K-TOWN Part 1- “Asian B- Are Supposed to be Skinny!”

Oh, K-TOWN. A little background, K-TOWN is a reality show that premiered in July of 2012 and was running on LOUD’s YouTube channel. The show is about a group of 8 Asian American 20-somethings and their adventures in nightlife in Koreatown, Los Angeles. A little more background, this show is a flaming pile of trash. There’s the typical reality show group of “friends”; “actors” and “actresses” rounded up to pretend to have wild, chummy history- the producers just vainly scraping at the bottom of the Jersey Shore barrel. The title sequence of the show even has a qualifier for each person, such as “Scarlet, The Troublemaker” and “Jowe, The Heartbreaker” because otherwise, audiences for sure would not be able to distinguish between the “stars”, what with their glaring lack of personality and amorphous character traits. K-TOWN is all about the Koreatown nightlife, but more importantly it has chronicled 1. The fight at the bar 2. The fight at the karaoke room 3. The fight with the go-go dancer pre-club night. 

                                   

                                             

And you know what? I watched this show. Not even ironically. I found it extremely entertaining and appealing for all the wrong reasons, but I was hooked. Admittedly, I watched K-TOWN with a masochistic mix of genuine fascination and cultural analysis. For a minute, anyway. I reached the episode with the big club night, and my mental state just decided it could not take it anymore. As I look back on episodes for reference in this blog post, I cannot even believe I consumed that much K-TOWN, but hey, I totally did. A lot of us did.

Episode 3 of Season 1 of K-TOWN is called “The Fight” and it produced, in my opinion, one of the most culturally revealing scenes from K-TOWN.

Clip starts 2:50 to 3:20 

Now, the entirety of K-TOWN is overwhelmingly problematic. As in, literally every second of every episode of this show can be made case for a crippling societal issue. But I want to focus on this one gem of a scene- Violet is shown getting into a fight with an unknown girl who she sees Jowe, her ex-boyfriend, flirting with. The fight erupts into punches and hair-pulling, and makes its way to the doorway where insults are thrown around. This is where the two girls have nothing but their words left- it’s time to pull from the very arsenal, it’s time for the BIG GUNS. They know they’ll need the insults that will cut to the core. Violet starts on the other girl’s outfit, looking her head to toe and commenting on the value of her clothes. Hilariously, the other girl fires back and soon they are both just making shots about how cheap each other’s shoes are. As K-TOWN shows us, if you want to insult another woman, just go for the appearance. And that’s when the “other woman” says, (and the show even spells it out on the screen for more effect, in case just hearing it wasn’t transferring enough impact)

“Asian bitches are supposed to be skinny, you fat f---!”

I say that these two women are pulling out the big guns in terms of club fight smack talk because in this situation, they want the meanest, sharpest, coldest slap-in-the-face put down. And where does she go? Weight. Asian girls are supposed to be skinny. This was supposed to be the worst thing she could say. So what does this tell us? 

 

Recent Asian culture has Asian and Asian American women pining for the ideal thin. Stereotypical ideas about genetics and Asian body type have lead people to believe that Asian people have a natural thinness, and this attributes to the very generic idea of a contemporary Asian beauty- pale skin, large eyes, long, straight hair, and a thin body. For an Asian woman to break apart from this mold would mean that she is not beautiful. To be “not thin”, and therefore not beautiful, has decidedly become to mean not feminine. Objectively, Violet is thin. Which calls into question just how thin is the Asian ideal thin?

I know it is incredibly asinine to call out this bar fight girl from K-TOWN about why what she’s saying is incorrect. But I’m going to do it anyway. There is no one way Asian women are supposed to look. There is no one way any person is supposed to look. The cultural norm of idolizing the thin, pale, Asian body creates in women issues of self-worth, eating disturbances, and obsession with image that fuels an ever-growing cosmetic surgery mania. Unknown bar girl’s comment on Violet’s weight as a point of insult speaks volumes about Asian and Asian American culture’s values of beauty, dieting, and having a thin, female body as a sign of Asianness. Men are objectifying women, women are objectifying women, and these strict barriers that are created only allow for one type of body, one type of beauty to exist, and this very type is tied to the millions and millions of people’s self worth who are told they need to look like this to be beautiful.