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Paper short abstract

This presentation examines the possibility of a “lesbian cute” through the work of Korean webtoon artist Ch'ŏngkŏn and their webtoon Yŏjach’in’gu [Girlfriends], which juxtaposes the cute surfaces of shōjo manga-esque aesthetics with a more violently queer, almost misandrist lesbian impulse.

Paper long abstract

Paek-hap, also known by the name of yuri or Girls’ Love (GL) is a subcultural genre of female same-sex romance and desire that originates in Japan and has become widely popular across East Asia from the late 1990s to the present. Despite its sizeable queer readership and significant overlap with lesbian and queer cultures, the genre has frequently come under accusations by feminist critics for producing “cutesy” and palatable images of lesbian desire and sexuality. In South Korea, which has been site to a number of radical feminist movements in the past decade, the contemptuous attitude towards weak, or “cute” forms of femininity have subsequently resulted in paek-hap cultures also being denounced as anti-feminist or fetishistic images meant exclusively for heterosexual male pleasure. This paper responds to these ongoing conversations about the feminist ambivalences of paek-hap culture by exploring the viability of a “lesbian cute” as an aesthetic strategy that highlights the potential of cuteness as a queer relation between girls and women. I contextualize this “lesbian cute” in relation to the ways in which cuteness has functioned in the paek-hap genre at large as an erotic expression of same-sex intimacy and desire. I route these discussions through the work of Korean webtoon artist Ch'ŏngkŏn and their webtoon Yŏjach’in’gu [Girlfriends], which depicts how these expressions of feminine, girlish cuteness are often misread and misinterpreted under a heteronormative lens. Ch'ŏngkŏn juxtaposes the cute surfaces of shōjo manga-esque aesthetics with a more violently queer, almost misandrist impulse to the effect of a disorienting “lesbian cute.”