Resistance to a gender threat: a case-study analysis of Vietnamese viewers’ unfavourable reception of soft masculinities in romantic Korean television dramas

ABSTRACT

Over the past two decades, global media audiences have witnessed the development of a phenomenon known as Pan-East Asian soft masculinities, present in Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, and South Korean pop culture. This construction, characterised by male entertainers’ effeminate appearance and personality traits, has seen both celebration and backlash worldwide and attracted scholarly attention. Contributing to such literature, this article features case studies of three Vietnamese male and female research participants’ unfavourable reception of soft masculinities in romantic South Korean television dramas. Once fascinated with South Korean pop culture, which has established its presence in Vietnam over two decades, the adult informants now view Korean soft masculinities as inauthentic, immature, unpragmatic, and inappropriately feminine. Such views are intimately linked to their lived experiences, including disillusionment with life and romance. To shed light on the informants’ attitudes, the article uses R. W. Connell’s concept ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and Judith Butler’s theories of gender performativity and gender anxiety to reveal the influence of norms on the informants’ gender perceptions. It helps fill the gap in research on the resistance to Korean soft masculinities in Vietnam and contributes to the literature on Korean pop culture and non-fans as well as contemporary Vietnamese society.

KEYWORDS:

• Korean Wave
• Hallyu
• soft masculinities
• Vietnam
• gender
• non-fan

Introduction

Over the past two decades, global media audiences have witnessed the development of a phenomenon known as Pan-East Asian soft masculinities, present in Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, and South Korean music, television, and cinema. This construction, while constituting variations (hence the use of a plural form), is characterised by male entertainers’ effeminate or androgynous appearance, with features such as a V-line jaw, styled hair, white skin, a slim body, conspicuous attention to looks including flamboyant fashion styles and make-up use, and/or soft personality traits such as cute, gentle mannerisms and emotional display (Gammon, 2021a; Jung, 2011). These images are termed ‘bishōnen/beautiful boy’ in Japan, ‘little fresh meat’ in Greater China, and ‘kkonminam’ (flower-like boy) in South Korea (hereafter Korea), seeing both celebration and backlash in producing and receiving countries (Gammon, 2021a; Jung, 2011; Lee, 2020; Song, 2021; Wen, 2021; Yu & Sui, 2022).

The celebration of soft masculinities worldwide is mostly observed in women, and this favourable reception has been connected to rising consumer culture endorsing men’s aesthetic self-care, women’s empowerment, and more equal gender relations (Chen, 2016; Han & Choi, 2022; Li, 2020). Backlash, on the other hand, is linked to essentialist views that frown upon feminine traits in men and see soft masculinities as a threat to conventional standards of manhood (Wang, Mao, & Smith, 2022) and to nationalist concerns that associate men’s feminisation with weakened masculinity, weakened armed forces, and a weakened nation (Song, 2021; Yu & Sui, 2022). While soft masculinities may not induce much progressive change due to their emphasis on heterosexual men’s purchasing power and privileges and their contribution to greater pressure on ordinary men in terms of consumption and self-care (Epstein & Joo, 2012; Hird, 2016; Lim, 2008), these images have challenged conventional understandings of masculinity, characterised by a high regard for ‘macho’ traits such as ruggedness and emotional restraint (Cicchelli & Octobre, 2021; Gammon, 2021a). Soft masculinity icons attract backlash from East and Southeast Asian countries because their effeminate or androgynous traits transgress traditional binary gender ideals in these countries (Ainslie, Lipura, & Lim, 2017; Chen, 2016; Kim, Song, & Jang, 2014). Because of such varying reactions, soft masculinities have generated considerable scholarly discussion and present a fascinating research subject.

Situated within the growing literature addressing reception of this Pan-East Asian phenomenon, this article focuses on the narratives of three Vietnamese informants, a man and two women, who shifted from liking to disliking melodramatic romanticism and soft masculinities in Korean television dramas (K-dramas). The focus on Vietnam as a receiving country is worthwhile because K-drama and Korean popular music (K-pop) have enjoyed persistent popularity there for over two decades, sparking a general interest in anything Korean and charges of cultural imperialism from local press (Gammon, 2021a). The spread of the Korean Wave (the popularisation of Korean pop culture worldwide, also known as Hallyu) in Vietnam has overlapped changes in local gender politics, including Western-influenced feminism and vibrant lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and others (LGBTQ+) activism. While Korean soft masculinities received mixed reactions rather than pure approval (Gammon, 2021a), their impact is visible: soft masculinity icons such as Song Joong Ki and BTS boyband members have many Vietnamese fans, and Vietnamese stars such as Sơn Tùng M-TP and Isaac have also adopted soft masculinity traits. Research has linked local fans’ consumption of K-pop and K-drama to their acceptance of male entertainers’ androgyny (Gammon, 2021a; Hoang, 2020).

