Dear IU, Our Bodies Are Fine
I knew my body wasn’t ‘right’; it didn’t look like the bodies of the K-pop idols and Korean actresses I grew up admiring.
This is From a K-pop Fan, With Love, a column by Giaae Kwon about her K-pop obsessions, past and present.
Wow, what’s it like to be her?
Dream High
Life must be so easy for girls with faces like theirs, bodies like theirsThe world must just open up for them. It must be so much easier to stay skinny when you’re already skinny.
Dream High
One Night of TV Entertainment
Healing Camp
Dream High
Don’t forget, in that darkness, you’re a star drawn with a left hand. Can you see? How wonderful your uniqueness is. You’re my celebrity.
Can you see? How wonderful your uniqueness isMaybe I can.
Giaae Kwon is always hungry. Her writing has also appeared in The Rumpus, Buzzfeed Reader, and elsewhere, and she writes the Substack I Love You, Egg. She lives in Brooklyn.
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More by this author
Dear Shinhwa, I Found My Joy in K-Pop Fandom
Joy is not something I’ve carried naturally.
Dear Tiffany, What Does It Mean to be ‘Korean Enough’?
In pretty much every K-pop group, there is the designated One From America.
Dear Irene, I’m Still Learning How to Be a Feminist Too
To be a K-pop fan is to bear witness to a whole lot of dumb shit.
More in this series
Dear H.O.T., I’ll Love You Forever
My obsession with the group was the first step I took away from the life prescribed to me as the Korean American daughter of devout Christian parents.
Dear Taeyeon, It’s Okay Not to Be Okay
Giaae Kwon on Taeyeon, living with depression and suicidal thinking, and how she cares for herself by caring for others—including GomSom, her beloved dogs.
Working on a Vineyard Taught Me to Slow Down and Pay Attention
We had no sense of “ecological time,” the cadence of the natural environment. Mostly, I experienced the natural world as lack.