My inspiration for this post comes from another article I was reading about EXO. I’m not a huge fan of EXO, and I don’t talk much about EXO on my blog, but this article rubbed me the wrong way.

Allkpop Discusses Baekhyun Dating scandal

Apparently, when EXO’s Baekhyun and Girl’s Generation’s Taeyeon began dating, it affected ticket sales for a musical Kyuhyun and Baekhyun were starring in, Singing in the Rain.

My response to this is to target EXO’s fan base.

A bunch of teenage-to-early-twenty somethings all decided not to watch a play and hear music of ONE member, because ANOTHER member is dating someone? Something is seriously wrong here!

1) Kyuhyun is NOT Baekhyun. What does another member’s dating scandal have to do with THIS member? That’s petty. This member has his own career, and should be able to develop himself as an independent artist. I understand Baekhyun is in the musical too, but there’s another EXO member who has been looking forward to this. Shouldn’t you continue to support ALL of EXO? I really dislike that “bias” thing people do in K-pop. It divides the group and shows favoritism. You’re not just letting Baekhyun down, but Kyuhyun! It’s bogus how Baekhyun’s life had to affect Kyuhyun’s life.

2) What does someone’s personal life or who they’re dating have to do with someone’s MUSIC? Why is that enough to take back a ticket when you are SUPPOSED to be there to see and hear the MUSICAL? Maybe because they didn’t buy the ticket to see the musical…

This is not only a poor reflection on EXO’s fan base, but this is disrespectful to EXO as artists. You know what this says? “EXO are only popular because they are a bunch of cute boys, but no one cares about their talents.” When this group gets old, no one will respect them, even if they are still talented. That’s sad.

Any record company or music critic overseas would SLAM them, calling them “pop boy-band wannabes”, because the fans have made it so obvious that the contributing factor to EXO’s success was because the females who supported them hoped to have the PROSPECTS of dating them. Not one of those “fans” respected EXO’s ART. That’s…embarrassing. That makes other people lose respect for this group. That puts this group below the more respected artists. This is why beauty is a curse.

Once upon a time, back when record companies first started producing music albums, music used to be about the MUSIC. Now, it’s just about the face in front of the music, and very seldom about the music. This is especially evident in Korea.

EXO’s FAN BASE and Women with Music

Sure, fans can spend money on anything that they want. It’s your money, I can’t control that. But you deserve every little shame you get coming your way if you took back your ticket over something so petty.

I’m sure there a few fans who appreciate EXO’s music and dancing skills, but there’s always that little dark side to a fandom.

These fans who did this were man-hunting, gold digging, “dirty dianas”, only interested in getting special attention from their idols. These women are desperate. Yes, this is common with any boy band. But that’s why it’s so disrespectful to music, to them as artists, and to a person’s personal life.

I’m sorry ladies, but he didn’t start a MUSIC career just to get girls’ numbers. He started a music career to showcase his TALENTS.

The problem with these young girls is that they live in a bubble. The reputation of women starts with the teenage mind. Women have a reputation of being “unrealistic”, “emotional”, “irrational”, “naive” or “too subjective”. Girls fantasize about idols ten times more than boys do. Girls carry unrealistic expectations in the real world, hardly seeing reality. This is why women don’t get respect in the business world. This is why men want to keep women far away from business. I was watching a reaction video the other day, which was geared toward f(x)’s Electric Shock (I know, it was an old video), and all the girl could comment on was on the clothes, the hair, and who was pretty. Nothing about the song, the arrangement, the message, nothing INTELLIGENT. It was the most shallow reaction I’ve ever heard. But sadly, she was not the only female to make reaction videos like that. Don’t get me wrong, looks can be interesting. But they are not the fundamental parts of a music artist. Women, especially teenagers, often seem to miss the fundamental parts. They are so naive when it comes to things, it’s no wonder boys seem to easily ‘take advantage of them’. These young girls put their ultimate trust in these idols, trusting their idols to love them obsessively. These are men they BARELY know.

The whole definition of idol shows the sheer ignorance of fans: any person regarded with blind admiration, adoration, or devotion.

Dictionary.com

“Blind” is correct.  Biases stem from this blind admiration. Bias isn’t a flattering term, either. It’s a form of prejudice that results from lack of reasoning or experience.

So, most of these fans, who mostly consist of teens and young adults, have painted an illusion, and have decided to live in it. They are almost “chasing rainbows”. This illusion aspect causes them to cross into the mental realm of insanity, to the point many of the things they react to seem to make hardly any sense at all. This obsessive and passionate behavior leaves one to imagine they are already in a “relationship” with these people, therefore jealousy and possessiveness sets in, almost as if they are already “married” to the individual.

Most teens have yet to develop their careers as well, so most don’t have the clearest understanding of business or a working person. They don’t often realize how damaging their obsessions are to a music career and to another working person’s personal life. They often make demands that aren’t realistic, not considering the cost of things.

There is nothing wrong with being a little passionate sometimes or being caught in an illusion. It’s a healthy part of human expression. But it all depends on whether you are passionate over the right things and in the right way. It’s also helpful to return to the “real world” after the illusion is over.

