Source Music Decides Not To Sell GFRIEND Body Pillows After Facing Criticism

[pearlychoco.livejournal.com]

GFRIEND’s agency has responded to the growing controversy over the sale of body pillows imprinted with life-size images of the GFRIEND members.

On December 29, Source Music revealed the official merchandise for GFRIEND’s upcoming solo concert in January. Amongst other, more conventional items, the agency announced that it would be selling large body pillows featuring photos of each of the six girl group members.

The life-size pillows, which were priced at 60,000 won (approximately $56) each, were described as being 180 centimeters (approximately 71 inches) tall and 60 centimeters (approximately 24 inches) wide.

The new merchandise quickly became controversial, with many fans voicing concerns that the pillows reminded them of Japanese “dakimakura” pillows, a type of body pillow that often bears life-size images of female anime characters. Fans expressed that the similarities to such love pillows were inappropriate and made them uncomfortable, with some accusing the agency of sexualizing the idols.

On December 30, Source Music responded to the criticism by announcing that it had decided not to sell the pillows. The agency stated, “Many people have been expressing their concerns about the pillows after they were revealed. We prepared the pillows out of a desire to offer many different kinds of merchandise to commemorate GFRIEND’s first concert, but after humbly acknowledging the fans’ worries and concerns, we have decided not to produce or sell them.”

The agency added, “In the future, we will be more careful in our preparations and exercise more caution. We ask that you continue to give GFRIEND lots of love and interest in the future. Thank you.”

GFRIEND’s first solo concert, “Season of GFRIEND,” will take place on January 6 and 7 at the Olympic Hall of Olympic Park in Seoul. Tickets for the concert sold out within three minutes of their release.

Sources: Naver (1, 2) via Soompi

Comments

[glokmusic.livejournal.com]

Isn’t a huge portion of their fan base middle aged dudes?? Gross

[pearlychoco.livejournal.com]

[sra-interesante.livejournal.com]

... according to gender ration in korean concerts that's actually twice & lovelyz fanbase



https://onehallyu.com/topic/547919-concert-attendance-ratio-for-female-idols-2017-gender-and-age/

[krissasaur]

this is interesting... i dislike most gg's and all the ones listed with 50%+ female are the ones i like.

[sra-interesante.livejournal.com]

yep! only in kpop girlgroups are created to attract male gaze & please men dominated audiences .... and those who appeal fangirls are the weird ones lol only in kpop

[senshicalico.livejournal.com]

I'd add j-pop to that tbh. I just feel like the girl groups that appeal to women more have a little bit of better survivability but not much tbh

[miwa201.livejournal.com]

this doesn't have gfriend tho? i guess we won't know until they have their concert

[storyofsomeone.livejournal.com]

they had their fanmeeting with 3,000 fans and a lot of female fans and kids, hard to find middle aged men there, I saw fanboys but middle aged men? and you could hear on the cheering too the girls, at the time I was surprised too, because I thought like people are commenting here but I changed my mind, the fanmeeting is on their CH+ on vlive.

[storyofsomeone.livejournal.com]

where you get that info? just because GFriend is an innocent girl group doesn't mean a huge portion of their fanbase is middle aged dudes. a huge portion of their fanbase is male and female in their 10s and 20s (yes they have female fans too, and are known by public of all ages but that's not their fanbase).

[msgrottesca.livejournal.com]

I would argue the male fans in their 20s are generally no less creepy than the middle aged ones lol they're all still the posting upskirt gifs and shit on the internet... pretty much all straight, male idol fans turn out to be fucking weirdos, regardless of the group.

[senshicalico.livejournal.com]

lol seriously. both creep me out for totally different reasons. The younger ones are just aggressive af and the older ones figured out how to be more insidious and manipulative.

[msgrottesca.livejournal.com]

the young ones are the ones screaming their bias's name in a terrifying voice like a gutpunched orc, the old ones are the ones going home to the shrine they built to her body pillow. That's the only difference lmao.

[senshicalico.livejournal.com]

idk I was unfortunately at an idol concert (I was there to see an older band lmao I had no idea the opening acts were considered idols) and the older ones did the most screaming. Like I feared they would stroke out or heart attack like...

[msgrottesca.livejournal.com]

Damn, I guess it's both then! In particular, I remember one video of youngish APink fans literally demon screaming that I think left a big impression me LOL. I find myself wondering why they think screaming in that type of voice is appropriate tbh, as a woman it's very intimidating to have a man scream at you in a scary voice, much less several men at once... I feel like it must be so uncomfortable for the girls.

