 to replicate the looks of BTS member, Park Jimin.
What is K-pop diet culture and its negative effects?
Better known as The Paper Cut diet, K-pop diets is something that many idols have to or still have to abide by when signing under their respected companies. These diets include eating almost little to no food. With the diet consisting of whole grains, fruit, and vegetables or sometimes, no food at all. Many K-pop fans express their obvious worry and mixed reactions towards these idols and their dieting plans. With a prime example being the group, Itzy. Who’s What I Eat in A Day video was shortly taken down due to many people expressing concern about how the girl’s diet plans being unhealthy and how they appeared to not be eating enough food during the day. With one the members Lee Chaeryeong even mentioning that she took supplement pills and a bottle of water in the mornings. Rather than eating any form of breakfast.
Korea is known for its high beauty standard and being skinny is one of them. Being overweight or slightly curvy is often frowned upon. You are Immediately seen as unattractive and ugly and it’s even worse if you are a K-pop idol. K-pop stars such as Jeonygeon of Twice and Kyla, former member of Pristin, have been given flak from fans both in Korea and internationally due to not fitting their standards, with Kyla being ignored by fans on occasions and Jeongyeon herself being fat shamed and cyberbullied online.
How are fans influenced by dieting culture and how it causes the early stages of eating disorders
Many channels on YouTube have attempted to try these K-pop diets for themselves as some sort of challenge. While diets such as Jennie Kim of Blackpink’s seems healthy and balanced. Some diets such as Jimin of BTS’s, Momoland and IUs are unhealthy and rather dangerous. With the IU herself revealing that she actually suffers from an eating disorder.
Jimin has said in an interview for fans to not mimic his dieting plan as he actually ended up passing out when preparing for a comeback. IU’s diet actually ended up becoming a challenge in late 2013. Fans would follow her diet plan of one apple, two sweet potatoes and a protein powder each day. Some fans have to endure serious consequences when attempting these diets. One youtuber called Lucy Lou speaking about how she had suffered from hair loss and bruising when attempting Jimin’s diet which only consisted of only eating one meal and then starving yourself for the next ten days.
How too much K-pop can sometimes lead to mental illnesses
Aside from diet culture, the K-pop fanbase is known for having an extremely toxic fanbase on the internet. One problem the K-pop fanbase has is excluding mental illnesses, more towards the fans than the idols. Due to the fanbase being made up of extremely toxic and devoted people, saying the wrong things can lead to being sent death threats, having your personal information leaked online or being sent disturbing images or videos just for having a different opinion. Things like this can lead to things like depression. The messages and hate you receive from people can make you feel like you’re not good enough. Being afraid you say the wrong things in fear of being bashed for it.
While most people enjoy K-pop there are many out there who don’t enjoy it and even hate it. An incident happened in mid 2019, where haters of K-pop were messaging K-pop fans disturbing images and videos such as extreme gore, animal abuse and sexually explicit content. This caused many K-pop fans to have anxiety attacks and some for some to develop PTSD and trauma from this.
How can we help stop the development of mental and eating disorders caused?
The best thing to do is to take breaks from both listening to K-pop and K-pop content in general. It would be better for your health physically and mentally. Once you feel better enough you can go ahead and return to listening to K-pop.
