I love Blackpink. I’m not sure my office fully understand it and I’m not sure I do either: their polished, almost militaristic brand of pop has become an obsession with remarkable speed. It’s not entirely out of the blue (I had a guilty love of Japanese pop music in my teens) but still my office find it incredibly unusual: why do I, a hirsute homosexual in London, feel such a strong passion for a South Korean girl band who sing in a language I don’t understand?
The thing is, it only seems odd because K-pop is still a new phenomenon. I love them as much as I love any great girl band: Destiny’s Child, Little Mix, Girls Aloud (the best girl band of all time – fight me). As a queer man I’ve always been drawn to the empowerment and aesthetic gaudiness of female-led pop, even more so when it’s a group of them doing choreography. That’s why I love Blackpink: they sing, they dance, they look fantastic. They’re more regimented – literally, in some senses – than my usual tastes, but I kinda love their balletic dedication to something as frivolous as pop music.
The natural next step of my love of Blackpink was to go see them live, which you'll be thrilled to know is upcoming. However, my colleagues were intrigued: wouldn’t I stand out like a sore thumb? That got me thinking: I know a lot of gay men who love Blackpink, but do I know anyone besides me who’d be at the gig? And even if some of them were there, won’t we be wildly outnumbered by teenaged girls?
This isn’t a complete anomaly to me: I once earned the ire of Ariana Grande’s younger fans on Twitter for insisting she not perform at the O2 while in the throes of PTSD and I once got hit in the face by a glitter cannon while reviewing a show in which I was the only audience member over the age of 16. But would I look like some sort of predator? Would there even be any other men? Are there, actually, many male fans?
And so I reached out to the fanbase. I reached out because I know they’re incredibly active, and because in my brief experience of interacting with them they seem lovely. I wanted to know: what’s it like being a male “Blink”?
The response was huge. I heard from hundreds of people, from teenagers to middle-aged divorcees, from Guatemala to India via metalheads in Greece, gay and straight, stans and casuals. In all I heard the same thing: online the fanbase looks, and is assumed to be, female yet hides a wealth of diversity. In person? There are a lot more dudes in the fanbase than you might think.
In fact, part of this is simply the disparity between how K-pop is perceived in South Korea and how it is perceived in the rest of the world. “In Korea most fans are of the opposite gender than the group themselves. That is, most girl groups have a majority male fanbase in Korea,” explained Muhammad, an 18-year-old fan from America.
“There are specific groups in K-pop that are dominated by men especially in concerts,” added 22-year-old Filipino Andre Sanchez. “In concerts, there is something called fan chants. You can really hear that when it is their concert it is really dominated by male fans.”
Outside of South Korea, it can be a little harder to admit that, as a man, you’re a fan of K-pop. In some countries it was actively looked down on: “My dad doesn’t support me for being a fanboy. He said that it makes me less of a man,” said 18-year-old Filipino fan Angelo. “Being a male K-pop fan in my country, Malaysia, is a bit looked-down upon, but it didn't really bother me as much as I was more focused on how I will finally get to see the girls whom I adore,” explained 17-year-old Jas. But in others, like Singapore, being a K-pop fan is seen as completely normal. “All my male friends were pretty envious and jealous over me going [to see Blackpink],” said Kev, a 15-year-old in Singapore who managed to get tickets for a concert that sold out in hours. Most of his male friends, he said, have a lot of respect for the genre.
Sometimes, fans said, it can feel like everyone assumes who you are in the community. “I’ve definitely been called sis by random strangers more times than I can count,” said 31-year-old New Yorker Joe. In part, this is because a lot of the stan community for Blackpink tends to be using alternate accounts from their main ones: these ones have Blackpink or K-pop-specific names (@jennieschicken, @kickitatlisa, @kickdownmydoor), avatars that tend to be their favourite idols, so they don't bombard their friends and followers with an avalanche of pro-Jennie or Lisa posts. This can, therefore, create an illusion of a lot of women talking, regardless of who mans them.
