Industry Insights: You Won’t See Gay Idols Around Anytime Soon

East Asian pop culture has seen a recent avalanche of LGBT media, but continued conservatism and social pressure means it’s unlikely we’ll see more than a tongue-in-cheek nod to the invisible Asian gay communities of today.

Industry Insights explores the inner workings of the greater music industry, and what they mean for artists and fans alike.

Written by Raymond Lam

ProducePandas, China’s first “'XXL' boy band” to come out of the country’s rapidly advancing C-Pop market, has most of the makings of any given idol group. Complete with dance covers of BLACKPINK and BTS songs, unofficial rogue fanclubs, gym selfies, and daily member-filmed vlogs of each other, the group has managed to attain some level of fame. They’ve even scored a bit of viral attention on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok: a lucky break considering the cutthroat nature of the country’s idol industry. However, apart from its aesthetics, it’s not immediately evident that ProducePandas is intentional in foregoing the conventions of typical, younger fellow boy groups. Aside from its more brash, masculine-looking members, the other main anomaly of the group is its nearly exclusively male fanbase, despite no indications the members or group as a whole are gay at all.

The fledgling ensemble, debuting about a year ago, largely built its brand outside the members’ serendipitous gay appeal, achieving its greatest flurry of media attention from making it halfway through idol elimination show “Youth With You.” The editing mostly treated their presence on the show as a joke, focusing on their rather rugged and garish appearances in comparison to other “little fresh meat” contestants (a term used for the more effeminate aesthetic adopted by Chinese male idols).

The five members (Husky, Otter, Mr. 17, Cass, and DING) intentionally hinged their early fame on gaining a viral edge, with singles like “La La La” centered around the subject of eating spicy street food and hot pot (it even earned them a notice from BLACKPINK's LISA) transitioning into a more developed ballad and EDM-based discography favored by modern Mandopop trends. Though they’ve sustained some initial skepticism and mockery (mostly from being overweight compared to China’s younger, thinner new boy bands), they’ve begun to grow a respectable-enough fanbase, amassing about 800,000 fans on their Weibo prior to the Oct. 15 release of their second album emo了.

Rather than focusing on the group’s gay fans (particularly of the “bear” title reserved for larger, masculine gay men), the members don’t center their music careers around sexuality at all. Instead, they brand themselves as average, working-class guys from outside the industry, hailing from regular jobs working as Amazon customer service reps and petroleum engineers before trying to make it in the hypercompetitive C-Pop industry.

In a profile by the South China Morning Post, member Husky wanted to stress the group’s affability and friendliness: “Mainstream male idols sell the idea of being cool and handsome. We are more approachable, and are able to play with the audience to make them happy.” It’s a perfect selling point for the base of gentler “Panda Keepers” (the band’s fandom name) the group wants to achieve.

Regardlesss of whether the group’s serendipitous male appeal is intentional or not, it appears the dual approach of appealing to general and gay audiences has been successful, gaining attention from Douyin fans to multilingual thirst comments alike.

The subtlety of the group’s appeal also works in their favor, making its humbler appearance more relatable to an audience with little in common to other male C-POP idols. Shanghai writer Alex Hong wrote, “The sexual fantasy aspect doesn’t apply to most male idols. The androgynous look and effeminate gestures of many male celebrities can be a little too much for gay men like myself.” The ProducePandas members don’t just fill a niche beauty standard: Their generally friendly demanor and more subtle gay coding make them safer to be fans of in a nation where less than 5 percent of LGBT individuals have fully “come out.” Without many real ways to be “out” in the wake of intense familial and social pressure, ProducePandas’ brand mirrors the experiences of the many in the Chinese gay community, showing a way to feel secure (if not a bit concealed) in their identities.

In comparison, Western media has been more explicit in its flourish of LGBT influences with reduced social friction: visionary production work from the late SOPHIE and members of the PC Music/Hyperpop collective, chart-shattering performances by rappers like Lil Nas X, and the Twitter fanbases of just about any very-online female pop artist are good places to start. It's far from perfect, but gains in representation have made it so that disclosing an artist’s sexual orientation is ideally a means to find an audience of like-minded fans rather than a path to social blacklisting.

Perhaps part of the reason for the more implicit marketing of groups like ProducePandas is the informal conservatism expected of East Asian idols, with similarly related K-Pop acts imposing “disciplinary contracts” limiting and sometimes even prohibiting public dating and relationship statuses of idols. A few idol groups, like the androgynous C-Pop girl group Fanxy Red, have had to more explicity tamp down on appeals outside cultural norms. In response to female fans’ love letters, the group had to explicitly deny any LGBT intent. “The band said they had no idea what the abbreviation LGBT stood for. “We're just ‘handsome’ girls,” said Fanxy Red member Min in a Reuters story on the incident. Ambiguity of sexuality just happens to better fit into the industry (but it’s just as profitable).

Make no mistake: East Asia has had a metric ton of LGBT shows, books, and cartoons enter its mainstream, largely from slightly more progressive countries like Japan and Taiwan with fewer de jure stances against homosexuality. With a few exceptions, though, most of these works are purely fictional in nature, using idealistic characters as a surrogate for often unrealistic and fetishizing stories to sell to a more limited audience. The fiction hardly mirrors reality — trying to find any real “out” celebrities achieving mainstream success is a much more difficult task.

And though acceptance of the LGBT community and the need for LGBT rights in China is steadily increasing, China retains an overall low approval of homosexuality outside of younger populations. In response to a 2013 Pew Resarch Center survey asking, “Should society accept homosexuality?” China was ranked the least accepting (21%) compared to other countries in the East Asian region. As of late, the country has taken stricter steps to limit the publicity of gay groups and themes, from the silencing of Chinese LGBT university students’ WeChat accounts to limits on the country’s Radio and Television Administration on feminine and “sissy” straight male idols. (Fortunately, the aesthetic direction of ProducePandas means they pass this test with flying colors.) Though no outright formal bans on homosexuality in the media exist, the changes in China’s stance means it’s not likely we’ll see more of groups like ProducePandas anytime soon.

For now, the fact that ProducePandas has amassed a dedicated male following isn’t a coincidence: They fit a specific gay beauty niche, but also fly just enough under the radar to remain a source of comfort for the subtler, concealed realities of LGBT life in China. There’s a low probability we’ll see more groups like ProducePandas in the future, but, for now groups like ProducePandas will probably continue to take their gay appeal in a (hidden) stride.

This article was added to Industry Insights after its publication, upon the creation of the Industry Insights series.

Industry InsightsAfterglow ATXNovember 12, 2021raymond lam, producepandas, lgbtq, c-pop