Colloquium in Apr. 2021
Jung, Gowoon (Professor, Department of Sociology at Kyung Hee Univ.)
This study analyzes how young women construct their feminist identity in relation to participation in the ‘corset-free movement’ in South Korea, based on its online in-depth interviews with 40 women students in their early 20s, mostly at top-tier universities in Seoul. The ‘corset-free movement’ could be defined as feminist discourse and actions led by Korean young women, which they claim resist Korean society’s rigid beauty standards particularly imposed on women.
The study finds the four types of mechanism through which the research participants form their feminist identity participating in the movement: reflexive self-making, discursive participatory self-making, scholarly self-fashioning, and social movement participatory self-making. As the consequence of participation in the movement, the study reports that the interview participants have experienced the feelings of liberation from masculine beauty standards, and that they have felt more confident about their own appearance. Through pop culture including online, feminist ideas have recently gained more popularity among the young women in South Korea, and the study points out this helps to develop the ‘corset-free movement’.
The strength of this study lies in its interpretation of the ‘corset-free movement’ as a new form of the social movement, which gives more importance to the participants’ personal identity and voluntary involvement.
♣ Please let us apologize for not uploading the photos for this virtual colloquium.
