Frank Kogan

Well, I think one of my hypotheses here is that in Korea to dress and dance and sound like that doesn't necessarily signify as "teenybopper," and it's assumed that young and even not so young adults are part of the audience. Same would apply to "Girl's Day." A corollary hypothesis is that the U.S. is relatively rare in assuming that bubblegum is just for kids. (I guess I could call that the Trix Hypothesis.)

An alternate hypothesis is that they are understood to be going young and teenybopper in look but in K-pop that's a frequent move among idol performers and it doesn't lose you your late-teen and adult audience. This would be the Orange Caramel Hypothesis. (I still haven't quite processed Orange Caramel for being these leggy model types who incongruously dressed like they'd stepped out of a picture book for the tykes while playing trot rhythms. And then in After School they revert to behaving like Pussycat Dolls. Covering all the bases, I guess; their clothing has grown up a bit since they started.)

Here's the vid, again, YouTube having killed the previous embed:



Of course, they may well be bringing some boho "knowingness" to the proceedings too. But I'd guess that there's some K-pop "knowingness" that's already there to begin with. (I've put "knowingness" in quotation marks because I don't buy that it knows anything; displaying one's self-consciousness isn't the same as having insights into, like, childhood and such.)(When I was a kid I hated kids' TV, preferring Tarzan movies and war movies and the Marx Brothers and I Love Lucy.)