thanks to gina @
www.kenchuindo.comGirly guise
By FOONG WOEI WAN
The Straits Times Singapore / Asia News Network
Thanks to F4 International Fan Club Philippines Yahoogroups
Source: Star Online
Credit: KensWorld
FROM Taiwanese model-actor Joe Cheng to South Korean actor Lee Joon Ki, star of the hit movie King And The Clown, androgynous celebrities are having their day in the sun. Sure, Asian showbusiness has never been short of beautiful boys (or bishonen, as they are known in Japan).
In the 1980s and the 1990s, the late Hong Kong actor-singer Leslie Cheung was a dazzling exemplar of the male diva, with all the splendid beauty and sexual ambiguity it implied. He famously went ultra-feminine in the 1993 Cannes-winning drama Farewell My Concubine, starring as a female impersonator in the title role.
But he was just one man, not yet a movement. And traditionally macho types such as Chow Yun Fat and Tony Leung Chiu Wai were still the norm from which Cheung deviated. You could say the tide began to turn in the late 1990s, thanks to Takuya Kimura.
The preening Japanese pretty boy with trademark long locks starred in serials like Long Vacation (1996) and swiftly found a following in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Without him, there would be no F4, the floppy-topped pop phenomenon from Taiwan who forced the bishonen floodgates wide open. Their 2001 TV show, Meteor Garden, is based on a Japanese manga, Hana Yori Dango (Boys Before Flowers). And F4 Jerry Yan, Vic Chou, Ken Chu and Vanness Wu looked like they had stepped straight out of the manga universe populated by breathless girls and babelicious guys.
The rest is history: The serial shot the four unknowns to superstardom across East Asia in 2001. The show also travelled to South-East Asia in 2002 and with it, F4 hairdos. A year later in the Philippines, one teenager reportedly killed another over get this - whose hair was more like Chou's!!
Certainly, F4 cleared the way for a new genre, the ouxiangju or idol drama, and heralded a whole new generation of poutingly pretty boys flippable, floppy hair is optional to star in such serials. Roy Chiu, Dylan Kuo and Mike Ho (who goes by a girly nickname, Xiaomei, meaning Little Beauty) are just a few of Taiwan's rising stars since F4.
By 2002, female fans were more than ready for a romantic leading man like South Korean Bae Yong Joon. With his fair complexion and gentle, sweet smile, surely the 33-year-old is the sensitive beautiful boy all grown up.
Okay, he did peel off his specs and shirt to show off his pecs and abs in a 2004 coffee-table book. But the bulk of his female fans like him with his shirt and delicate smile on.
And what they want, they will get.
Because girl power is not just about women being in the limelight on their own terms think Li Yuchun, the tomboyish girl wonder from China. It is also about men bending over backwards, or even gender-bending, to suit the tastes of female pop culture consumers.
When the ideal man these days is a metrosexual (read: more likely to star in a skincare ad), androgynous heartthrobs like Lee Joon Ki are not much of a departure from the norm. They may in fact be the future.
Lee Joon Ki
GIRLS want him. Guys want to look like him, reportedly going under the knife to get his soft facial features. The 24-year-old shot to stardom in South Korea playing an effeminate clown and the apple of a despot's eye in last year's King And The Clown, the most-watched movie in Korean history.
He is also big in China. Hundreds of fans were waiting to welcome him at the Shanghai airport two months ago, never mind that his film has not been shown on the mainland. Chinese fans, who have seen him in the 2005 TV serial My Girl, are already comparing him to Leslie Cheung, the Hong Kong star who was just as at ease with his girly side. Time will tell if his fame will last as long as Cheung's.
Joe Cheng
THE 24-year-old has been Taiwan’s “It†Boy (or Girly Boy) after making a daring acting debut in the 2003 idol drama The Rose. With shoulder-length hair, slender build and a sashaying gait, he played Kui, a sulking youth infatuated with both his half-brother (Jerry Huang) and half-sister (Ella Chen of the girl group S.H.E). With fame, there came tabloid talk that Cheng is gay and that he is niang (Mandarin for girly). He has laughed it all off, however. And the model-actor who, like supermodel-host Chiling Lin, is managed by agency Catwalk is no one-hit wonder. His drama, It Started With A Kiss, was so popular in Taiwan last year, a sequel has been planned.
Kangta & Vanness
ARE Chinese American singer Vanness Wu, 27, and his South Korean counterpart Kangta, 26, going Brokeback? Wu found fame with the group F4 and Kangta, with H.O.T. Both had little luck as solo acts, however. But they have attracted more buzz since regrouping as the androgynous pop pair, Kangta & Vanness. At the Golden Melody Awards this month, female fans shrieked as Wu and Kangta showcased their slinky moves on the red carpet and on stage, like two pretty peas in a pod.
