By Hyemin Lee
I believe Soshified is not a feminist of color space. Many members on the site are interested in getting to know more about a girl group that sexualizes themselves mainly targeting the male audience. Although the members of the site try to create a safe space, it seems to be far away from becoming a feminist of color space since the members of the website oftentimes answer explicitly gendered/racial posts in a very pessimistic manner.
Gina’s site, American Cospaly Paradise, got me thinking alot about the way gendered/racial questions are addressed on Soshified. On my website, gendered/racial postings tend to drop just ‘word bombs,’ rather than explaining their context of the postings. One of Gina’s screenshots on the website during her presentation was about a concerned high school girl, who gets made fun of for liking cosplay. While Gina’s example was contextual and relatable to their common interest, postings on my website tend to be out of context and overtly political. Because I believe gendered/racial postings should be in a personally relatable manner, it was interesting to see the difference between Gina’s site and my site.
In my future research, I would post a topic that is a personal conflict, in relation to Girls’ Generation and wait for comments from other members. Also, I would participate in the forum on the website more often as an insider of the community, rather than an observer. I definitely need to feel more related to my avatar. Furthermore, I am interested in learning more about female points of view and why they are attracted to a girl group that could seem to be demeaning to women’s image in society. Using my avatar, who is an Asian female, it would be easier for me to approach female members of the website with personal conflicts to discuss their views and understandings of such female sexualized images of Girls’ Generation.
