My ID Is Gangnam Beauty: Overload of Cute Guys

 I put off watching My ID Is Gangnam Beauty for a long time. Why? The premise makes me cringe a bit, if I'm honest. The feminist in me finds the impossible beauty standards in South Korea disturbing. Beyond that even, the people they think are prettiest there are never appealing to me at all, which makes it feel disturbing for no reason.

My ID Is Gangnam Beauty: The Cute Boys

But I've started watching anyway because I was looking for something that would hook me from the first episode. I heard this one was like that.

While I liked the dynamic and vibe from the first episode, I was still turned off by the subject matter. The judging of looks, etc. I figured that that attitude wouldn't fly elsewhere in the world, and as an international success, it MUST stray from those values, right?

It did. But on the flip side of that coin, they stacked this drama with attractive guys all over the place. I mean... really? The women seem like... whatever. So is this a purposeful role reversal? The evidence:

These aren't even the stars. I mean... what? The last guy is literally just a random guy. I thought it was probably a cameo from someone famous given the look, but I didn't find anything about him. So they're literally just filling this with eye candy of the male variety for some reason.

My ID Is Gangnam Beauty: The Weird Casting

Now, this overload of cute guys leads me to the next super weird thing. The male lead has another star playing the middle school version of himself. No big deal. Dramas do that. 

However, the middle school him looks WAY older than the college aged him. That is creepy. The college actor, Cha Eun-Woo, is cute but not sexy or fierce or "hot" at all. Shin Jun-Seop on the other hand is a fierce kid who looks groomed to be sexy not cute.

Awkward, right? I thought perhaps Shin Jun-Seop was actually really young and just LOOKED like he was crazy older than he was. But it appears that both actors are the same age in reality. So wtf?

It is one thing to bring in a young actor to play a youthful version of a character. I can see getting a different actor even if the older one could pull it off IF the other lead (the opposite sexed lead) couldn't pull it off... i.e. if she looked too fiercely grownup to pull of being a kid, then getting another actor to play him as well so as to not be weird.

However, her face isn't seen in the flashbacks. So they made the choice to replace him... with a dude who looks way older... and is actually the same age but supposed to be like 8 years younger? Ooookay. That makes no sense.

I'm not super mad at it though, to be honest. Why? Shin Jun-Seop is so fierce that I'm already a fan. I might just check out MYTEEN, his kpop group, since he clearly has stage presence. Just saying.

Korean Language

I might as well mention too... I finally had my first real conversation in Korean and English the other day. It was with 김근영, of course. His English was very good, so we talked in more English than Korean. BUT I naturally threw in some Korean phrases... clarified in Korean vocabulary... practiced some things that I find difficult (Sino vs Native Korean numbers--ugh!)... and just integrated Korean into the convo. 

He helped with my pronunciation. I understood him fine. He seemed to understand me fine too. We were both nervous, but we ended up talking for an hour and a half! It felt very comfortable and natural, to be honest. I was excited. I'm also proud that we studied very hard all these months and finally talked!

파이팅!