Rania undoubtedly created an impact on the K-pop scene with their debut, as they’ve been turning heads with their provocative concept, earning them a lot of fans and a ton of criticism (as evidencedhere, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).
The girls, their producer, and their company’s CEO have all been willing to stand by their sexy concept, while griping about regulations that did seemingly little to endear them to fans, both international and domestic. Reflecting over the criticisms though, I’ve found that many of the most common criticisms are rooted in sexism, racism, and xenophobia.
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Usually when we talk about the issue of sexism or misogyny, we refer to males looking down upon females as being the inferior sex; every time the issue comes up on allkpop, the women here take up arms and vehemently defend against any perceived slight, which is obviously understandable.
However, what doesn’t make sense is that the majority of the individuals who are labeling Rania as “sluts”, “whores”, “bitches”, or any other derogatory term used against females, are actually women themselves. The stark difference in treatment and response made me wonder what exactly was going on, because it made little to no logical sense.
What is it that makes women unite against men, but act utterly vile towards each other when it comes to respecting the choices of their fellow women? I just think it’s hypocritical for me to see so many women on this site fight for the rights and freedoms to be fierce and to be strong, but the moment another woman uses that platform to go out on an edge and say, “Here’s my sexual side”, she gets pummeled for it by other women.
Who’s holding who back in that case?
While there are admittedly many reasons that one could criticize a girl group (and believe me, I think I’ve seen them all by now), the level of nationalistic bias and overt racism towards those who back Rania is generally quite shocking, even for me.
While there are Korean girl groups who have used sexy concepts in the past and present, and while they do catch some heat, the level of vitriol that Rania gets just doesn’t match up.
Why?
Teddy Riley. Believe me, I wouldn’t make an issue about this if people didn’t spell it out for me, but with many of the harshest critics specifically mentioning the African American producer’s backing of Rania as a problem, it’s quite clear where their intentions lie.
With comments ranging from calling Teddy a “black rapist” to saying “America ruins everything K-pop stands for”, it’s quite clear that racism and nationalism are firmly in place. Now lest you claim those comments were outliers, they were taken from the top of Rania threads using the “Best Rating” (of which some were deleted, because please read the rules) sort option, so these are obviously not unsupported opinions.
Now I don’t need to tell you why automatically associating an African American with ‘rapist’ and ‘pimp’ is detestable, but what many of you need to realize is that criticizing his hip-hop and r&b background is to criticize K-pop as well, which, like it or not, is highly derivative of those two genres.
