Park Geun-hye & Fashion: A Late-comer to the Race to Ascribe Stereotypes to the President

This is our third installment in a sadly growing series of critiques of mainstream Korean media that can't seem to find something relevant and newsworthy to report on. Joining the Korea Times and Joongang Ilbo this week, late-comer Choson Ilbo enters into the media over-emphasis on Park’s clothing, read it here (or don't rot your brain): Park's Clothes Tell a Story, Say Fashion Watchers.

Hilariously (or not) the article itself acknowledges that the over-emphasis on Park’s clothing “is generating more than the usual amount of buzz, perhaps because she is Korea's first female president and old gender stereotypes die hard.” [Emphasis added] The article then goes on to describe at length Park’s wardrobe and ascribe all of the old gender stereotypes TO her Presidential performance.

Here is a nugget of garbage from the article:

"When it comes to projecting a serious, decisive image in some manly domain like the military, Park favors darker clothes. She wore an olive green coat with gold buttons to a graduation ceremony at the Korean National Police University last week, the same she wore on her inauguration day. "She seems to have chosen a green outfit to display a stable and calm image," speculated Kan Ho-sup at Hongik University." [Emphasis added] 

To rephrase: Green was the perfect choice to prevent her agitated lady parts from destabilizing and ruining the graduation ceremony! That olive green coat sets her silly, indecisive lady image aside so we can buy into her running the military... you know, because when everybody voted to elect a woman president, they hadn't fully considered that she would actually be in charge of things that are of the 'manly domain' and we need a color palette to manipulate us into forgetting.

High five, low-five, too slow... to the Choson Ilbo for acknowledging your own complicity in propagating the popularity of this gendered attention to Park’s clothing. 

So, is that why he wore so much GREEN?
The Choson Ilbo... comes off as just about as newsworthy and reliable as the Sunday Sport.

Again, did anybody care what Lee Myung Bak wore to the graduation ceremony at the Korean National Police University? Nope? Nobody?

For background, see our previous posts Park Geun-Hye & Skirts: HATE this Double Standard and Park Geun-Hye & Fashion: Still HATE this Double Standard.