With apologies to the authors of the blog Sociological Images for copying both the name and the idea, but then my own images will be few and far between, and naturally confined to only Korean examples! Besides, if the quality of the images on this blog didn’t already give it away then I’ve aleady been a fan of modern Korean art and photography for quite a while now, and have long lamented that the academic in me rebels against posting images just for the sake of it, no matter how well they might embody, say, a certain Korean zeitgeist or - my personal favorite – provide interesting juxtapositions.
Which may seem a bit rich to describe my first choice of this image (source) of Son Tae-young (손태영) from her appearance at the SBS Broadcasting center in Seoul yesterday, promoting her new drama Two Wives (두아내) that is due to air on May the 4th, but there are indeed *cough* two points to this image which make it – in the words of the about page of SI – “compelling and timely,” albeit both of which I’ve already discussed in depth and so will be simply linking to here.
The first, of course, is the fact that her bra is clearly visible, without which her appearance at the promotion undoubtedly wouldn’t have generated quite the attention in the Korean media and blogosphere that it has (see here, here, and here for the latter). Why that is significant in anything other than a voyeuristic sense is that – as far as I know – she is the first Korean celebrity to dress in that fashion, and, as I explain here, here, and especially here, Western celebrities doing so several years ago heralded big changes in fashions and notions of “appropriate” standards of dress for women here. Perhaps Son Tae-young will prove to be an icon that accelerates those?
She is already probably much more significant an icon as a (recent) mother though, mostly by virtue of numerous photoshoots of her unusually thin body while pregnant and then determination to return it to it’s former glory afterward (see number #11 here for the former and here and#15 here for the latter). Neither of which I bemoan her for as a celebrity in an already appearance-obsessed culture, and nor do I mean to imply that I think that Korean mothers are all mere passive followers of ideals of appearance set by celebrity mothers (let alone just one). Or then again, perhaps I should: as I explain here, many are already so concerned with their appearances that they: diet while pregnant; as a whole have proportionally more caesarean sections than any other group of women; and will quickly bottle-feed after birth in order to diet again, even though as fellow blogger Melissa points out here, breastfeeding is actually the surest means of losing baby-fat. And as she goes on:
What Korea needs is some famous (slim & beautiful) celebrity mom to talk about the glories of nursing/expressing milk and we’d start to see an increase in numbers. ^^
And when Son Tae-young said she was breastfeeding her son, there appeared to be the distinct possibility of that! But by wearing that particular outfit, then clearly she isn’t any more, even though it’s only been four months since the birth, and at least a year is best for the baby. Sigh.
Like I said, that’s showbiz, and I don’t bemoan her for it. Nonetheless, it’s a pity that Korea is still waiting.
(For all posts in the “Korean Sociological Image” series, see here)
Posted in Childbirth, Korean Sexuality, Korean Sociological Images, Pregnancy Tagged: Caesarean Birth, Caesarean Section, 손태영, Korean Lingerie, Sohn Tae-young, Son Tae-Young
