A taste of spring!

While I am drinking green tea with ginger and honey to keep the cold away, I dream of this perfect spring outfit, seen on street peeper.

The Female Grotesque

Happy new year everyone! I wanted to start the year with quoting this interesting article and make the resolution to blog more, as I was quite busy with other projects last year!

South Korean poet Kim Hyesoon on subverting expectations, her use of grotesque language, and the state of feminism in Korea.

Within the South Korean literary tradition, women poets are called yŏryu siin (female poet). Male poets are simply called siin (poet). According to Kim Hyesoon, this gendered terminology results in the marginalization of women poets’ authentic voices, as yŏryu siin are expected to write pretty, sentimental verse that speaks in a passive voice. It’s not a stretch to see this, as Kim does, as an extension of Korean gender norms that define “acceptable” behavior for women according to three rigid roles: ch’ŏnyŏ (young unmarried woman/virgin), ajuma (middle-aged woman/mother), and halmoni(grandmother). Each role requires the woman to serve a different master, Kim has noted: “She must first obey her father, then her husband when she becomes an ajuma, and finally obey her son as a halmoni. Any woman who violates or lives outside of these roles is called a ch’angyŏ (prostitute).” read more on .... Guernica / The Female Grotesque