[storyofsomeone.livejournal.com]

of course there are fans like that in all groups and ages, but on this case their core fanbase is the one against these pillows.

[glokmusic.livejournal.com]

I just heard that they were popular with uncle fans lol chill

[storyofsomeone.livejournal.com]

"and gfriend's in particular" what did I miss? what happened to be Gfriend's fanbase in particular? I'm genuinely asking.

[storyofsomeone.livejournal.com]

the spy glasses guy. that guy was creepy and seemed older than the demographic of Gfriend fanbase, but I don't remember another incident like this just that one and he got caught and blacklisted.
another reason why I'm angry at the company, this happened, they blacklisted the creep but then thought was a good idea selling body pillows that are often associated with sexual stuff and sending an encouraging message for more creeps to join :s source music is a mess,why would they want to hurt the friendly image of their group, they lost their minds this year.

[callherblondie.livejournal.com]

I get why they decided to pull this piece of merch and it was the right decision, but dang if I don't want a Eunha one.

[sra-interesante.livejournal.com]

body pillows? you fucking kidding me... stop encouraging this kind of creepy fandom culture eeww

the way kpop agencies keep sexually objectifying female idols will always creep me out

[storyofsomeone.livejournal.com]

Source Music was scared of the fandom boycott.

but they still suck for even think in selling this and for what they been doing all year.

[welljustguess.livejournal.com]

Ha. imagine the discussion behind the decision of selling this pillow

[dropthecrates.livejournal.com]

thank god, what the fuck

[oncloud999.livejournal.com]

errr bs, they totally knew what they were doing and who the target audience of these pillows are. that's pretty gross. i'm glad the fans are against this (or at least a proportion of them)

[msgrottesca.livejournal.com]

It's honestly pathetic / an insult to our intelligence that they're trying to pull the "it was a misunderstanding" card here... everyone knows who those body pillows are for and where the idea originated from LOL.

[kyungwons.livejournal.com]

can’t believe they were going to sell these in the first place. there’s really no non-creepy reason for a body pillows like this with the girls printed on them i’m glad fans spoke up about this. their management/marketing team/whatever is gross :(

[audiograms.livejournal.com]

I suppose they wanted to stop bootlegs so at least the girls profit. I am being charitable here, i know. I hope they never try a stunt like this again.

[gathyou.livejournal.com]

Ew ew ew who had this idea and who allowed it wtf
Don't make this a thing in kpop, the k-entertainement industry is already wayyyyy too creepy towards young idols TT

[pbutterlion.livejournal.com]

Lmao yikes

[msgrottesca.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of when Somi sold her school uniform for charity and some grown ass many paid thousands of dollars for it. K-media is slowly slithering into J-media territories with all the normalization of pedophilia and sexualizing young teens. The cutesy pure lolita shit is why I left J-pop for K-pop in the first place and now it's seeping in here too.

[miwa201.livejournal.com]

this has always been present in k-media tho

[msgrottesca.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely! But I do think it has become more shameless and widespread with the recent popularity of pure concepts. In an environment where literally every company is currently going out of their way to appeal to lolicons, there's really no escaping it or tuning it out anymore.

Shocking!

[putalawea.livejournal.com]

Wow, sexualizing the idols. Who would know? They just have fans for their music and they have never seen them dancing or wearing cute/sexy outfits... oh wait...

[yxerin.livejournal.com]

uh. why was this even a thing in the first place

[calzonazos.livejournal.com]

I'm just glad they listened and stopped offering those things. Not even j-idol groups sell actual bodypillows of their members (though bootleggers totally do, same with kpop groups), so this whole thing was...wild. If someone wants a pillow of a fictitious character I could kiiiinda get it, but even with that they are grody as fuck lmaoo also some of you ^ above need to stop acting as if only girlgroups have creeps following them because sadly, many boyband members are constantly stalked and groped in airports by female fans. I just want kpop companies to treat their idols with some more responsibility.

[msgrottesca.livejournal.com]

There are obviously creepy boy group fans too but the impact of an overall misogynistic culture on the marketing and treatment of girl groups can't be ignored. They're almost incomparable situations due to how misogyny plays a part (especially in a country where over 80% of women admit to being domestically abused or where date rape drugs are openly advertised on flyers in men's restrooms etc).

[mjspice.livejournal.com]

Oh good. No need to sexualize young girls any further