This morning, actor and model HoYeon Jung was trending on Google. Why? Because the 27-year-old has shot to global fame since Squid Game became Netflix’s most popular show of all time. HoYeon, who is one of Korea’s most famous models, made her acting debut on the show as the brave and cunning Sae-Byeok.
Now, she’s the most followed South Korean female actor on Instagram, gaining 13million followers in mere weeks - and has just signed a deal with Louis Vuitton as their new global ambassador.
But what’s come with this global success? Perverts, apparently – at least according to Google. While many of the breakout search terms under HoYeon Jung’s name are to do with Squid Game (or, quite predictably, ‘HoYeon Jung husband’… yawn) one of the breakout search terms for the actor is ‘HoYeon Jung nude’.
Yes, really.
It appears that once again, a woman cannot achieve worldwide fame without a million creeps immediately searching for her naked – with ‘HoYeon Jung Squid Game underwear scene’ another common search term. Of course, Squid Game’s most famous male cast have not been subject to any of these perverse searches – only questions about their social media and net worth.
When people start searching for nude images of female actors, tabloids use it as an excuse to splash their naked bodies everywhere.
We’ve seen the same thing happen with almost every female actor in the UK when they’re thrown into the spotlight. When Jodie Comer achieved global fame with Killing Eve, tabloids began unearthing old scenes of her nude or semi-clothed. When Keeley Hawes starred in Bodyguard, more found screengrabs of her completely naked in a horror film from near two decades prior. Then there’s the countless times naked scenes with Dakota Johnson, Emilia Clarke and Gemma Arterton have been searched for and rehashed in the press.
Because that’s what happens when people start searching for nude images of female actors, tabloids use it as an excuse to splash their unclothed bodies all of their front pages in a lewd attempt to make artistic expressions of real life, salacious, pornographic material for male gratification.
Now of course, these images or nude scenes are in the public domain, and the women surely consented to it at the time – at least, one would hope but Hollywood has proven otherwise on occasion –so the actors are likely perfectly fine when them being viewed. But there’s a difference in viewing a female actor naked as part of a movie or show they produced, understanding it’s context to the plot, and going out of your way to seek and share pornographic images of female celebrities as if they’re objects of male pleasure. In all of these cases, the viewing context and intention matters.
HoYeon Jung is just the latest in a long list of women subject to this exploitative reaction in a world that still treats women as sex objects. But instead, how about we search and share the important details of her life?
Who is HoYeon Jung?
Like, for example, how incredible it is that her acting debut has been met with such resounding praise. Or how her runway debut as a model saw her walk in an astonishing seven high-profile shows in one season including Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs and Fendi. Even when she began modelling aged 16, she worked on Soeul Fashion Week without having an agent - managing to establish her popularity there so quickly that she was quickly signed to ESteem models.
She’s clearly hard-working, talented and business-savvy – surely that should be more interesting than her naked body.
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