In K-pop history, we have never seen any competition between a boygroup and a girlgroup like BTS vs. BLACKPINK. This is a chance to make this industry an equitable game.
During K-pop history, we have seen many wars between a lot of famous boy groups such as g.o.d, H.O.T or BIGBANG, Super Junior, and DBSK. On the other hand is the battle of famous girl groups like Girls’ Generation, T-ara, 2NE1. However, this is the first time we can see a war between 2 groups of different gender: BTS vs. BLACKPINK.
Recently, BTS’s “Boy With Luv” has defeated BLACKPINK’s record of the most-viewed video in the first 24 hours with 78M views. After a week of standing at 1st place, BLACKPINK has to face the fact that they have lost to 7 boys who come from Big Hit.
Below are some reasons why K-pop should have “non-gender” battles.
1. Creating a fair rivalry between groups:
Not paying too much attention to their rival’s gender will help the company come up with smarter strategies that can break the concept stereotypes for each comeback. For example, if a boy group pays too much attention to maintain only one concept during their career, the audience will be bored.
TWICE are in their golden age but they still sometimes get bad feedbacks from netizens about their concepts being same. This could be seen as a chance for TWIC so they can make their concept different from others like BLACK PINK, Red Velvet,…
Besides, if a group concentrates more on their music quality, their fandom will not get into trouble on the internet regarding the concept or choreography copy-cat problems, and they will focus on streaming their idol’s music instead.
2. No more discrimination between girl group and boy group:
We all could see that JYP has lots of K-pop famous girl group like Twice, Wonder Girls… But boy groups such as 2AM, 2PM then or even GOT7 now do not receive good feedback in Korea. Even SM is neglecting Girls’ Generation and paying more attention to EXO and NCT 127.
On the contrary, YG shows their injustice when concentrating too much on BLACK PINK. While iKON, WINNER always need to produce their own song BLACKPINK has Teddy – a famous producer to produce their songs.
Therefore, if entertainment companies look at BLACKPINK and BTS, they will understand what they need to do with the groups that have the talent and personality which are fully qualified to be famous.
3. To build a better K-pop community
To protect the rights of their idols, many fans are willing to use words that are disparaging to the gender and personality of the rival group. During the wars between BTS’s and BLACKPINK’s fandoms, both are more or less restricting their sexual disparities and insults towards each other’s idols.
There are even compliments between two fandoms for their efforts, as well as for their idols. When the idols’ rivals are both girl group and boy group, fans will be more careful when choosing their words because the gender-related insults will cause bad images for their fandom. Especially during times when movements like #metoo or #debttoo are affecting society.
Instead, fandom will focus on views, on the power of social networks with hashtags to support idols’ public image, creating fair and healthy competition.
In the future, those who love K-pop are heading towards more “non-gender” battles such as BLACKPINK and BTS, which will help K-pop reach the world with a friendly image and there is no provocation or hostility.