My article contributes to the scholarship addressing unfavourable reception of Pan-East Asian soft masculinities through its focus on the under-researched resistance in Vietnam, but departs from the prioritisation of collective sentiments seen in previous studies (Song, 2021; Yu & Sui, 2022). By exploring case studies, it reveals personal responses to soft masculinities and to what I term ‘Korean pop romanticism,’ marked by K-dramas’ idealised romances involving handsome male protagonists who show whole-hearted devotion to their love interests. Most Hallyu studies exploring audiences’ viewing via psychological lens still treat viewers’ emotions such as pleasure and sadness as collective, despite the possibility that individuals’ experience of those emotions may differ remarkably. On the one hand, soft masculinities in K-dramas perpetuate patriarchy by portraying privileged heterosexual men who dominate women financially and professionally,¹ exemplifying ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell, 2005/1995). On the other hand, they subvert traditional visions by demonstrating men’s engagement in practices traditionally associated with women such as make-up use, romantic and nurturing behaviours, cute mannerisms, and expressions of vulnerability (Jung, 2011; Khai & Wahab, 2017).

The participants featured in this article are middle-class heterosexual informants in their 30s. They all mentioned their past fascination with actor Bae Yong Joon, a soft masculinity icon, and his role as Kang Joon Sang, a handsome architect in hit drama ‘Winter Sonata’ (2002) when they were teenagers (even though the project did not focus on any particular actor or drama). Later in life, however, their worldviews changed; they became resistant towards soft masculinities, regarding these constructions as inauthentic, immature, unpragmatic, and inappropriately feminine. Such changes, I argue, are intimately linked to their lived experiences, including disillusionment with life and romance, and the augmentation of domestic responsibility. Practical demands of everyday life and gender roles seemed to cause them to further identify with hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 2005), which emphasises heterosexual men’s performance of strength and problem-solving skills and denounces men’s display of weakness and emotions. This study follows an innovative audience research method that examines viewers’ narratives of their personal lives and forges connections between lived and viewing experiences, which will be explained in a subsequent section.

The article responds to the call for studies of non-fans, who receive much less attention in audience research due to the inconveniences associated with recruiting non-fans and eliciting data from them (Gray, 2003; Wilson, 2011). Hallyu studies, in particular, are abundant but dominated by research on fans rather than non-fan or anti-fans (except e.g. Ainslie et al., 2017; Chen, 2016; Kim et al., 2014; Wilson, 2011). Echoing Wilson (2011), who studies Chinese non-fans’ lukewarm reception of K-dramas, I argue that research on non-fans and anti-fans is worthwhile when discourses concerned with a genre have extended beyond its content, as with Hallyu products. In Vietnam, many people may not watch K-dramas but are familiar with soft masculinities through friends or family members who do watch. Studying non- fans’ reception helps form a holistic picture of how a genre is socially received. To discuss the informants’ resistance to soft masculinities, the article utilises R. W. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity (the dominant heterosexual manhood) and Judith Butler’s theories of gender performativity (the everyday ‘doing’ of gender) and gender anxiety (defensive feelings towards unconventional gender practices). The following section explains the local context of gender relations.

Vietnamese hegemonic masculinity, changing gender politics, and reception of romantic K-dramas and Korean soft masculinities in Vietnam

As in Chinese and Korean culture (Y. Kim & Kim, 2019; Xu, Huang, Tang, & Kaufman, 2022), Confucianism has historically exerted a strong hold on Vietnamese culture. Under the influence of Confucianism, Vietnamese society traditionally upholds patriarchal views of gender roles. Men are expected to extend the family line and be trụ cột gia đình (financial backbone) (Soucy, 1999; Rydstrøm & Drummond, 2004). They are supposed to act as breadwinners and decision-makers while demonstrating self-determination and leadership (Tran, 2004). Women are, on the other hand, expected to serve as the primary caregiver (Luong, 2003) and ‘keeper of morality’ (Nguyen & Harris, 2009). Correspondingly, business and affairs external to the household are traditionally seen as masculine spaces, while the home remains primarily women’s province (Werner, 2009). Men’s external activities enjoy greater prestige than women’s domestic service (Soucy, 2001). Like femininity, masculinity is linked to heterosexuality by default, as all men are expected to marry and have children (Horton & Rydstrom, 2011; La, 2012). Overall, Vietnamese hegemonic masculinity abides by principles of hegemonic masculinity developed by Connell (2005/1995), which highlight a dominant heterosexual manhood subjugating other forms of masculinities and femininities. While hegemonic masculinity is not a fixed character type but one that evolves over time with social change, it is historically linked to heterosexual men’s breadwinning and leadership roles and thus reinforces the legitimacy of patriarchy (Connell, 2005).

