#선남선녀 ask

[storkmuffin]

i’ve seen several times korean fans calling male idols 요정 or 선녀 which surprised me cause at least as a westerner it’s such a female word? even so we use pretty/babygirl/girlfriend very often for male objects of affection so i guess it’s not really different. in english obviously fairy is a homophobic slur and you wouldn’t call a man that affectionately so maybe that’s just it. anyway i assume it’s not common to call men that in wider society (like pretty/beautiful) but is it something kpop fans use?

OK so I've seen 요정 before, definitely, but not 선녀. Are you sure it was 선녀 and not 선남?

요정 can be "fairy" in English, but it can also be "elf" (though sometimes we also sound out the word 엘프) but it further can also mean magical creature (gn). 요정 is also a polite way to refer to the fact that a showbiz man is short (under 175 cms) but attractive, because there is also a cocomitant demand now that all Korean men in the performing arts have to be super tall. To us a man being androgynously pretty doesn't immediately equate to his being homosexual, so that probably also is where the difference comes from.

입덕요정 is not meant to mean 'androgynously or girlishly pretty skinny guy with delicate features.' Instead, it literally just means, Magical Being Not Of This World That Ushers You Into The Fandom. Because if it meant 'androgynously pretty' etc, you wouldn't be able to call Choi San 입덕요정 without first being inaccurate since his bulk up, and he isn't and has never been androgynous or feminine looking, but he's definitely been called 입덕요정 to his face on various promotional interviews, and did not object.

선녀, as I've said, I've never heard applied to a man. A quick search on Naver nor Google doesn't yield any examples. 선남선녀, which in Chinese characters is 善男善女 which literally I think means Kind/ Good Men and Women, is in modern parlance used to refer to good looking and young men and women, who are eligible with each other.

The other word to refer to good looking men who are also upstanding and clean cut, with an implied understanding of having decent to excellent economic capacity is 훈남.

Uh. Very few Korean men who actually look like they could be 요정 (Felix of Stray Kids, Yeosang of Ateez, any of these other guys whom I don't know ) are all going to get scoutedinto trying to be Idols or actors or other performers, so to be perfectly honest, in the same way that most women who are 6ft tall and weigh 105 lbs are unusual and usually fashion models, me in my not-at-all-related-to-showbiz life have never seen a man who could fairly be called 요정. (Sad).