Member post of the week: Tiffany
Name(s):
Tiffany (티파니)
Stephanie Hwang (스테파니 황)
Hwang Mi-young (황미영)
Date of Birth: August 1, 1989
Blood-type: O
Height: Taller than Jessica. No, really.
Casting: 2004 SM Casting System; 2004 CJ/KMTV (USA-LA) Contest 1st Place
To take a leaf from just_keep_on 's book:
Tiffany is a girl. Discuss.
What makes a girl and what makes a woman? We’re not going into SNSD 9 meta here, mainly because I it’s not the appropriate piece for it, but I think the first thing we have to think about, when we consider how Tiffany has changed, is how SNSD, Girls’ Generation has managed to negotiate (and potentially delay, at least publicly) their maturation. What happens when you bring in a girl like Tiffany, known for being vocal, driven and reportedly more than familiar with nightlife* into such a group, and a company that is hellbent on this group being a success, even if it means potentially tacky dance moves with lollipops? (To its credit, SME has made a fortune out of turning out questionably-styled pop music goldmines with some fine treasures in the mix.) Remember that clip from 2009 Hollywood Bowl, when Tiffany mentioned, with a rather embarrassed laugh, that her friends who watched it (including their KY and Gee performances) asked if she was embarrassed to be waving a lollipop at that age? What struck me then was how she seemed happy before that to appear to be wholeheartedly participating in this shtick-such joyful eyesmiles being part of her charm then, in 2008-but after that remark, and after early 2009, when Gee was no longer in danger of seeming like a fluke success, the cutesiness became more ironic, more distanced. It’s something we’ve all noticed, that she’s toned down on variety shows, that she’s “quieter”, that she’s very eager to show, publicly, that she has “matured”, in terms of her music taste too-note her references to how she’s keeping up with American and British pop music, in various backstage interviews, as well as her uncontainable enthusiasm for songs like RDR (“I thought to myself, ‘This is it!’”). In other words, the fandom consensus seems to have been that “Tiffany has matured.”
Yes, she no longer babbles on charmingly on shows. (Kara’s Nicole filled that variety show void for a while, and very well too.) Her Korean is much smoother. Yes, she seems more thoughtful of others, which is nice. She’s piped down, partially due to throat problems, illness and an obvious desire to showcase other members, or at least to give them a chance to speak. It’ easy to argue that this is because she has a strong permanent (or as permanent as you can get in Kpop) fanbase, and no longer has to worry about establishing herself in the treacherous, anti-filled waters of the Korean pop scene; instead, the much-vaunted “Soshi bond”, so suited to her personality of forming strong emotional attachments and of sustaining strong loyalty to these attachments, became her priority.
But has she matured? Or did she instead finally emerge from what I argue to be a self-imposed, self-protecting internalization of SNSD’s image (read: “the nation’s fairies”, or hearts and lollipops) in 2008?
The logic of this argument is as follows:
1. 2008 was a difficult year for the girls. The only way for them to succeed was to be united, and to focus on consolidating their fanbase through SM’s strategy of marketing them as the ultimate in sweetness and light.
2. For a girl of Tiffany’s background, to be expected to look so deferential and so damn sweet all the time must’ve caused internal turmoil, especially since we’ve seen that she’s got such a wonderfully snarky side to her. Her brand of sarcasm is not one that the average Korean will appreciate, I’m afraid. It’s just not their usual brand of humour.
3. She initially tried to reconcile who she was, at that point, with what was expected of her by producing blunt remarks, which I honestly found refreshingly funny and dorky, on shows, but which apparently came across to some netizens as “rudeness”-hence her toned down (but still present) snark today, as well as continued internal doubts.
4. At the same time, she would have known that for the sake of the group, as a whole, to survive, they needed to be united and to commit to their performances. In other words, if SME was selling them this way, they would have to look like they pooped fairy dust. They were going to be the best damn lollipop-wavers, and they were going to rock lace and pouffy pastel chiffon layers, even if it killed them little by little, just so that they had a chance to comeback and well, “be cooler when they grow up”, to paraphrase a line from RDR.
5. Furthermore, Tiffany seems to enjoy intense, sweeping emotions in narratives (cf. Twilight fangirling and the intensity of her return to Christianity in 2008, which I believe to be a real, intense, personal conviction), and I feel that she would’ve been captivated by the drama of their situation, the “do or die” feeling of their (delayed) comeback-which led to the awesome energy of Gee, which does not need to be discussed here.
6. Hence, for her to retain her sanity, her sense of self, and to convince herself that their group/company’s strategy was working, and that it would All Pay Off In The End, she had to internalize what they were selling-that bright, girlish charm.
7. But after Gee, which for all its neon colours and “bright”-sounding production values was at least a step up from lollipop-waving, she didn’t need that anymore. Yes, they still wore pastels for promo shots, but at least they were being allowed to mature, even if the pace was so slow that Taeyeon was frustrated by the sound of Gee, and all that it represented.
8. Without this need to promote herself and the group thus, and with the reminder that her peers in America were looking, dressing and acting very differently from them, Tiffany thus was at the right time and place to move on from what protected her sanity throughout the toothache-inducing struggle for survival on variety and music shows in 2008.
9. I’m not saying that she hasn’t matured, but that what looks like her maturation can be read as a relieved detachment of herself from what she had to do, in 2008.
Tiffany is a woman. Discuss.
I would argue that moving through 2009 to 2010, she’s become (more than?) slightly disillusioned with Korean pop, and has in fact, stated her wish to enter the American pop market, after SNSD. She might change her mind about that, and we can’t tell what will happen. What I think has happened, however, is that she has matured, but not just from an ambitious teen pop starlet to a confident young lady in that same Kpop scene. She wants a bigger, different scene now, one that perhaps has different (if still problematic) depictions of females. She may have made important contacts in the kpop industry, but her view, her ambitions have changed. She’s thinking long-term, and not Korea anymore-something which the other girls have not expressed recently. She’s the only one who expressed such desire, when they were asked about post-SNSD plans. Before this, she wanted to be a Korean or Asian pop star, like BoA. For now, she wants SNSD to make it as a top Asian group. But for the future, I believe that she does want something different from what she dreamed of nearly 10 years ago, as is common of tastes changing as we mature. Perhaps being an Asian star, with all the baggage of being SNSD’s Tiffany or ex-SNSD Tiffany, just doesn’t seem as attractive as making a fresh start, a desire which calls to mind her abrupt move to Korea at the age of 15. The intensity of her emotions, the scope of her ambitions hasn’t changed. She still seems fond of these Big Gestures, like making her mind up to move away for a chance to become a music star, like falling in love with God again, like loving SNSD the way she does. She also still dreams big. She is, however, expressing herself differently, and more importantly, looking at different arenas now.
*Source: HYJ brought this tidbit.
PS: greywing would like me to announce that she’s still looking for someone to do the Yoona post.