The Social Uniforms Project

The gazed gazes back.

By Baek Min-a

The zeitgeist

Korea is in the midst of gender war. There is too much to try to sum up satisfactorily here, but between the 2016 Gangnam knife murder and the seemingly non-stop spate of random assaults on women in subways and in the streets, which culminated in the recent Isu station assault , there are lots of men ― online and off ― who seem to be deeply angry at women who step out of their assigned social places.

But this essay is not about all of those unfortunate things, but rather about it being the appropriate time for Korean society to have an elevated, even possibly theoretical conversation about gender and how it is socially constructed, which is far more a popular topic of conversation than I ever thought possible. To the extent that so much of everyday lived experience back in the U.S. is defined by race, in South Korea, it is defined by gender.

Social uniforms

All the characters are different in their unique way, but are not completely detached from the real me. They are all characters who are kind of amplified versions of the different layers of femininity I already have.

And what happened exceeded any of my expectations as we started knocking out "uniforms" to shoot from my list, then her list, then ones on the list we were starting to construct together.

I add in ones that I easily see ― teacher, student, office worker, young mom, new bride on her wedding day, fashionista. And some that are less obvious, such as the "chwi-joon-saeng" fresh grad trying to get that first job, or the college super-senior on graduation pics day at a women's university.

But what I call the "rainbow unicorn" shot that I have to put in real effort, research, and a bit of personal finessing into making happen are the ones that really require little thought at all, ones that we've all seen but that are actually quite hard to get: a part-time worker "alba-saeng" actually at work (I just got a job at at a major restaurant chain to get into the role and the uniform) and the Holy Grail of the female social and actual uniform: the KAL stewardess.

The KAL stewardess is the pinnacle of modern, Korean femininity and gender performance. That uniform is power. I'll get it soon, somehow. But for now, the project is just getting its sea legs and striving to get into shape to get there.

A close analysis of gendered role-norms for a young, female, jobseeker. From The Social Uniforms Project Instagram account (@socialuniformsproject)

The project

Inevitably, this project is one of social documentary. But I'm doing it "backwards."

Parts Cindy Sherman and parts Nikki S. Lee, with a good chunk of photographer Oh Heinkeun as aesthetic sauce, this project is social art more than social science.

It would take too long to await actual moments and opportunities to shoot flashes of femininity in the wild, randomly.

So, the project visually recreates moments/characters we see in Korean society that everyone else knows are true.

I work to channel social messages through "social characters" who wear certain kinds of "social uniforms" that are quite recognizable in Korean society.

The pictures speak for themselves. Beyond just stereotypes, these social uniforms are documents of the various manifestations that femininity take in their visible and socially performed ways.

Through portraits of everyday Korean women and their visually and publicly performed femininity, it is possible to get a sense of the social norms and rules that govern the way many individual women embody the social programming that says women should comport themselves in specific ways.

It is a visual way of documenting and expressing the constantly performed femininity in South Korean society.

In Korean resume pictures, you look enough like you to be recognizably you, but in a way that does not actually look like you. From The Social Uniforms Project Instagram account (@socialuniformsproject)

The main difference here is that this project expresses many faces of femininity and South Korean society through the body of one South Korean woman.

In this way, the single actor in this project unifies all of the various social characters and uniforms into a single tapestry of believability and relatability for the viewer.

Because I try to do what is very difficult ― embodying the various facets of femininity itself ― I thought it would be more powerful to show the reality of all these various social uniforms as not mere accident of individual circumstance or idiosyncrasies of personality.

The project hopes to demonstrate that these are all acts of identity performance.

Social characters … and moments

Another fun social uniform is the ubiquitous image of young 20-something girls who review trendy new restaurants for their Naver food blogs. From The Social Uniforms Project Instagram account (@socialuniformsproject)

Aesthetically, the project is designed to be more than entertaining cosplay.

Each image is intended to convey the very essence of a particular kind of social uniform ― a social character, stereotype, or mode of visual representation ― that most people in South Korean society readily recognize but often don't think very much about.

By demonstrating and displaying these social uniforms visually, in a picture that is the convergence of hundreds or even thousands of semiotic cues and signs and symbols and elements coming crashing together to create a new synthesis and message that our brains are programmed to readily read, the portraits are intended to convey that these social uniforms are worn by everyday people, out there in society, and any one person could end up wearing any of these uniforms, given the right set of circumstances.

"Women's university grad. Won't fit in. Probably uppity. And a bit old." From The Social Uniforms Project Instagram account (@socialuniformsproject)

The point is that there, but for the grace of God and circumstance, could be you. Or your friend. Or sister. Or mother. Or daughter.

A wholesome, vision of Joseon-era respectability. From The Social Uniforms Project Instagram account (@socialuniformsproject)

The model, herself, and others

I decided to model in this project because I fit in and between all the lines and have elements of all the social uniforms in my range, but I am not completely any one of them.

The project required someone who could be a chameleon and could occupy different kinds of social and mental spaces.

Strategically, the portraits themselves act as micro thin slices of Korean lived reality that offer big hints as to the overall structure of the society they exist within.

They are samplings that give hints as to the nature of the whole.

Mina, the real girl behind the masks. From The Social Uniforms Project Instagram account (@socialuniformsproject)

Baek Min-a (백민아) graduated from a women's university with a liberal arts degree and took her interest in media/communications to her role working on several media production projects in Seoul.

The Social Uniforms Project is on Instagram @socialuniformsproject.