Nowadays, while tradition holds sway, factors such as communism, modernisation and globalisation have joined to shape gender relations (Nguyen, 2018; Schuler et al., 2006). The 1986 Đổi Mới (Renovation) policy saw Vietnam’s transition from a command economy to integration into global networks. Since the 1990s, Vietnam has enjoyed rapid economic growth, the rise of a consumer class (Minh TN Nguyen, 2015; World Bank, 2018), and flows of Western cultural products, which introduce the ideas of sexual freedom and alternative romantic practices such as online dating and dating foreigners (Nguyen, 2007; Martin, 2017). Such exposure to global media and the Communist party’s endorsement of gender equality in political and social participation have changed gender views and improved the status of women (Martin, 2017; Nguyen, 2007), while the government’s relaxed control of gender discourses has also allowed the vibrancy of LGBTQ+ movement since the 2010s.

Following the early 2000s, romantic K-dramas, alongside other genres such as K-pop and Korean cinema, have helped Hallyu establish its presence in Vietnam. Due to their depiction of relatable urban life struggles and rich emotions, romantic K-dramas appeal to local audiences’ interest in self-explorations and modern romanticism (Gammon, 2022a, 2022b). Yet, many frown upon this escapist genre because of its sentimental storytelling and melodramatic portrayal of characters’ devotion to romantic love (Gammon, 2021a). This disapproval may be linked to a historical denouncement of individualistic romantic love and melancholic emotions as self-indulgent, weakening, and thus harmful (Taylor, 2000) in the Vietnamese collectivist society, which traditionally celebrates romance as the steppingstone towards family building to fulfil reproductive and filial duties and ultimately nation building rather than self-enrichment and sexual pleasures (Phinney, 2008).

To Vietnamese audiences, soft masculinities in K-dramas are both familiar and foreign. These constructions have been traced back to images of the male scholar in Chinese Confucian ideology (Jung, 2011), characterised by a fragile/tender appearance, good manners, and strong will (Louie, 2002). Such constructions are known as seonbi (scholar) masculinity in Korea and hình tượng nho sinh (Confucian pupil) in Vietnam. On the one hand, soft masculinities reinforce the prevailing ideal of heterosexual men as breadwinners and leaders through attractive protagonists who embody wealth, privilege, and talent. On the other hand, while representing women’s ‘dream men,’ they belong to a fantasy world detached from reality (Maliangkay & Song, 2015) and thus may not be taken seriously. Furthermore, K-drama male characters’ delicate appearance and narcissistic attention to looks run counter to the Vietnamese traditional gender perspectives, which attribute the performance of beauty to women rather than men (in Vietnam, women are often called phái đẹp, or the beautiful sex while men are called phái mạnh, the strong sex). Those with traditional gender views see men fussing about their appearance as unmanly (La, 2012, p. 95) and may associate them with stigmatised homosexuality (Horton, 2014). K-drama male characters’ wholehearted devotion to their lover may also lead to them being perceived as feminine and weak in a culture that accentuates men’s strength and emotional restraint (Soucy, 1999; Nghe et al., 2003; Vu, 2021). In the next section, I introduce Judith Butler’s theories that shape my analysis.

Norms, gender performativity, gender anxiety, and boundaries

Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theorisation of power among others, Butler stresses the role of power in the construction of gender and gender performativity – the gendered habits and skills which individuals embody and demonstrate in everyday life (Butler, 2006, 2011). For Butler, ‘to become gendered is partly to become gendered for others’ (2004, p. 25), as norms play a significant role in regulating the ways people project gendered images. While there are individual ways to ‘do’ gender, ‘doing gender’ (or gender performativity, in Butler’s terms) is not just a personal matter because gender performativity is motivated by societal rewards and prohibitions. To be recognised as a ‘true man’ or a ‘real woman,’ people seek to abide by gender norms. The assumption of a coherent identity position (such as a ‘true man’) entails setting up boundaries where certain practices and positions are allowed while others, perceived as non-conforming, are not (Butler, 1997). However, precisely because gender ideals are shaped by norms, Butler argues that ‘gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity’ and is rather ‘tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts’ (Butler, 2006, p. 140). People constantly negotiate their gender views, which can change remarkably over time, as this study shows.

Adopting norms, heterosexual-identified people may develop defensive attitudes towards alternative gender possibilities, which Butler terms ‘gender anxiety’ and sees as arising in everyday life (Butler, 1997, p. 136). A woman may guard against homosexual desire, fearing to lose her femininity and not be seen as ‘a proper woman,’ and be compared to men; a man may fear homosexual desire because he does not want to be seen as ‘feminine’ and no longer ‘a proper man’ (Butler, 1997, p. 136). Butler’s argument could explain the backlash against non-conforming gender images – for example, a woman exhibiting traits linked with traditional masculinity, or a man showing traits associated with stereotypically perceived femininity. Butler’s concept of ‘gender anxiety’ echoes a common observation in masculinity studies: that hegemonic masculinity is ‘anxiety-provoking’ (Donaldson, 1993, p. 645) and men’s adherence to hegemonic masculinity involves setting up heteronormative boundaries of what can or cannot be done as a way to cope with the fear of not living up to this idealised manhood (Dean, 2013).

