Since their official debut in 2009, 2NE1 has presented a new image of femininity to the Korean wave that does not follow the typical cute or sexy concepts seen in previous girl groups. With mellow verses and a powerful rock chorus, the song “Ugly” in their 2nd mini album 2NE1 demonstrates the dark side of the Korean idol industry. It is worthy to note how the lyrics contrasts with the atmosphere of the music video. The official music video accurately depicts and exemplifies the underlying message to the song, through the lyrics, visual elements, and subtext.

 

Although the song “Ugly” is a K-pop song, the most important part of it, the chorus, is entirely in English. The use of English in K-pop songs has become prominent these days, and is essentially “a strategy… to reach transnational audiences both within and beyond East Asia” (Benson 2013:24). Through the lyrics alone, the song “Ugly” exhibits an atmosphere of melancholy and self-deprecation. The chorus, “I think I’m ugly and nobody wants to love me,” depicts the insecurity that results from the strict beauty standards in Korea. With the English chorus, international fans can also relate to this feeling as they too face their respective country’s beauty standards. English lyric mixing increases the marketability of the song globally, by transcending culture through hybridization (Jin and Ryoo 2012:127).

 

Visual media plays an important role in K-pop (Epstein and Turnbull 2014:316), specifically music videos. Music videos have “opened up greater opportunities for local expression in both production and consumption” (Lee 2006:136). In other words, the visual aspects provided through music videos offer an alternative meaning to the song that may or may not be evident in the lyrics. Contrasting the seemingly self-deprecating lyrics, the members of 2NE1 are seen confidently walking through dark and desolate streets, in official music video of “Ugly.” In the beginning of the video, the members’ faces are covered with masks, which are removed in time for the powerful chorus. The masks can be seen as a symbol for the unrealistic beauty standards idols are held against. A member sports an “ugly” tattoo symbolizing how society labels people based on their ideals. As the video progresses, the 2NE1 members encounter a fenced off area with “plastic zone” and “ugly girls not allowed” signs. Park Bom breaks the chains on the fence with an axe, and confidently struts into this area for superficial people. The members proceed to spray paint and vandalize the area. The vandalism signifies the disregard of the social “labels” and rules. Despite the lyrics, the music video shows a song of empowerment; disregard beauty standards and be comfortable in your own skin.

 

YouTube has allowed for the transnational distribution of K-pop (Ono and Kwon 2013:209); the song has garnered over 35 million views to this day. With 2NE1’s popularity, the underlying message of this song can reach global audiences. The song and music video discuss beauty standards of the Korean society, and not living up to them. Specifically, K-pop idols struggle behind the scenes in maintaining their “facial and bodily perfection, which usually involves endless dieting, regular skincare, and plastic/cosmetic surgery” (Lin and Rudolf 2017:31). Their struggles, for the most part, are kept in the dark by their entertainment companies. Beauty standards are prominent in both Korean and Western culture. This song can be seen as a source of empowerment for fans, and with YouTube’s interactive capabilities, it can be further shared across the world (Ono and Kwon 2013:208).

 

In conclusion, 2NE1’s song “Ugly” represents the dark side of the Korean idol industry. With the use of the lyrics, visual elements, and subtext, the song is not about self deprecation, but is a song of empowerment.  It allows fans to relate to 2NE1 through the commonality of trying to live up to the beauty standards that society places of them.

 

Works Cited

 

Benson, Phil. “English and Identity in East Asian Popular Music.” Popular Music 32, no. 1 (2013): 23-33.

 

Epstein, Stephen and James Turnbull. “Girls’ Generation? Gender, (Dis)Empowerment, and K-pop.” In The Korean Popular Culture Reader, edited by Kyung Hyun Kim and Youngmin Choe. 314-336. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

 

Jin, Dal Yong and Woongjae Ryoo. “Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-pop: The Global-Local Paradigm of English Mixing in Lyrics.” Popular Music and Society 37, no. 2 (2014): 113-131.

 

Lee, Hee-Eun. “Seeking the “Others” Within Us: Discourses of Korean-ness in Korean Popular Music.” In Medi@sia: Global Mediation In and Out of Context, edited by Todd Joseph Miles Holden and Timothy J. Scrase. 128-146. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2006.

 

Lin, Xi and Robert Rudolf. “Does K-pop Reinforce Gender Inequalities? Empirical Evidence from a New Data Set.” Asian Women 33, no. 4 (2017): 27-54.

 

Ono, Kent and Kwon Jungmin . “Re-worlding Culture? YouTube as a K-pop Interlocutor.” In The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global, edited by Youna Kim. 199-214. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2013.