Why K-drama and hairstyles matter, even in a time of crisis

In a photo from early January 2020, I’m sitting with an interviewee on the balcony of his tattoo studio in Auckland, New Zealand. 

My then colleagues and I are filming a travelogue about the Kiwi people and culture.

The photo captures us mid-laugh, tickled by great conversation. It resembles a regular still from a production set, except the soft sepia filter reminds me it isn’t.

Behind us, the raging bushfires in Australia around 2,000km away have turned the sky bright orange. It adds an apocalyptic glow to the image – and perhaps less explicitly, a creeping sense of cognitive dissonance. 

I remember thinking: Why does lifestyle journalism still matter when the world is, quite literally, burning down?

Resistance against doom, or escapism?

It’s a conundrum I’d continue to confront in varying degrees over the following years, as a journalist interested in contemporary culture.

As Singapore’s death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic rose, I was admittedly more transfixed on the budding romance between the leads in Netflix K-drama Crash Landing On You.

Amid the ongoing war in Gaza, my fascination turned to the phenomenon of evergreen bands like Michael Learns To Rock and Westlife repeatedly coming to South-east Asia.

And as the US-Israeli attacks on Iran persist, I’ve enjoyed reading online comments about how American figure skater Alysa Liu’s striped hairstyle inadvertently gives girls permission to embrace their quirks too.

I see diving into my comparatively trivial interests as a simple act of resistance. The unprecedented access to bad news makes it easy to doomscroll and dissociate from reality, and I am desperate to remember what I love about my job to stay present.

At its core, I believe lifestyle journalism is grounded in the concept of living well, which also encompasses broader areas like parenting, relationships, books, travel and the various facets of food beyond dining – topics that invite deeper reflection about what makes a life. 

Critics would, however, argue lifestyle journalism as a whole is fluff; sheer escapism for a privileged few who can afford to turn a blind eye to the world. As the saying goes, the personal is political, and vice versa. Individual daily life, from our fashion to entertainment choices, is shaped by systemic power structures.

Accordingly, I have had several friends emerge as indefatigable spokespersons for various political causes. Against their constant, impassioned online activism, it would seem I don’t care about what I should to be taken seriously as a journalist.

Whether I like it or not, the algorithm is a mirror of sorts. And a glance at mine might elicit the infamous response by American media personality and socialite Kourtney Kardashian to her younger sister Kim when the latter felt utterly distressed over losing her diamond earring in the ocean: “Kim, there’s people that are dying.”

Nobody wins the suffering Olympics

Indeed, as more people die every day from unprecedented global events, there couldn’t be a better time to learn to read the room, or risk getting dogpiled online from saying the wrong thing.

This increasing need to be politically attuned has inadvertently created a hierarchy of joy in crisis, where certain lifestyle pleasures are deemed more justifiable, if at all. Enjoying a movie might be more socially acceptable than catching up on influencer drama. And you could be judged more harshly for splurging on luxury handbags than a $500 Michelin-star meal.

The average netizen’s response to lifestyle journalism on a regular day feels more pertinent when the world is at war: “How is this news?” 

Yet, here, the implication is that everyday levity is inherently irresponsible – indulgent even – when there are people living in fear of getting bombed. There seems to be a misplaced sense of survivor’s guilt, unproductive and ironically self-serving. 

One might even start to consume lifestyle content with a mental footnote: Yes, I know there are wars happening. As if a love for pop culture were only permissible with an equally heightened awareness of one’s privilege and comfort.

But the reality is, there are no winners in the suffering Olympics. Curbing our joy has never alleviated another’s pain.

If anything, this self-imposed austerity only makes us judge others who exhibit a capacity for both empathy and enjoyment. They feed their passion for celebrity gossip, join a sports fandom and follow fashion trends, without ignoring atrocities in the Middle East or systemic issues closer to home – whereas we focus on policing perceived moral failings, instead of channelling this energy towards productive acts of solidarity with those we claim to care about.

Not indulgence, but necessity

It’s understandably hard to see the importance of lifestyle journalism in a time of crisis, besides serving as a distraction. 

In fact, I’d say that common argument misses its real value: not to turn us away from humanity, but to affirm its myriad shades by exploring the texture of daily existence. 

Anyone who has endured devastating personal loss knows that regaining your footing is usually found in the smallest rituals, like watching your favourite K-pop idol on screen or putting on earrings in the morning. 

Likewise, when the world seems to be falling apart, it is stories of personal acts of creating a good life – the search for a delicious meal, the desire to own a luxurious home, the draw of beauty in our sense of style, the parasocial pull to celebrities – that keep us anchored. They remind us of the value of living, not just surviving.

This idea is perhaps best illustrated by a famous anecdote from World War II about the significance of lipstick – a mere aesthetic product today.

Women in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, which was liberated by the British army in 1945, were sent cartons of red lipstick. Despite the torture they suffered, the lipstick was able to give internees back their dignity. They were individuals again, no longer just a number tattooed on their arm.

A bulk of lifestyle journalism shows that supposed indulgences could instead be necessities that make a life worth fighting for and essentially provides a way to imagine joy and meaning in our own lives beyond immediate gloom.

Even lifestyle industry news that’s depressing, including closures of food and beverage outlets and heritage stores, reminds us that everyday loss continues to exist outside a war zone. And this grief, while far smaller, remains so very human and can be just as transformative.

After all, life is a full-spectrum experience. Treating it as a buffet where we can solely choose politically correct emotions is to build a wall against the totality of human feeling.

In reality, when we crack ourselves open to joy, it can make us more receptive and alert to suffering too. And an unblunted experience of humanity is precisely the quality that must be held on to, especially amid divisive political rhetoric and real-world wars. 

When the goal of the aggressor is often to reduce both victim and bystander to a statistic or object, to feel fully is to resist that dehumanisation.