Through an analysis of the informants’ narratives, I argue that norms and hegemonic masculinity influenced their construction and negotiation of gender ideals (Butler, 1997). Their resistance towards soft masculinities demonstrates a defence against ‘gender threats’ – any construction that threatens to disrupt dyadic gender ideals and falls outside people’s boundaries of intelligible gender performances. For the informants of this study, soft masculinities seem to belong to ‘uninhabitable zones of social life’ (Butler, 2011, p. xiii) incompatible with their gender projects. Their unfavourable comments on soft masculinities can be seen as forms of gender performativity influenced by societal emphasis on local hegemonic masculinity. Before discussing the case studies, I introduce the data collection and interpretation methods below.

Methods

The data featured in this article were collected in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, in mid-2019. I conducted interviews in Vietnamese and translated excerpts myself. I use pseudonyms and do not disclose identifiable details to protect the informants’ privacy. Ethics approval for the project (application ID: 0000026887) was granted by the Vic­toria University of Wellington’s Human Ethics Committee. All participants received an Information Sheet detailing the nature of the project and provided their informed consent. The interviews followed the Free Association Narrative Interview (FANI) approach, inspired by Sigmund Freud’s ‘free association’ clinical method (Hollway & Jefferson, 2000). Extending this method to non-clinical research contexts, FANI encourages participants to tell personal stories. To allow thoughts and feelings to flow freely, I asked participants open questions, including those about their personal experiences, and parroted narrators’ phrasing in questioning. I also showed participants’ images of soft masculinities, including photos of male characters cooking, wearing make-up, or showing romantic gestures to a female character, to trigger thoughts and emotions which questioning alone cannot produce (Gammon, 2023). I traced their biographies to understand their perceptions of soft masculinities. This psychosocial interdisciplinary approach investigates how ‘subjective experience is interwoven with social life’ (The Association for Psychosocial Studies, n.d.) and combines elements of sociology, cultural studies, psychology, and psychoanalysis. Due to their focus on individual experiences, many psychosocial studies delve into a few case studies and consider biographical details rather than a sample without biographical context (Gadd & Jefferson, 2007; Gammon, 2022a, 2022b; Harris, 2020; Hollway & Jefferson, 2000; Roseneil & Budgeon, 2004; Whitehouse-Hart, 2014).

My choice of this case study approach deviates from traditional audience research’s tendency to homogenise as they isolate viewing experiences from the context of individuals’ lived experiences and treat those as social rather than private experiences. In an era where audiences have become fragmented and viewing experiences increasingly individualised following the proliferation of media content, case-study audience research such as those by Johanssen (2018) and Whitehouse-Hart (2014) has gained traction. While its apparent disadvantage is the lack of representativeness, researchers can still draw larger sociological meanings from the patterns of narratives shared among interviewees, as how this study reveals the influence of norms on media reception and partly explains the broader backlash against soft masculinities.

Tài, Hà and Vy, each of whom I met twice (each time for two hours), share a lot in common in terms of lived and viewing experiences. As highly educated, middle-class, heterosexual adults in their early 30s, they bear considerable familial obligations, which reinforce their identification with heterosexual ideals. The three used to be fans of the romantic drama Winter Sonata (2002), an epitome of Hallyu in Asia (Jung, 2011), and its male lead Bae Yong Joon. Over time, their fandom subsided until they stopped watching K-dramas or began watching them differently. Although they acknowledged that Winter Sonata was linked to their younger selves, its sentimental content had lost relevance to their present ideal of romance and masculinity. I met these participants by chance; each volunteered to take part due to their knowledge of the Korean culture rather than an interest in soft masculinities. The following section covers their stories one after another, which are subsequently followed by a discussion comparing their narratives.

The case studies

Tài: “I don’t want to be near [flamboyant men]”

When we met, Tài was 32 years old and living with his family in a neighbourhood surrounded by relatives. As a language teacher, he has achieved middle-class status but grew up in a working-class home. As a teenager, Tài enjoyed romantic K-dramas and idolised Bae Yong Joon, whom he saw as an icon of male beauty. This interest in Korean pop culture influenced his decision to learn Korean. However, by the time of the interviews, Tài had not watched an entire K- drama for about a decade and only seen extracts of some hit dramas. He manifested unease as he answered questions about soft masculinities. In response to photos of carefully groomed male entertainers, Tài said those men were too ‘performative/decorative’ (màu mè) and too ‘feminine.’ Highlighting those images’ abnormality, Tài referred to Korean men he had met: ‘Only entertainers look like that, ordinary Koreans are not so groomed.’ He placed limits on grooming: ‘You can dye your hair, you can use hair wax, but don’t be too colourful. If I meet a man who has cologne all over or looks too glossy, I’d cringe and not want to be near them.’ Tài’s reaction reflects ‘gender anxiety’ that makes individuals become defensive towards abject bodies (in this case, effeminate men) (Butler, 1997, p. 136).

