Is There a Balance between 'Looks VS Talent' in K-Pop?

There are about 3 major media companies that are well-known in South Korea, the trinity league: SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, and YG. When it comes to these companies, any regular teenaged individual can give you at least one artist under each company. There's something about these companies and how they handle their artists that makes them well known in their industry.

But how can you tell success from talent apart from success from looks? Would it be harsh to say that certain groups get by just because they offer a mass appeal that talent cannot achieve on its own?

Here is something that we know is tested and true, media is a superficial industry. It can't help that aspect of its existence because every artist that goes into it is placed under a microscope. Every little thing is supervised, from the way they dress to the way they sleep, who they hang out with on a daily basis, what they wear when they travel, and the list goes on. The pop culture suggests that artists like Girls'Generation, miss A, f(x), INFINITE, these groups have to live up to a standard of looks first before talent.

SM Entertainment was once believed to put looks over talent. They have this belief that talent is something you can train and eventually achieve, but with the number of fixed noses, smaller faces, whiter skins, can't that also be said about looks? I don't know how sensitive you are towards the reality that your oppa isn't au natural, but you can't honestly say that the abundance in obsession towards these media figures is all about the talent.

YG Entertainment holds artists such as 2NE1, Big Bang, Se7en,  etc. they were all rounded up by the company and have been successful in their careers so far. And because of the diversity in images, YG is known for producing artists for being artists, and not just necessarily for being attractive. We all know that comparing is not going to help much, but you can't deny YG's success when placing artists on the market.

But does this mean that there is a good balance between looks over talent when it comes to K-pop? I'd say that looks trumps talent, when placing into account how most of these artists are told to dress and look a certain way. Korea has a very specific idea of beauty. If you haven't noticed, they favor those with small faces, those who are tall and skinny, those who are fair skinned (remember how Kai of EXO is always being told off about the color of his skin?), and it goes for both men and women. This is mostly why a lot of the members of certain idol groups look alike; they mean to do that, since they're striving to fit a mould.

And when they tried to debut a girl group that wasn't all skin and bones, they were eventually forced to lose weight to gain more popularity.

It's because of these reasons that I think that if you want to be a Kpop star, you don't just have to be talented and attractive, you have to be thick-skinned. You have to understand how being a part of that industry means being a product that is sold to people who will objectify you and judge you first and foremost by the way that you look.

What do you guys think?

Tags
K-Pop
idol
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