The fans consume their lives around music and artists. They have begun to “worship” these people. For them, it has become more than music. It has become a desire to be included in the artist’s life. This is where the heavy obsessive research comes from. Fans desire to know personal information: his favorite sock, his favorite food, his family, etc. And what is the need to know all of this? None of these tidbits have to do with MUSIC. So why? Is it so these young girls can get special attention and feel worshiped themselves? Is this some sort of social-status behavior? Do they hope an idol will focus on their knowledge of him, like God calling you of all people to do his will? Only, it’s in pop star form? That’s a little ridiculous.

They see perfection in an imperfect being. Young women who form these obsessive fantasies more than likely don’t value themselves. When people are looking to someone as an idol, it’s because they feel that their own lives are mediocre (whether they feel let down by the men in their community, let down by family or school, etc). They hate themselves, and so they reach out for something other than who they are. They end up living their own lives through the lives of another. When someone values themselves, they love their life too much to be concerned about someone else’s, and tend to let people live their own lives. If half of these girls had their own great boyfriends, they wouldn’t be expecting this man to be theirs.

When someone becomes this obsessive, they become a little possessive, and therefore aggressive. The fans end up forming abusive relationships with their favorite “idols”.

This was exactly the abusive fan-idol relationship I talked about on my last post. Click me to Read About That. There needs to be some reform in this industry. The idols become dependent on these fans for income so they take anything off of their “customers”. It’s like working as a waitress for a major restaurant. They often take crap from customers and are still expected to smile and be polite, no matter what. They are almost like puppets of female fans. And fans threaten them like this: “If you date so-and-so, I won’t buy any of your music, and you’ll be broke and hungry. No one will ever like you again…unless you do what I say and break up with HER!” That sounds like some crazy horror movie. It almost sounds like a “stick-up” from an old western film. If people are this crazy, there’s a whole lot of people we need to send to mental wards.

I hope those fans never return to EXO. This weeded out the FAKE fans and revealed the REAL fans, the fans who loved them for their music and not their bodies. I’m glad the fans who treated EXO like objects are gone. And they say SM treats its idols like robots. Just as I said on my last article, SM drives wherever the fans (money) goes. If anything, SM is only reflecting the fans’ demands.

And it’s not that women only focus on the looks, they focus on the members’ “television” personalities. Sometimes, through these variety shows and interviews, fans form “bonds” with these idols. Sometimes, they get TOO close with them, to the point they’ve attached themselves to a fantasy perception of this idol. Sometimes what we see on these interviews are PROFESSIONAL FACES. Many idols put on a pleasant face, their nicest, most charming qualities, and give it to the public. But that person isn’t showing their complete personality.

Women always want to be respected in everything, and are always the first to complain about being objectified. Perhaps it’s because women have so much experience objectifying themselves and others. A rat can smell a rat. This is some serious objectifying.

Men usually don’t respect women in sports, true enough, but how many women respect men in music? Women make up the largest consumers of music, especially in K-pop. These women don’t respect what men DO, they only respect how they LOOK doing it. It’s the less evolved form of woman.

The Jungian principle highlights this well. –> Click Me

To prove that women make up the largest consumer crowd in K-pop, I’m going to create a poll.

I’ll bet the majority of you who read this will be females.

Even though women objectify the other female idols in K-pop, too (only liking an artist because they are pretty), they don’t care to get angry if one of them is dating…unless they are dating a boy-band favorite.

More on Teen girls and Boy bands

I sadly read the comments from these fans of Baekhyun.

*”It’s not that I hate EXO and Baekhyun, I just don’t approve of his relationship with HER. And fans accept his relationship, they just don’t approve of it.”

Not approving of a relationship means you haven’t truly accepted it. And when you ask what their reasons are for not approving of this relationship, they have some of the dumbest reasons. It’s not like Taeyeon has shown herself to be a BAD person. What’s there not to approve of? Oh, I get it. You don’t approve of it because you’re jealous. But what does that have to do with the EXO member’s MUSICAL? What does that have to do with you being entertained by MUSIC? It doesn’t.

*”It was too soon for EXO to be dating. They just became idols, and they got so big halfway because of their female fans”.

Why is it too soon for EXO to be dating? Karmin debuted married! So? If it were about the music, who cares who they are dating? If they truly impressed you with their talents and skills, wouldn’t you be paying money to see that? If you’re paying money just to see them and not their music, that’s not only deceptive, but that sounds like you’ll have even less of a chance of gaining the love of your idol. Why would EXO want to be around someone who is pretending to like their music only to get closer to them? That’s no different from men who deceptively act sweet and charming just to get a girl, and yet girls always want to preach against that.

