New Identity

*watch video :46 sec - 1:15 sec*

TGS Sketch Comedy Show on TV Series 30 Rock

Scene 1:
This is Amelia Earhart, I'm almost across the Pacific. Oh no,
my period! "

Scene 2: (Hillary Clinton) "I will now take questions. Oh no, my period!
Let's nuke England!"

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TGS Creator Liz Lemon comments on the scenes:
"That is an ironic re-appropriation. (sigh) I don't know anymore. This started as a show for women starring women. At the very least we should be elevating the way women are perceived in society and --ohh! my period! You're all fired!"

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In Girl Wide Web 2.0 , the diasporic Korean girls we read about use Cy-World to re-appropriate the Korean culture's patriarchal obsession with infantilizing women. One girl explains a popular hand gesture, u-mu-na, she has posed in photographs as putting "both hands on the chin and at the same time you must say "um-ma-na." This in its original ethnic meaning references the "cuteness" expected of the dominant contemporary Korean culture and femininity. Do the girls on Cy-World conform to these visual representations and thus reinforce ethnic stereotypes of Asian women ? Or are they just hip to the jive? As Liz Lemon attests, this can be a murky line.

The researcher in the essay tends to believe it is a bit of both. Ethnographic researcher Michelle S. Bae says that their, "playful accommodation (of this popular gesture) does not mean naively immersing herself in an image of cuteness informed by popular Korean trends. On the contrary, it is rather a conscious exploration of female femininity" (98). This negotiating process in turn reveals an ambiguous mode of conformity and resistance. In other words, the diasporic Korean girls interviewed are posing in their photographs perhaps to mock the girls seen above...sort of.

The essay further explains that the gestures are made to intentionally make the face smaller - a Korean cultural ideal of femininity. Is the Korean love for small faces related to Western domination of the world and the exporting of Western images of beauty and culture? The response from the girls verifies that is the reality. There is a blending of cultures at work in the poses.

Let's take first into consideration the already prevalent patriarchal culture in Korea in which the father and eldest male or female in the household must be both obeyed and revered by everyone. This creates a hierarchy where males are at the top and all women (except in cases where the eldest is a woman) are essentially submissive. A male earns respect because of his sex and domination of a woman who will become his wife, whereas a woman will only earn respect when she is the oldest broad around. Combine this submissiveness with the body-image obsessed cultural influence of America, and you get the Korean pop culture posing.