I wasn’t going to write about Big Bang Gold Miss Diary, but as I watched it I couldn’t help but wonder why 10 minutes of a half-hour show is spent guessing the women’s ages. This is one of the things that I can’t stand about Korean variety shows, this obsession with youth and the jeering at older women or older men by the younger of the opposite sex. I couldn’t put my finger on it before, exactly what irked me even while I laughed at the antics on Korean shows, but in this post I pretty much go through what it is. Everything seems to be looked at through the lens of how much of a man or a woman you are through the eyes of the opposite sex. So when all of Big Bang guesses how old the women are it’s kind of like going through who’s dateable/doable and who’s not. And likewise, when, say, a member of SNSD guesses the age of an oppa or ajussi like Yoo Jae Suk and Kim Soo Ro, it’s like saying where they stand with these girls.
After the age-guessing bit of Gold Miss they go into “If you go back 10, no, 15 years, who would you approach first?” Once again, we see this idea that a woman is only as good as the man that will have her and vice-versa. Read more »
