The men should be allowed to dance more freely and with more expression, not just stereotypically strong and masculine. It limits everyone like you said and it just perpetuates the idea that women and anything relating to femininity as lesser.

many of the boy groups "are seemingy afraid to move there hips" HILARIOUS statement but unfortunately so true

One thing nobody mentions is that being skinny is way more forced on female idols than men, and with skinny i mean reduce as much as you can not just the fat but also the muscle mass of your body. Alexa (kpop soloist) was required in produce 48 to reduce a lot her muscle mass because she was already lean but had "too much" muscle that made her too heavy for what the kpop industry is used to.

I say this because male idols can have a little bit of muscle definition that makes a huge diference while dancing powerfull. Even if they give female idols powerfull coreographys, the explosiveness of their moves are never going to be as explosive as the male idols... female idols are just too weak, they eat less and has very little muscle. And its sad because everybody, but specially dancers, needs that minimun of muscle mass to support the bones and joints.

The only hope is that the athletic aesthetic is getting stronger in corea, because of the exposition to international beauty. So i hope it gets better and one day this beauty trend issue is fixed.

i remember when everybody was surprised when everglow released “FIRST” bc it their choreo being powerful like what boy groups does and it’s rare for girl groups to dance that way

Also, can we get rid of this notion dances and choreos need be extremely difficult or exhausting to be good.  There's is so much more to choreography than the level of difficulty.  Idols should be able to sing while dancing, if a choreo is really hard and exhausting how are they meant to have proper breath support to sing?

Your last input into this matter is spot on! Honestly I love gg defult choreos, but  I also want to see girls exploring a wider variety of dance styles, since their options seem so limited. I wanto to see Fromis9's Hayoung and Lee Seoyeon, Nmixx's Jiwoo, Billlie's moon sua and so many other hiphop based dancers shine in their element rather than to be pushed back into the same box as every other female idol just because they are women.
And as for the boy groups, i feel like the scenary is improving as now many more male idols are doing gg choreos as they should be executed. However, the hypermasculinization is still strong in kpop rn, which is so frustrating.

Overall, I really like your analysis and take on this issue. Great video!

So many times I see the discussion of GG vs BG dances end in “GGs should dance more like BGs!” which still implies that BG is somehow the “better” style of dance and if GGs danced “better” they would dance like BGs. I’m so glad to see someone breaking that take down, not in an “either or” but rather “both”. Both dance styles are valid, and both GGs and BGs would benefit from being allowed to explore different styles in their choreo.

The perfect case study for this topic is BoA.
BoA is easily one of the greatest dancers in K-pop, from her consistency, longevity, versatility, and technique.
BoA has made it a point to be taken seriously as a singer, because during her early years people really overemphasized her dancing over her musical ability. So that can result in moments where she really softens her choreography to ensure she has the stamina for live singing. But when she is 100% on and focused only on the dancing, it's a sight to behold.
Additionally because she started so early in 2000, you can see how the trends shifted and how the audience would perceive dance across age and gender.

Because of her vast career, you can clearly see when her routines are about honoring the musicality of the songs (e.g. Only One, Better, or the early releases that rightfully avoided any kind of sexuality). But then you can see when the team would try to make her more "relatable" or "womanly" and create routines that de-emphasized technique. Sometimes this was in favor of creating a routine that was more accessible for the audience to learn and do. But sometimes it was literally her and her team pushing against the "BoA the artistic-dance robot-girl crush-man eater" in favor of "see BoA can be feminine too!!!".

Dreamcatcher Choreography is the perfect balance between dynamic and shapes, pretty and power

everglows first is a very good example of a choreography that doesnt contain the “typical” gg style choreography . bbtrippin have my respect for choreographing a dance for a group while disregarding their gender , since this is very rarely done in kpop . the dance has powerful and stereotypically “masculine” movements but also contains stereotypically “feminine” movements and mixes the styles flawlessly . wish more gg choreographers would do that

13:05 This reminds me of A.C.E's main dancer Kim Byeongkwan, who once noted that he highly respected the typical choreo gg's do because of the body control necessary to execute them.

Dance shouldn't have a gender. A guy should be able to bust down twerking and a girl should be able to start thrusting the air in the industry without someone saying that it's "wrong".

I wish this video was an hour long! So many great points made. Misogyny has society in a grip. It irks me so much when people underestimate GG choreo because it LOOKS easy but the detail and discipline is still challenging and deserves more praise. It's no different to being able to sing well quietly, everyone can be loud and brash but to be refined with dynamics and technique requires a lot of work.

Great point at the end there too, I loved Pixy's Bewitched choreo and i'm about to deep dive into more Nmixx choreo.

there are SEVERAL fandoms that need to watch this video omg 😭 thank you sm this is literally what i've been arguing with people about for years. people are always yapping about female dancers but NEVER let them grow or experiment with their style like exactly what happened to jihyo 😭

Really love your video. With my friends, who are all dancers, we discuss this topic a lot.
But I feel like some gg start to explore more types of dances nowadays. Look at LE SSERAFIM or Newjeans for example. First of all, we have LE SSERAFIM who do some waacking and a little bit of commercial dancehall and on another hand, we have Newjeans who do some more hip-hop-based dance style. Even a little bit of afro in OMG with a variant of the Gwara Gwara step. But you are right. GG are still stuck in this very feminine choreos.

P.S. : I hope that if Hanbin from Boys Planet ends up in the debut group, they will do something with his waacking and tutting skills. I wanna see some other styles in boy groups too. They are somehow stuck in this strong hyper-masculinized dance style.

I really like SEVENTEEN's Darling choreo, it's pretty.

6:17 This is something I've wondered for a while ever since I found out that a lot of the stereotypically pretty kpop dances are choreographed by Kyle Hanagami, Willdabeast Adams and Giselle Jinestra. There's nothing wrong with with easy or "pretty" choreography, but it's like some choreographers put on a filter (for lack of better word) when they make these dances. The dances they make for girl groups and the dances they make for classes look totally different. But I never understood why it had to be that way. It's like all the girls aren't capable of doing harder dances and the only teachers who seem to get that is whoever's choreographing for Itzy and NMixx and BB Tripping when they choreographed First by Everglow.

I wouldn't say that I prefer the "masculine" form of dance. I've always prefered watching powerful choreography and dances. I love(d) gfriend and Dreamcatcher because their dances are powerful and pretty. I'm always surprised when women do powerful choreography not because I'm shocked that they are able to, but because it was given to them in the first place. I've been thinking for years it would be fun if girls weren't restricted to being pretty and the guys cold be a little more chill 😅 If I were a dancer, I would probably be reluctant to become an idol because my choreography would become limited. I'd want to show fun and powerful looking stages as well as the elegant and pretty ones.

It also seems many female kpop choreographies are very similar from a quick glance because their upperbody is almost always just upright and their legs turned inwards to seem shy and their arms moving very elegantly.
When i first joined kpop i found that so boring. But i learned more about dancing over the years luckily  😅

Love the video!

I hate the divide between the genders in dance. Also koreans love to gender everything and actually believe the stereotype is 100% true and applicable to 100% of society, and then proceed to get shocked when there’s someone who is good at something “only the other gender does”

Taemin is always at the top of the best dancers lists though while being famously opposite to the powerful style, especially solo?

But yeah, on the boys' side I would love to see more choreos not being afraid to dip into what we consider feminine moves like Ateez's Deja Vu 😍