This blog is written by me and contains my personal thoughts, as well as references to other blogs I’ve read, which I’ll cite. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but please be kind while spreading it.
I was introduced to this song called “Mommae” by Jay Park and Ugly Duck through Thai actors “Build” Jakapan Puttha and “Apo” Nattawin Wattanagitiphat during the KinnPorsche World Tour when they respectively danced to it, and both of them did a pretty decent job. I first saw Apo dancing to it, then later I saw Build dancing to it before he resigned from the company, Be On Cloud, due to a scandal.
When I first heard this song, without knowing the meaning behind the lyrics, I just vibed to it because of its catchy beats and even imagined myself dancing to it. Then, out of curiosity, I saw the music video and God, it was horrible! This made me wish I had searched about the meaning behind the majorly Korean lyrics before even vibing to them because, as a girl, I was slightly horrified and disappointed at the amount of objectification shown on women, whose bottoms and breasts were mostly in close-up by the camera, as well as women twerking with their bottoms in close-up; in fact, it was introduced by the close-up of a woman’s bottom, with texts “Mommae” and “Jay Park ft. Ugly Duck” if I can remember correctly. I tried my best to endure it since I liked this song. Just an FYI, I barely even know Jay Park. I just know that he’s a popular figure in the K-pop world and is Korean-American. Women were in bikinis to sports bras and were hyper-sexualized in the video, with Jay Park rapping about basically his lust and male gaze for a woman, as the English subtitles explained, and that too openly without fear, even going to the extent of saying that Beyonce’s butt seems flat when compared to that woman (like, are you serious right now?!). Before I could even finish it, I just gave up watching it!
As a girl, this amount of hyper-sexualization and exploitation of women’s bodies really hits me in a negative way. Women in all industries have been mostly reduced to sexual objects, one of the reasons why sexual harassment and rape take place (and I’m not denying that men get molested; in fact, people of all genders can fall prey to sexual assault, but this is a different story), from item song numbers in Indian movies where a woman usually in a bralette and a long skirt happily dances in front of a crowd of cheering men to bikini-clad women in music videos of mainstream Punjabi songs and even in English pop music videos. Unrealistic beauty standards are heavily promoted through them, which may cause body-image issues for most people identifying themselves as women.
Coming back to Mommae, the word itself means “body” in Korean, and I just realized that as I’m writing this. The lyrics by Jay (translated from Korean to English) goes like this:
When I’m in front of you
https://colorcodedlyrics.com/2015/05/jay-park-bagjaebeom-mommae-mommae-feat-ugly-duck
Even Beyonce’s butt seems flat
This is frustrating, just be cool and put it on me
Your dark colored thighs are tight
Like a taxi driver. You’re so long and curvy
If admiring you makes me a pervert,
then I wanna be a pervert
I mean it, if I look like I’m acting
Then I’m a cigarette. I don’t know what we are
But I want to be introduced to them right now
The two sisters on your chest
The twins. I want you to give it to me o0o0 weee
I wanna be with you like Twix. Baby, just us two, grinding
Let’s dance on my bed. No rules, no rest
I’ll keep giving it to you. Lets shoot a movie
All this while a bunch of girls crowd and lie on Jay’s body as he raps those verses, with their almost naked bottoms in focus. A lot of the emphasis is on how sexy the woman is. He even has the audacity to say that if he were a pervert, he’d be one. Creepy, right? If he said them to me, I’d just run away! Slayy Point‘s Gautami’s tagline, “Hello Mahila Helpline,” is coming to my head now. Jokes aside, this verse is one of the questionable lyrics this song portrays.
The lyrics rapped by Ugly Duck disgust me even more, especially the lines like “Even if you wear a turtleneck, I can see your body; I’m thirsty; I should take another sip of the cocktail” and “Are your parents Korean? Your hips look like they’re imported”. I was totally disturbed by it, and I read this after I ranted to my cousin about the song! What is so special about a woman’s body that makes a person “thirsty”? Is it just the body the man cares about, or is it also her personality and feelings? Also, this line, “Your hips look like they’re imported?” is more than just a huge facepalm to me, it’s that objectifying! To me, the woman is an object for them to ogle at.
As Stitch Media Mix’s “Music Video Anatomy #7 – 몸매 (MOMMAE)” says, “This song is misogynistic as hell”, which is something I definitely agree with for the reasons mentioned. Jenny Park covers this topic very well in her blog titled Sexualization and Objectification of Women in K-Pop:
It seemed like Jay Park’s “Mommae” M/V portrayed how women are used to fulfill men’s desires very well. From beginning to end, all women did was to be used as objects or “mannequins” to display their body parts to fulfill men’s sexual desires. The most shocking part of this M/V was that, this was openly accepted in popular media. The viewers seemed to be shocked by the presence of women in the video at first, but quickly moved onto how sexy Jay Park looked with his tattoos and dance moves (Yoon). The serious issue of sexualizing and objectifying women in his M/V easily became avoidable as Jay Park took people’s attention away from them with his existence. This shows how people aren’t taking this issue very seriously, because Jay Park was easily able to grab their attention away from half-naked women in the M/V.
If it were any other cisgender-heterosexual male artist and a less popular one, then this might get a lot of backlash in today’s time. But since it is Jay Park, everyone praises it, from the catchy beats to Build and Apo dancing to it, and before I got to know the meaning, I actually fell into that trap of catchy melodies and tunes this song offered, only to be disappointed by it. If it were released at today’s date and time, then Jay would face a lot of backlash for the right reasons. Well, even during the time it was released around 2015, it got quite a backlash and was banned from airing on television because of explicit sexual content, but it was still accepted by the audience as he was showcasing the “free culture” as depicted in the United States (as Jenny Park writes in her article).
With that being said, I still feel that not all K-Pop is bad; in fact, I have heard a lot of very good songs, and I’m pretty sure a lot of them aren’t misogynistic. I have no problems with lusty lyrics if they are depicted right, and I can’t deny that Mommae is really catchy and enjoyable, but only when you ignore the meaning behind the lyrics. And if anyone is familiar with the language or reads the translated lyrics, then they need to be called out, especially when we live in a patriarchal society where victim blaming is prevalent, when women, when sexually assaulted, are blamed for wearing clothes that are “too revealing”, and considering the hyper-sexualization of females in the M/V, this might promote it. Some people might call me a hyper-sensitive feminist, but considering the wide access to YouTube, many impressionable minds would find access to this video and may get disturbed thought processes lyrically or graphically. That’s how powerful the media is.
Sources:
Sexualization and Objectification of Women In K-Pop
Music Video Anatomy #7 – 몸매 (MOMMAE)
https://colorcodedlyrics.com/2015/05/21/jay-park-bagjaebeom-mommae-mommae-feat-ugly-duck/
Esha Lee Madgavkar 