“Insanely Fragile Masculinity”: Movie Posters In Korea Featuring Female Leads Intentionally Damaged?

The upcoming Barbie movie featuring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling has been highly anticipated for many people, and its release date is right around the corner!

Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in Barbie

While the hype has been building for a lot of people, especially women, it seems that there are at least a couple of people who have taken their frustrations out on the movie and/or its actors in an odd way.

Netizens recently noticed that this poster for the movie in Korea is notably wrinkled and worn.

The Barbie poster in question | The Qoo

Of course, if that was the only instance of this happening, one probably wouldn’t think much of it. However, it seems to be the latest example of a trend in movie posters that only feature female leads being intentionally damaged.

On a Korean forum post, the author shared a number of examples of movie posters with women on them that are warped by wrinkling and folding.

| The Qoo

And once again, just looking at these two additional examples, one might wonder if maybe it’s just all of the posters at a particular cinema that get this kind of treatment.

| The Qoo

But there are also images shared that show movie posters side-by-side that feature a male and a female lead respectively, and each time, it’s only the posters with the women as the focus that are wrinkled.

| The Qoo

It seems to actually be intentional, and netizens speculate that it must be male staff at the movie theater(s) that are, for some reason, taking out their frustration towards women on these posters.

| The Qoo

It seems like extremely odd behavior if true, but with so many examples of this happening, it doesn’t appear to just be a coincidence.

| The Qoo

Netizens have left comments about the apparent misogyny from these actions on the forum post, understandably disturbed and upset by this seemingly strange and concerning behavior.

We’ll have to wait and see if these crumpled posters suddenly stop appearing now that cinema employees are being called out for their alleged behavior.