Tài stressed his preference for industrious masculinity that is not hyper-performative: ‘I once found people with smooth and white skin beautiful, but now I find them feeble-looking (ẻo lả²); a healthy person should be active, tender looks wouldn’t fit a modern environment.’ Stating that maintaining well-crafted images like Korean entertainers was ‘too time- consuming,’ he pointed to their ‘aesthetic labour’ (Elfving-Hwang, 2020). However, because aesthetic labour is part of entertainers’ work, he recognised that those images are acceptable within the entertainment industry: ‘I think it [flamboyant looks] only fits the entertainment world; only artists dress like that.’ For Tài, an ‘ordinary’ person looking so invested is unacceptable because their looks would not fit ordinary life.

Tài framed his past engagement with K-dramas as part of a trend pervading Vietnamese youth culture in the 2000s and stressed that he enjoyed them passively then, mitigating his agency. He revealed past feelings towards K-dramas only to disavow them: ‘I think the male lead [in Winter Sonata] is quick to cry [for love], sometimes I found it moving, even wanted to cry along, but now I ask myself how I could possibly feel that way.’ He explained this changed attitude to his study of marketing, which exposes media manipulation: ‘They build up climaxes and compel you to wait [for the next episode].’ It is, however, not only the commercialisation of K-dramas that made Tài change. He revealed deeper reasons, including his disillusionment with romance and fundamental life change after his father’s death, shown in the following dialogue:³

Tài: At university I liked someone terribly. Years later, I calmed down and changed. I think oh, what a fool, how could you like [her] so much. Because I’m the realistic type. I used to face incidents in life, changes, so now I think … those things are nothing … And Koreans, they’re very pragmatic. If a relationship doesn’t benefit them, they’ll break up, and it’s normal. I think it [complete romantic devotion] only exists in dramas.

The Author: You mentioned incidents that made you change. Can you share a little more?

Tài: First, when I broke up with [my] ex-girlfriend. Second … after a family member [his father] passed away for example. Then I was depressed, stressed, for example … or because I quit my job. When I quit my job, I realised that having a stable job, stability is very important. Women are pragmatic now. They may date but don’t want to marry someone aimless, without stability. Two people might date, but when they graduate from uni, the woman might marry someone else better off. I saw a friend in such a situation. I can’t say she’s a bad woman.

Tài’s views reflect a social reality: many Vietnamese women prioritise men’s money-marking ability over other qualities in judging their partnership potential (Nguyen, 2015). He was not critical of female pragmatism and adapted to fit it. He did not want to be seen as a financially unstable and aimless man and not ‘husband material.’ He reflected on his past self with reproach (‘what a fool’) and saw his previous emotional investment in love as weakness. Furthermore, following his father’s death, Tài became the head of the household. He stressed his duty as the only son to take care of his family, a common expectation due to a societal emphasis on filial obligation and men’s role as the financial backbone (Rydstrøm & Drummond, 2004). He probably felt this pressure acutely by living near relatives, under their constant gaze. With such pressure, indulging in romantic diversions may harm his present sense of self as a responsible son and head of the household. Tài’s attempts to show an awareness of K-dramas’ strategies of appealing to viewers reveal himself as a ‘defended’ psychosocial subject (Hollway & Jefferson, 2000) – a knowing viewer who cannot be emotionally manipulated.

Hà: “I’m only into manly men”

Hà, 34 years old, grew up in a middle-class family. She has a master’s degree in business administration and has worked for the government for ten years. She is married and has three children. Hà’s husband is the primary breadwinner, while Hà spends more time attending to the kids. Holding essentialist gender views, Hà sees men and women as inherently different, from their brain structure to the way they cook and hang laundry. According to Hà, most women are emotional, cannot think logically like men, and therefore cannot lead as well; they are, however, inherently better at housework. Such views reflect how many Vietnamese internalise role assignments that subjugate women within the domestic sphere (La, 2012; Nguyen, 2012).

According to Hà, her father hit her often when she was little, and his abusive behaviour resulted in her forming a deep fear of men, which only gradually dissolved after harmonious relationships with ex-boyfriends and later her husband. Hà said she would not feel ‘safe’ dating someone too handsome, stating her husband looks ‘fine,’ but her ex-boyfriends were ‘old’ and ‘ugly.’ She accentuated that she did not like men with feminine features and preferred men who look ‘thorny’ (gai góc) and ‘rugged’ (gân guốc). These terms conjure up traditional masculine characteristics like physical strength and experience. This description of rough masculinity contrasts with soft masculinities, which Vy, the next informant, described through antonyms like ‘smooth’ (nhẵn thín) and ‘glossy’ (bóng lộn) (further analysis in the next section). These two opposed sets of terms connote not only appearance but also differing degrees of life experience.

As a teenager, Hà saw Bae Yong Joon as the epitome of male beauty. She explained that she liked Winter Sonata for its portrayal of a pure first love, but now found it ‘too sentimental.’ She contrasted her previous fandom with current attitude towards K-dramas and soft masculinities, describing K-drama romanticism as ‘overdone’ and ‘childish.’ She linked her earlier fascination with immaturity and a lack of romantic experience: ‘Now I don’t like this kind of romanticism, it’s unrealistic. It’s for teens.’ Like Tài, Hà attributed her past consumption of sentimental dramas to trends, stressing that it was a passive practice.

