Part Two: The King’s Affection #2 and Joseon Hairstyles
And then, thanks to this gratuitous shot of Park Eun Bin’s dressing regime, we get to see the Court Lady actually complete the sangtu set up properly. (sorry for subpare screenshots.)

Bonus 1: The jealous uncle in the hunt conveniently knocks off her top knot cap (sangtugwan) with an accidentally too-well-placed arrow, loosing her hair, (super subpar action screenshot again, mianhae)… because apparently long hair automatically makes her look more like a girl.
I don’t really think it makes her look anymore of a girl than she already did in this but kdrama logic I guess. (I think we need more men to grow out their hair for sageuks to farther the support this argument that long hair does not always = femininity. It’s also weird in this for me because all Men historically would’ve HAD long hair, and it was the norm for all classes, men and women, to wear their hair tied back at least, if not up. But no! Eun Bin lets her hair down and now there’s something suspicious! Feels like a weak argument if you ask me. Bone structure, lack of facial hair and lack of Adam’s apple isn’t more of a give away? Whatever.)

Forgot to link it in the last post, but here is what I’m talking about for anyone who is wondering: https://www.deviantart.com/glimja/art/Making-Sangtu-627937867
The Sangtu is the traditional men’s top knot in Joseon Korea.












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    Her hair really got me. I don’t like that most of our cross-dressing dramas have to have our female leads look too pretty/too perfect. I wouldn’t have minded a no-makeup-makeup-look. Instead, we got glowing skin and overly (at least in my opinion) pink lips.

    I would expected her to have adopted a more “masculine” comportment and gait. She is someone who has had to live as a man during her pivotal pre-teen and pubescent years. I would expect her to “sell” it. And then that modern-looking hair took me even more away from the illusion. This might sound nitpicky, but I would have expected her hair to look thicker, darker, and predominately one length. Sort of how it looks in one of the drama posters, where she is wearing her hair in the daenggi mori style.

    I will add that this is not a criticism of the actress.

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      Also, for the most part, Park Eun-Bin is very convincing as a haughty prince . She looks amazing in her princely garb and sangtu. I wasn’t criticizing that part; I’ll reserve my judgment on that part for later. I didn’t like the makeup and the way her hair looked when loose.

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      Pretty sure this is her natural hair colour so it’d be hard to get darker at least without actually looking UNNATURAL. Same with the thickness. The “waves” don’t look too Salon made to me but maybe that’s just cos my hair, naturally very straight, could look like this without styling.
      There does seem to be a bit of layering though, hence the not one length, so I can see how it would pull you out.

      As for the walk, wasn’t she on a horse most of the episode? Hehehe

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        LOL, yes she was on a horse for a good part of her scenes. The stills here don’t really highlight the “issues” I had with her hair. I wish I had the energy to screencap some other scenes, lol. Overall, I just didn’t like the look of it. I don’t mean to sound so nitpicky. I will try not to let it ruin my enjoyment (I have a feeling I will have enough of a problem with the choice of modern pop songs that will be played; I am not a fan of those in saeguks, even if they are youth-fusion saeguks). The childhood backstory was very heavy and that young actress was great.

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          Fair enough. I can understand being nitpicky, it’s fine. (I did not like the modern pop songs so far either.) It [the hair] doesn’t bother me personally as much but I will say, if it’s any consolation, I doubt we’ll see much more of her hair fully out again after this arc. Or it would be weird to me, in historical context purposes if we do.

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            You never know…we might have some more accidents with her topknot, which might cause her hair to cascade in beautiful waves around her shoulders. 😉

            I was trying to explain to another Beanie that her hair looked modern. And modern hair in general–due to our modern beauty products–looks different from hair from earlier time periods. Models from the Victorian and Edwardian eras come to mind when thinking about these differences.

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