Sometimes the assumption is sexual rather than gendered: “I remember about ten months ago or so a girl I met assumed I was bisexual due to the fact that I had a Blackpink lanyard,” said user @HearteuRosie. Other fans said they’d experienced the same: “It almost seems like you have to prove yourself as an actual fan,” said 18-year-old American fan Anthony Rivera, who felt that both inside and outside the fandom people find it hard to think straight men can like the band.
But at concerts, everybody said, the differences of the outside world fall away. People who had attended concerts everywhere from Manila to Atlanta said that they were surprised by the amount of men, with most saying they felt like it was a 50/50 split. Even those who felt like female attendees were the majority said they didn’t feel weird about it. After all, you’re all here for one thing: to witness the girls in action and to give them the most possible support.
Niki and Sammy Albon are 27-year-old presenters who have been talking about K-pop for nearly four years between their BBC Radio 1 podcast and their YouTube videos. They've been the first to debut BTS and Blackpink songs on national UK radio and have been to their fair share of K-pop concerts. They said they are always staggered by the diversity of the crowds.
"We were at a Zico show in Shepherd's Bush when a lady in her late fifties turned to me and asked if I was attending BTS at the O2 (this was prior to their first shows in London)," they told me. "When I said I was, she informed me she was dragging her daughter along because she herself was a massive K-pop fan."
There’s also a lot of different ways to encounter male fans: fan pages, forums, Discords and group chats all exist for male fans of the band. “Its not [a groupchat] where we sexualise or objectify the girls,” explained 18-year-old Filipino fan @bilandreortega. “Believe it or not, most of us talk about how Blackpink's literally changed our lives and perspectives when it comes to women.”
This highly diverse fanbase, however, might be an anomaly among K-pop communities: people suggested other bands, such as EXO, have far smaller male fanbases, especially abroad. One part of this, some argued, might be because Blackpink has such a large audience of gay fans, which in turn might be because they have done more than many of their contemporaries to show support for the LGBTQ community both home and abroad.
“The topic of being gay/lesbian/etc is not really brought up within idols or South Korea. So being an LGBT fan it can often bring up worries if your idol would even accept you as a person,” explained Russ, a 16-year-old British Canadian. But many gay fans mentioned how band members use the rainbow flag on stage in performances and that member Rosé had spoken to a lesbian fan about her girlfriend. Moments like this, said Russ, weren’t forgotten by fans.
To some, the biggest dissonance between male and female Blinks comes down to the energy they bring to gigs: “Female fans will scream and cheer their lungs out even before the show when they usually play music videos,” explained 24-year-old American fan Malcom Morales. Many men, he said, are often less vocal at the show. “Ideas of masculinity attribute to why some male-identifying fans feel they cannot fully express their excitement,” he added.
But others who had attended concerts bucked this trend. Some male fans made great friends at gigs, some even go to gigs dressed as male counterparts to their favourite band costumes. “A younger female fan was in the seat next to me and probably thought it was hilarious to see a full-grown man and male friend waving the light sticks and screaming till their lungs give out,” said William Mendoza, a 25-year-old Asian-American fan who saw the band in LA. “I guess it did feel odd a little bit, but in a funny way.”
Mendoza said that most people probably think male Blackpink fans are just there to talk about how attractive they are. “Which I mean, yeah, it is the truth! But beyond that, I believe everyone in Blackpink is crazy talented and make music that lifts people up and empowers them.”
For me, fans all had the same advice: it might feel weird to start with, they said, but pretty soon the fact that I’ll be an older attendee, and a male attendee, will stop feeling weird once the band get going. What excites me most is the chance to go to a concert where, it seems, everyone in attendance is really focused on seeing an act and seeing them succeed. The chance to see an audience who aren’t having loud, drunken conversations about their weekend plans, who want to marinade in the moment rather than act like its an inconvenience, sounds like a welcome change to most of the London gigs I’ve been to in the past few years.
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