Unlike Tài and Vy, Hà still watched K-dramas. She stressed that she did not watch them for the romance but to learn about Korean culture and appreciate Korean music and fashion. Her attitude echoes Seiter’s (1990) observation of middle-class audiences’ tendency to frame their experience of viewing soap operas as a learning process, intellectually distancing themselves from a lowbrow genre. While Hà appreciated manliness shown by the character K2, a bodyguard, in The K2 (2016) as he is protective and caring towards his girlfriend, she stressed that she liked K2 for his personality, not looks. She explained that Ji Chang Wook, the actor playing K2 and a soft masculinity icon,⁴ looks boyish and too beautiful. ‘His face does not convey ruggedness and experience,’ she elaborated. Nevertheless, she likes Ji’s muscular body as it shows masculine strength.

As she grew older, Hà’s idealised masculinity shifted to pragmatic traits. She confided, ‘I don’t need someone to be crazy about me, being crazy in love can blind a man and make him weak. I don’t need that, I need a strong man who can protect and shelter me.’ This view illustrates her high regard for men’s rationality and protectiveness, traits that she perceived as masculine, over emotionality, which she saw as feminine. With an overdetermined desire for manliness, Hà dismissed soft masculinities. She disliked the photo of a man leaning his head on a woman’s shoulder that I showed, reasoning: ‘men should act as the pillars, I prefer leaning on a man.’ She expressed aversion to photos of meticulously dressed actors with make-up on, describing them as ‘too well-groomed,’ ‘too feminine,’ although she acknowledged their beautiful faces. In response to photos of men cooking, a frequent scene in K-dramas, Hà approved of one in which she found that the man looks manly while rejecting the ‘more feminine’ others and stated that she liked to see a man ‘looking rugged and strong while doing a feminine task.’ She implied that men in the kitchen, a traditionally feminine space, must look manly to disavow association with femininity.

Vy: “They’re too beautiful”

Vy, then 30 years old, is a housewife with three daughters. She became interested in Korean culture as a teenager and went to Seoul to study Korean in her early 20s. Vy’s husband, like Hà’s, demonstrates traits of Vietnamese hegemonic masculinity: a breadwinner in a technical job who financially supports his wife, children, and parents, and is nearly ten years older than her. Vy no longer watched K-dramas, explaining that she became too busy taking care of her kids. She acknowledged that romantic, handsome characters like Kang Joon Sang in Winter Sonata are regarded as ideal lovers by young women, including her younger self. However, she now showed a disidentification from Korean pop romanticism and soft masculinities. This eventual disidentification is linked to her experience of growing up and disenchantment with life. Asked about ideal men, Vy refuted the idea: ‘there’s no such person.’ The very idea of ideals seemed to trigger defensiveness in her. Although Vy mentioned desirable traits in men such as responsibility, consideration, knowledge, and talent, she repeatedly stressed that no man is perfect.

When in Korea, Vy could observe Korean men more closely. Drawing a distinction between Vietnamese male students and Korean counterparts, Vy stressed a much higher degree of performativity (mức độ đối phó) in the latter. The verb she used, đối phó, traditionally means to deal with something, but it has gained connotations of performing in front of certain people, implying inauthenticity. Vy underscored social pressure on Korean male students to maintain a good public image, despite their ‘true’ nature: ‘They pay great attention to details to look good in front of others, but behind that … terrible. They smoke, drink, and spit.’ The young Vy, who came to Korea hoping to find a man like in a K-drama was disappointed. Korean men’s conspicuous performativity made Vietnamese men more genuine in her eyes despite their own shortcomings. Vy also discerned how Koreans look down on Vietnamese women because rural women were marketed as brides to Korean men (Kim, 2012). Like Tài, Vy distinguished between Korean fantasy and real life: ‘Life in Korea is materialistic, almost the opposite of life on screen. The romanticism [in dramas] is superficial.’

While acknowledging that the romance in Winter Sonata once absorbed her, Vy stressed such emotions had passed. She remarked that men’s romantic practices in dramas are ‘overdone/ridiculous’ (lố) and that no man in real life acted like the male characters, who would leave work to chase after a woman. Vy said she preferred her husband’s small gestures, such as having her watch repaired and doing housework, and appreciated his responsibility during a period of separation, demonstrated by his steady transference of child support money. Vy did not show overt disapproval of soft masculinities like Tài and Hà, but a disidentification that accompanies an acknowledgement that Korean actors are ‘too beautiful.’ She asserted that Korean actors’ beauty may suit others but emphasised her preference for practical traits. Vy described Korean entertainers as ‘very smooth’ (nhẵn thín) and ‘glossy’ (bóng lộn), pointing to their smooth skin and clean-shaven faces, the outcomes of excessive attention to looks and distance from physical labour. She compared this masculinity to the ‘dust-covered’ (bụi bặm), ‘rugged’ (gai góc) looks projected by heroes in Western pop culture, which exemplify ideal masculinity. ‘Smooth’ evokes the images of youth and innocence, while ‘dust-covered’ and ‘rugged’ conjure up physical labour, experience, and struggles. The association with labour and experience projects traditional masculinity, marked by physical strength, autonomy, maturity, and reliability. These terms also suggest an element of authenticity: a man is just the way he is, with no special grooming.