Sure, this isn’t only a K-pop thing. Even in the country I live in, the USA, girls treat their favorite celebrities like objects. Look at how girls treat One Direction. Look at how badly people slam them when they even think about dating someone. However, the very difference between K-pop artists and American artists are what they expect from musical artists. In K-pop, the biggest artists are the ones that have an obsessive following. Most of the biggest artists are objectified. The Korean artists that aren’t so good-looking struggle to dominate the charts…Ironically…

In America, the first K-pop artist to break in was Psy. Not because he was attractive, not because he had a sweet personality, but Americans respected his wacky, satirical art. Though many of our youth enjoy hot celebrities as much as the next person, many average people are famous. Look at Adele, Susan Boyle, even Miley Cyrus! These artists are big for their art. This is probably why so many people want to make it big in the American industry. Artists have more creative freedom. Artists are less defined by their looks and more defined by their product. Sure, we get all up in people’s business. But there are so many artists with problems, dating scandals are minor. And even if someone acts like a retard, it’s not enough to stop people from buying their music if it’s good. Miley Cyrus isn’t the most morally conservative, but people still buy her hits if the music is good! Michael Jackson’s name was smeared, but his albums still make billions, even after his death.

This is not to say the USA was always like this. The 1990’s “bubblegum pop” era posed the same issues. Hot, young pop idols dominated the music industry. Boy bands marked the mid to late ’90s. But we left that scene behind, and for good reason: we were losing touch with what real art is even about.

There are those who think “This is their own fault for being idols. They seduce girls and then expect them not to be obsessed.”

Perhaps since these people think it’s their own fault for being idols, since that is the mindset, perhaps there shouldn’t be any idols at all. If it’s going to effect the livelihood of people, there shouldn’t be any idol professions. It should be music artists and nothing more. It’s not an important part of life anyhow, and since people treat it with such low respect, why bother existing as an idol at all? That’s barely an existence.

If this situation were the other way around, where a female idol was stalked and sent hate mail by a male, we would not see her as the one at fault. She would be a victim. We wouldn’t blame her for seducing men, would we? Our society treats women too precious. But we don’t give our boys that same respect. These boys do not intentionally seduce girls. EXO, of all the boy bands, hardly sing love songs at all! Whatever the boys sing about, they will always be objectified. And women will always seem them as the one at fault for whatever happens to them. We should start holding women responsible for some things. Women are not that naive and fragile not to know what they are doing. Teens are no longer little children. Since most of them want to be treated like adults, they need to start by being held accountable for their involvement in destroying these idols’ careers. They need to be taught the reality of the industry. If we want our children to grow up loving their job, and being in a creative field, we have to reform that field so that teens don’t grow up resenting everything they once loved.

“K-pop boy bands aren’t declaring love to anyone in particular in their music. It’s better than singing songs about war and killing. I feel that when you are in the entertainment business, you will make an impression on girls. Some boy bands do not sing about love, and yet still get treated like objects. It’s not toying with girls if they are singing the songs to someone they care about, but want to share it with others.

If this were the other way around, where teen girls were treated like objects by boys, there would be all kinds of organizations to change things, and you know it. Do you want to blame female idols after a male stalks and rapes their favorite idol? Oh, it’s her fault for toying with boys, preying on boys and their strong feelings? These girls have gone that far, stalking, sending hate mail, affecting the livelihood of these idols. I wouldn’t be surprised if they would try to rape them. The teen girls can’t project. Even if we do put some blame on entertainment, we can’t ignore the teens either. We also have to hold them accountable as well. This is how change happens.

This is their job, to express art through their music. What else can they do for a living? But it stops them from living a normal life because children AREN’T taught to respect artists.

I do blame parents for not taking entertainment seriously, or seeing how it affects these teens. I don’t feel there are enough programs that teach teens the reality of entertainment. But to some degree, a teen is no longer a child. And since teens nowadays want to be treated like adults, that means we as people have to hold them responsible for the actions they feel they are “in control” of. The artists are not innocent, people know this, but neither are the teen girls.

Does it make it any worse that half of the fans are in their early twenties and of college age, according to stats? That’s too old to be acting this crazy. There are certain things an adult should know.

Everything works on money. Everyone has to eat and make their living somehow. A teen doesn’t have that concept because they have their parents taking care of their every need. In a teen’s mind, they look at the world as being ideal. But an entertainer HAS to sell a product, otherwise they won’t EAT. This does not mean I believe an entertainer should do just about anything to earn money, but they have to sell something. A love song is hardly what makes boy bands sell. There are many boy bands, like Exo, that sing songs about themselves, and yet, it doesn’t really matter, does it? They can sing a song about the sky and girls will treat them like objects. In this case, are they “toying” with girls when they sing about the sky?

Teens think art should be purely art, and if someone makes a business out of it, the artist should expect to be treated like an object. This same mindset travels to all employment. But art is not purely art. People still have to survive. People want to make money doing something they love, but teens, with incomplete mindsets make that hard to do. The artist ends up doing something they love with consumers who treat them like crap. There has to be a balance somewhere. We want the teenagers to grow into creative adults who have the freedom to do what they love doing, but the reality is people can make you hate what you love. This can be better helped if consumers were taught to be realistic in their expectations.”

I hope that K-pop eventually comes to a point where its idols are respected more for their talents and skills and less for their charms and beauty.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you people think about this issue.

Tags: Baekhyun, Baekhyun dating, dating scandal, EXO, EXO dating, f(x), f(x) rumors, Girls' Generation, Romance, SM Entertainment, SM Town, SNSD, Taeyeon