Noteworthy

Does K-pop make you question your sexuality? – Seoulbeats

Has being a fan of idols made you queer? Or if already queer, straight? Or a pedo? Or indulge in nasty fantasies? And if so, do you think any of this is a bad thing?

Here’s a cute little article, pointing out quite rightly that the intense sexualization of idols (Kpop in the article’s case, but Jpop certainly applies as well) is always open to individual interpretation, and so individual audience members determine for themselves how effective (or excessive) that display of sexuality is. In other words, diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks.

The main point strikes me as correct, and the question is definitely worth asking as a community as well as individual fans. Are we being turned on by things we don’t expect, by people who don’t fit what we think of as attractive? Why is that? What does it say about that idol – and more important, what does it say about me?

If anything, it’s the undercurrent of agonizing in this article – lesbians afraid of exposing their attraction to a male idol, female fans attracted to Amber and afraid of what their friends would think, male fans drooling over a sexy slice of rough-hewn ab-sexy goodness from a boy band – that strikes me as a bit… well, juvenile. After all, there’s a difference between questioning one’s sexuality and being secure in oneself as a person – it’s possible to have both. You can find something attractive that’s far from your usual beat-off path and be able to share it with people close to you. You can be curious about your sexual identity and not feel threatened by it – if anything, a healthy curiosity is a great benefit to one’s sense of self in all aspects of life. Without that level of reflection, of honest self-interrogation, you could well end up one of those boring people with their minds closed to anything foreign or strange.

All this actually reminded me of a couple of posts from way back in the early days of the wotasphere from myself and from YODC that tread similar territory (Oh my God, this was five years ago?) but without so much hand-wringing and worrying about a “threat” to one’s sexual identity. And of course, queerness (or straightness) is only one aspect of sexuality that idols can lead one to question. For fans of Japanese idols, there’s the whole lolicon thing – I find it highly amusing that the wotasphere doesn’t even blink twice nowadays about expressing a playful, often ironic, desire for young teens like Hey! Say! Jump’s Chinen when the group first debuted, or Hagiwara Mai (no, not THAT Hagiwara Mai, C-ute’s Hagiwara Mai), or Frances and Aiko… These may not be things said in polite company at the next church picnic, but we know teen idols can be as sexualized as adult idols and can poke fun at them – and ourselves – for the odd dynamic that creates.

And there’s so much more to consider! Lord knows, there’s cosplay fetishes that can be played out, and the whole furry thing may be unleashed by one too many idol dressed up as a giant cow or goat… Did Gomaki Sparrow turn you on? Or what about Nishikido Ryo dressed as a cow?

Then there’s the truly disturbing stuff, if you’re willing to dig deep enough. I was a great fan of JAV idol Maria Ozawa during her S1 days when she decided to jump into the rape fetishist subgenre with the new label DAS. As much as I loved Mozawa (and still do), watching even small portions of her DAS work was truly disgusting and disturbing in a way I didn’t want to deal with. It didn’t turn me on at all and made me wonder if something had gone seriously wrong in Ozawa’s life that she’d be willing to participate in such things. I then tried to rationalize it out a little by looking at what she was doing as being akin to the work of the Marquis De Sade – extreme “eroticism” in the service of a grand philosophical statement – but come on, who was I fooling there? And yes, it did make me wonder if there were any such horrible fantasies that I entertained, it made me question my sexuality in the sense of what turned me on and why in terms of power. (So maybe there IS something to the Mozawa De Sade angle… Hm…)

Was it pleasant to think that way, to contemplate that kind of a dark side? No. Just no. But the opportunity was there to ask myself, I realized I’m not a rapist-in-waiting, and felt better for it. Mozawa thankfully now moves between different subgenres, so I still enjoy her newer work once in a while… but mostly I stick with the S1 stuff whenever I needed a fix of her special idol goodness. (And then there was that SOD Create video where JAV idols were covered in their own feces right before intercourse, but do we really want to go there?)

There’s a cliche that “the biggest sex organ is the brain”. Obviously, whoever said that hadn’t ever watched a Tony Tadeschi DVD. But there’s truth to the role imagination and intellectual engagement can have in determining sexual identity, and I think idols can be a great way to explore that. After all, idols inhabit an imaginary space defined by very strong displays of sexuality – they invite us to fantasize with all those bared midriffs and taut muscles and bulging eggplants and so on. If we can’t expand our imagination here, to let ourselves consider possibilities that we may not ever contemplate in our real world lives, then we’re losing a great opportunity to learn about ourselves.

If you’re male and straight, why not enjoy some Ohmiya action and wonder what it’d be like to be locked in Nino’s sexual powerhouse grip? If you’re liking GP Basic or Ebichuu, what’s wrong in indulging in a Nabokovesque daydream if that’s where your fancy takes you? The important part is remembering it’s a fantasy space, it’s all part of an imaginative exercise – idols aren’t real relationships, they’re pararelationships, and what we think of idols is a simulacra of how we can relate to real people, how we can deal with real emotional ties.

It’s just like falling in love, but with the safety net of being strictly on-the-screen and in-your-head. That’s an important limitation – and if we find ourselves thinking beyond that limit, to think liking Junnosuke of KAT-TUN may mean I would want a blonde Japanese boy in real life… Well, maybe one has stumbled on a greater truth than first suspected, and one has to tread so much more carefully if that’s the case. Yes, self-discovery can be ushered in by idols and idol love, but the step into everyday realities means lust and caution must go hand-in-hand. And while I don’t think it’s unheard of, I’m willing to bet that if you’re already agonizing over whether or not you’re queer just because a KAT-TUN video gives you a hard-on, then idols probably aren’t the first time this dilemma came up, so to speak.

So get your freak on, heed Amuro Namie’s words to “Want Me, Want Me”, and have fun with what’s out there! Just remember to check your head once in a while, or you’ll end up in front of a judge going, “I swear to God I thought that goat was over eighteen.”