Vy said she idolised Bae Yong Joon and saw him as ‘manly’ when she was a teenager and had yet to meet many men, but now found him feeble-looking. She implied that a handsome, romantic man like Bae’s character in Winter Sonata is an attractive date but would not make a good husband. She further explained:

For me now, masculinity is not about being glossy (bóng bẩy), smooth (mịn màng) like actors these days. They’re terribly polished, terribly smooth. They’re too neatly combed (chải chuốt quá), too beautiful. They pay so much attention to their images. Masculinity for me now is in behaviour, in the ways one treats others. For example, a manly man can’t flinch from a barking dog or ignore a child who trips.

Here Vy brought up socially desired traits of masculinity: strength and protectiveness to weaker subjects. Her comparison also evokes a typical dichotomy between looks and character: looks are seen as deceptive while character is reflective of an authentic self.

Discussion and concluding remarks

The rule of normalcy and gender boundaries

As the informants’ narratives show, significant life events led to substantial changes in their views of life and gender, including an engagement with hegemonic masculinity. For Tài, those events include becoming an adult with greater familial responsibility following the loss of his father and a breakup. For Hà and Vy, experiences of growing up, getting married and mothering made them more pragmatic. Those experiences caused them to change, further internalise traditional Vietnamese gender norms, and distance themselves from soft masculinities. Their resistance to soft masculinities is consistent with their self-presentation as responsible, busy middle-class adults not manipulated by fantasy. It comes with a distaste for Korean pop romanticism, which emphasises men’s display of emotions and vulnerabilities.

While Tài internalised criteria of hegemonic masculinity because of his role as an ‘only son’ and the man of the household, Hà and Vy looked for ‘husband material,’ a man who can take care of and protect their family. Their narratives all demonstrate the role of the family in shaping the Vietnamese’s gender views. They preferred pragmatic masculinities, manifested in action-oriented and solution-based traits, to soft masculinities. None cited looks or style first in their view of ideal masculinity. In Butlerian terms (2004, p. 206), adhering to ‘coercive criteria’ of gender norms reassures them of their positions as ‘real man,’ or ‘true woman’ (who desires the ‘right’ kind of men). Alternative constructions, therefore, become ‘threats’ that may disrupt traditional dyadic gender ideals. Echoing Butler’s notion of gender anxiety, Yumiko Iida illuminates this defensiveness:

Perhaps, those who strongly react against unconventional gender practices have their own good reason to be fearful of the dissidents, for their gender identities are immediately dependent upon the undisrupted operation of phallocentric discourse. This dependency, moreover, could be more than just psychological, but may also involve total personal well-being, for the gender identification via the symbolic penetrates the formation of sexuality and thus personhood (Iida, 2005, p. 69).

During their teenage years, as the participants shared, they had little romantic experience, limited social connections, and had not formed firm views of what counts as ‘normal,’ ‘proper’ gendered behaviours. Additionally, idolising soft masculinities, a novel construction, was trendy among youth during the participants’ adolescence, normalising young people’s desires for such images. As they matured and took more traditional gender roles, they became more invested in hegemonic gender ideals and began questioning soft masculinities. By then, soft masculinities became less acceptable among adults due to their effeminate traits and perceived opposition to pragmatic, normative traits (even though characters exemplifying soft masculinity in K-dramas tend to be successful and wealthy). Their gender views changed as their living circumstances and the norms that affect their lives changed. Norms govern ideas of gendered possibilities, the who and what of gender behaviours, namely whom to date and marry, whom to identify with, whom to desire, which behaviours can be enacted, and which cannot.

A prominent feature of the participants’ descriptions of soft masculinities is their use of such words as excessive[ly] (quá mức), overdone (quá), terribly/very (rất) to describe non-normative grooming and romantic practices. At times uttered in an emphatic tone, those words revealed the speakers’ unease with the ways soft masculinities transgress normalcy. Their emphasis on such transgressions indicates that K-dramas male characters’ conspicuously feminised performances exceeded the terrain they had demarcated for ordinary social life. The rule of normalcy governs terrains where hyper-performed acts are accepted. Being “too” romantic could be seen as unusual and inauthentic. As the informants observe that men in real life (whether in Vietnam or Korea) are not as passionate in love as K-drama male leads, they dismiss a man who would sacrifice everything for a woman like in a drama as ‘unrealistic’ or ‘ridiculous.’ A man being ‘too romantic’ is seen as less masculine, and unpragmatic, and thus problematic because men are socially assumed to be less emotionally expressive (than women) and focus more on work and business. The repetitive assertions of Tài and Vy that ‘even Koreans in real life don’t dress that way’ and ‘no man in real life acts like K-drama male characters’ show the influence of norms. The prerequisite for acceptability towards a behaviour is that many people have done so. To be appropriately masculine is to fit within the zone of gender intelligibility. Spilling over the edge of intelligibility risks negative judgments. Each person demarcated individual boundaries for performances of masculinity: men can be sweet in love, but not so much that his acts are suspected as inauthentic ‘performances’; men can pay attention to looks, but not ‘too much.’ The informants’ narratives show how the assumption of a coherent identity position requires continuous practices of ‘producing, excluding, and repudiating a domain of abjected specters that threaten the arbitrarily closed domain of subject positions’ (Butler, 1997, p. 149).

