Iyah... YG has revealed a member of BabyMonster who is 13... and I have two seperate reasons why I have to rant about this.
The first should be obvious. 13 years old. She's going to spend more time in this group as a child than an adult. There's no way of avoiding it, this is just dangerous. She'll be growing up in the public eye. She is a YG ENTERTAINMENT idol. She is going to be exposed to thousands of not a million people. Wonyoung was 14 when she joined IZ*ONE and look at the shit she gets today. Because what was once adorable for our tiny bby Jang Wonyoung to do is now cringe and pick me behaviour. This isn't an industry safe for minors for so many reasons which I won't go into for speculation reasons. I just... I know nothing about this poor girl and I've heard she is super talented vocally. But. I can't support this. I will support her when it comes to defending her rights to be protected. But this is alarming.
And now of course. We have defenders. Who are absolutely stupid.
In general, not just towards this BM member, people will say this isn't a new thing in kpop. TRUE. This isn't new. WHICH MEANS WE CAN LOOK AT THE CONSEQUENCES OF OTHER IDOLS WHO HAVE DEALT WITH THESE THINGS. I'm not a huge fan (as in I don't actively keep up with these idols) of Boa, Sunmi, Taemin or Jungkook, but I've heard people saying they've each spoken about the damage debuting young had on them, and how they'd just wished they'd waited. This isn't a new practice in kpop. But it should've died by now.
Two. In regards to the BM member, there are people saying they actually do want to support her because she is talented. Omg we do love talented children, they're impressive and it's clear they've worked so hard. This girl is also not Korean but Thai, meaning she's probably had to overcome difficulties including being away from her parents (assuming she actually grew up in Thailand), speaking a different language AND doing both of these things at such a young age. Because if she's debuting at 13 god forbid finding out when she became a trainee in the first place. I understand wanting to support a minor, because once they've debuted there's no going back. I mean, I believe Choerry from LOONA got boycotted because people didn't support the concept BBC gave her. And the thing is, yes making this message known is good, but at the same time we're also hurting a minor in the process. It feels awful to ignore the hopes and dreams of these children because their self esteem is already fragile in this stage of their life, and surely ignoring them won't help this
And yknow. At this point. And ik this is going to be messy because of my current stan list. But from now on, any group debuting with majority minor members, and members 14 or under, I will no longer be supporting. People say supporting minors isn't weird until you make it weird, which is a sentiment I agree with to some extent. However, at this point the more people support these groups with these children, the more companies are going to decide it's okay, which it just isn't. I know I support IVE, who debuted with 2/3 minors, and ITZY, who debuted 3/5 minors, but this something I wish I'd been more critical of in the past. IVE felt okay to stan because 3 of their minors were my age, and all of ITZY were older than me. So how could it be a problem for me to support them? I can't possibly be a creep therefore it's okay? But now, it's not about whether I as Miel am the creep or not. It's about realising that the more I support these children, the more recognition they receive, and the more the actual creeps can access them. It's too late for me to unlove Yuna, it's too late for me to not adore IVE. But I think from now on, it's time to start avoiding groups with younger minors in them, until they're older, because I don't support this exploitation of children
![☆ ITZY - LOCO [Ver. C] ☆](/forums/data/dbtechShop/itemIcons/2/2002.jpg?1632758575)
