Often in the media, we see those that are made self-concious because of ‘perfect celebrities’ and become insecure because of their looks, height, weight or even all of the above. It’s not often you’d open your favourite news website or a newspaper and see a positive article featuring a conventionally ‘ugly’ celebrity. Their articles are usually saved for things like scandals, and generally news that paints them in a bad light.

‘But where does K-Pop come into this?’ Well, I’m glad you asked. When I began listening to K-Pop, I was confused as fuck. My first music video was, like many before me, Big Bang’s ‘Fantastic Baby.’ It was an incredibly odd experience for me. Was I enjoying music that wasn’t the opening theme for some anime? (Yes, I went through a horrible phase where I only listened to anime themes on repeat for days, but that’s a post for another time.) I was in awe as to how many elements they were incorporating, and my brain was constantly developing different images being thrown at me. It was then that my eyes lay upon Taeyang’s shirtless body (something that’s very difficult to avoid if you’re a fan of Big Bang on any scale) and found myself even more bewildered than before (this guy can sing, dance and is fucking ripped?) though the camera then shifted to an even more buff, chained-up, blonde hair’d man in what appeared to be a dungeon. At this point I’m just like ‘wow, fantastic baby’ both physically and mentally.

But now I bet you’re thinking ‘YOU WERE INSPIRED TO GET FIT BY LOOKING AT SHIRTLESS MEN FOR TEN SECONDS, YOU GAY TOOL.’ However, I can assure you there were other reasons, one of which was influenced by another member of the supergroup Big Bang.

By now many K-Pop fans know the story of T.O.P, Big Bang’s main vocalist and dancer, who’s so good he usually invents his own choreography on the spot. Well, T.O.P wasn’t always the beautiful bastard he is today, and was actually overweight before his debut, and was rejected during multiple auditions. T.O.P dropped 20kg in 40 days. While I know this probably wasn’t exactly a healthy process, it made me realise that getting in shape is nowhere near as difficult as people make it out to be, especially considering the spare time I happened to have (I do understand there can be other reasons for a person being unable to lose weight) and so I joined the gym last November and haven’t looked back.

Coming full circle, the idea of these ‘perfect celebrities’ discourages people from thinking they can be like them in anyway (and true, I’ll probably never come anywhere close to what G-Dragon makes from royalties alone) but in my case, these celebrities from an industry where you have to be perfect inspired me to better myself, and I’d never go back.