These days, male Idols are a standard part of the advertising toolkit across Asia and in China – in fashion magazines, shopping channels, adverts, and online sales channels. It may be a rarely seen phenomenon in the West, but rest assured that it is huge in China. Put simply, male idols are able to sell more magazines and more product than female idols – largely because of their enormous and loyal fan bases.
Paul French caught up with Amanda Sikarskie, one of the authors (along with Peng Liu and Lan Lan) of the new book Male Idols and Branding in Chinese Luxury (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024).
Can you briefly explain to us the male idol phenomenon in China – how is it different to traditional male celebrity icons?
The word ‘idol’ comes from the Japanese ‘aidoru,’ which is simply a borrowing of the English word idol to refer to a celebrity or star. We might trace idol culture back to 1960s Japan and Japanese artists like Kyu Sakamato (Kyu-chan) – gaining popularity in the Western market with hits like “Sukiyaki” – and notice that fans called him Kyu-chan, rather than Kyu-san, likening him to a child. So there’s this decades-old tradition of making idols less masculine, first by rendering them childlike and later through both infantilisation and feminisation. This idol culture really began to take hold in South Korea and China in the 1990s (and a bit earlier in Hong Kong).
Over time, the look of a male idol has become somewhat standardised across East Asia, usually quite thin and about 180 centimetres tall (this is also the height of many Western female fashion models and makes male idols ideally suited for modelling women’s luxury fashion), and with a v-line, rather than square, jaw (which some are born with, but can also be achieved through jawline botox or “K-pop surgery”).
Can you explain why these male idols seem to be so effective at shifting products – huge amounts of products – in China?
We are seeing a phenomenon in which women consumers are more interested in wearing the goods advertised by their male idols than by female idols, even when it comes to traditionally feminine products such as handbags and cosmetics.
Who are the fans of these male idols? And can toxic behaviour and inappropriate online behaviour damage the male idol brand ambassadors?
I wouldn’t say that there’s one monolithic demographic of idol fans. Fans might be anywhere from elementary school age to in their 60s, although teens to people in their 30s seem to be the most common. What young fans want and expect from their idols is different than what middle-aged fans (who generally have their own partners and families) are looking for.
I think it’s a big mistake to assume that these parasocial relationships between idols and their fans are naturally toxic. The vast majority of idol fandom is actually pretty well-adjusted. Where we do see this toxicity is when groups of fans with different agendas choose to butt heads, such as Wang Yibo solo fans versus Xiao Zhan solo fans or solo fans versus shipper fans (fans that imagine a relationship between two idols). Negative posts, generally in the form of fake news, made by one idol’s group of fans against another idol can potentially be damaging to both idols’ reputations, but this sort of online disinformation is so common within these little insular communities of fans that I think most people generally take what they post with a large grain of salt.
What are some of the major pitfalls for brands working with male idols in China?
Besides online turf wars between groups of solo fans or solo fans and shipper fans, brands also need to keep in mind that idols can make mistakes. These could be small mistakes that nonetheless affect the idol-brand relationship, like an ambassador for Redmi using an iPhone or Samsung phone in public. Or, an idol could make a very large mistake leading to them being “cancelled” in the mediasphere, like committing a crime. This would also generally lead to the termination of the brand’s partnership with the ambassador, of course. Because of these potential pitfalls, brands may increasingly turn to virtual idols in the future. While not as compelling as human beings, a virtual idol obviously cannot make these sorts of blunders.
How do the Chinese versions of male idols differ (or mimic) those we may be more familiar with in Japan and South Korea?
Chinese idols initially were sort of modelled on Korean idols (commonly known in online culture as ‘little fresh meats’ or xiǎoxiānròu in Chinese) and some of the most famous male Chinese idols of the 2000s and 2010s, Han Geng (Super Junior), Lay (EXO), Jackson Wang (GOT7), and Wang Yibo (UNIQ), all trained in Korea and debuted in Korean idol groups before moving back to China later. Since about 2018, the idea of Korean idols perpetuating a “sissy” niang pao aesthetic has gained traction in China, though. And so now, compared to the 2010s, you won’t see an idol like Wang Yibo wearing nearly as much makeup, especially eye makeup, as he used to. He’s still a brand ambassador for Japanese cosmetics staple Shu Uemura, though, because, as I noted earlier, male idols are just really efficient in marketing products to female consumers.
The Beijing government has seemed a little concerned with the rise of the male idol. How has the clash between male idol style and government ideas about masculinity and gender played out?
The idea of “sissy men” or niang pao (or alternately ‘luxury pig men’ — jing zhu nan — in Chinese) has gained currency largely because of Beijing. So, on the one hand, we see the state decrying men who aren’t manly, but on the other hand, we still see these idols not only all over billboards and red carpets in China, but on shows like holiday specials on CCTV as well. So, despite the bluster, it seems more or less that the government is tolerating male idols, at least for now. They are effective economic engines, after all, as contemporary, financially independent women tend to gravitate towards them.