The participant’s middle-class status is manifested in how they keep a distance from romantic K-dramas. All demonstrated a tendency to critically discuss these dramas and Korean culture and present themselves as knowing viewers. Both Tài and Vy, who studied Korean and have been to Korea, compared K-drama male characters to the men they observed in Korean society. Hà stressed her consumption of K-dramas was to learn about Korean culture rather than for romantic indulgence, framing her experience as intellectually inclined rather than emotionally motivated – an inclination typically observed in middle-class television audiences (Seiter, 1990; Skeggs, Thumim, & Wood, 2008)

Concluding remarks

The views of Tài, Hà, and Vy may not be representative of the wider adverse public response, but help explain some of the backlash demonstrated by local adults. While their perceptions of soft masculinities leaned towards the negative, they did not view soft masculinities as a harmful trend threatening social order as similar studies conducted in China such as Song (2021) and Yu and Sui (2022) suggest; they presented their views as personal preferences. The reason, I suspect, might be because of the Vietnamese government’s more flexible attitude towards alternative gender constructions, compared to that of the Chinese government, who condemned soft masculinities as harmful and even banned entertainers with soft masculinity traits. In one-party communist countries, governments play important roles in shaping public opinion and reproducing norms because they control local media production. As of 2023, the Vietnamese government has not commented on soft masculinities and is more open-minded towards the LGBTQ+ movement.⁵

The informants’ shift illustrates life cycle’s substantial role in the development of gender ideals. Viewers may become more conservative and less impressionable as they grow up and adapt to new living conditions. This switch towards conservatism is not uncommon among Vietnamese adults: research such as Nguyen (2018) shows how men changed behaviours to better fulfil their expected role as family financial backbones after marriage.

By focusing on the informants’ experience and changing views, I do not mean to generalise that maturity and experience or even a middle-class status are associated with diminished engagement with soft masculinities and romantic dramas. Within my larger project, some other middle-class participants in their 30s still hold favourable views of soft masculinities (Gammon, 2021a, 2022a). Their positive reception is due to not only their general acceptance of feminine traits in soft masculinity icons, but also the ways these icons still demonstrate hegemonic masculinity through the display of wealth, privileges, and protective attitudes towards women. Audience members have different ways to negotiate gender ideals to justify what they consume. Tài, Hà, and Vy seemed to overlook those traditional traits that can be found in soft masculinities because of their aversion towards effeminate traits in men and refusal to be manipulated by a mass-manufactured genre.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Victoria University of Wellington: [grant number 221581].

Notes on contributors

Thi Gammon

Thi Gammon holds a PhD in Media Studies and recently worked as a lecturer in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London. Her research has been published in the Journal of Psychosocial Studies, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Asian Studies Review, and Sexuality & Culture. Gammon’s work focuses on contemporary Vietnamese society and culture, especially the issues regarding gender, sexual relations, and identity in response to global media.

Notes

1 According to Lee and Park’s (2015) analysis of 100 popular K-dramas broadcast between 2003 and 2012, most feature lead male characters as wealthier and better educated than female counterparts. Some dramas shown in the late 2010s such as Crash Landing on You (2019) or It’s Okay to Not Be Okay (2020), however, have shifted this power dynamic to a more even footing.

2 Ẻo lả suggests weakness and delicacy.

3 Tài’s narrative shows a tendency to avoid discussing emotional events in detail, a sign of his unwillingness to engage with his past, which involves distressing events. I offer thorough interpretations of this emotional avoidance in Gammon (2021b).

4 In K-dramas, it is not uncommon for soft masculinity icons to play traditionally masculine roles such as bodyguards or military officers such as Ji Chang Wook and Song Joong Ki in K2 (2016) and Descendants of the Sun (2016) respectively. These roles tend to hybridise aspects of Korean militarised masculinity through the display of a muscular body and military skills and the image of a romantic and sensitive gentleman.

5 Due to the lack of space, I regret not to discuss this issue in depth but want to highlight a few progressive events, such as the government’s legalisation of sex reassignment operations in 2014 and the Health Ministry’s 2022 official letter to health care services requesting equal treatment towards LGBTQ+ people and asking these services not to treat homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality as medical conditions needing treatment (Thư Viện Pháp Luật, n.d.).