TikTok’s Latest Wellness Trend: Starving Yourself in the Name of K-Pop
Pastel pink and soft vignette filters, images featuring thin girls with long eyelashes, and good grades and skincare products: These are all manifestations in the world of “Wonyoungism,” a wellness trend growing rapidly online among K-pop fans that, amidst the milky images of bows and strawberries, has faced criticism for promoting eating disorders.
The term Wonyoungism itself derives from the K-pop idol Jang Wonyoung, a member of the girl group IVE. At 19 years old, Jang boasts more than 11 million followers on Instagram, and has become something of a platonic ideal for fans online. Wonyoung is confident, smart, pretty, sophisticated, according to those following her; so much so that she has evolved past a typical example of celebrity idolatry and into a theology unto herself. Using phrases like “The Wonyoung Effect” and “Wonyoung Motivation,” evangelical fans online promote a message of self-improvement centered around the singer, telling each other that by making specific lifestyle changes, they can look and, more importantly, feel as seemingly confident as Jang.
The trend’s first boom happened last year, after an audio clip from an interview with Jang went viral. “I don’t care—you are you, I am me,” she says, a message that drives home two key tenets of the lifestyle: confidence and effortlessness. Inspired by the clip, the hashtag #wonyoungism bloomed among the fandom soon after; now, it currently has over 292,300 posts on TikTok, and many users post in the comments about how following the singer’s maxim—and the ways developed by fans to embody it—has changed their lives.