Man marries body pillow girlfriend in Korea

The UK Metro is reporting on a wedding ceremony held for a 28-year old Korean man and his full-sized body pillow girlfriend. The pillow cover supposedly has an image of a character named Fate Testarossa from the anime series Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha.

The story is reminiscent of a New York Times Magazine piece I wrote last year; the Metro article also mentions a story we originally posted on Boing Boing in November about a guy who married a character in his Nintendo DS dating sim.

• [coaxial]

  So what’s up with asian fanboys “marrying” inanimate objects? What is it? Some sort of “No! I’m a biggest loser fanboy!” contest?

  Then again, I don’t get cosplay either.

  Don’t even get me started on the furries.

• [Anonymous]

  Well.. he married his PILLOW, and not the FATE herself.

• [Teller]

  I think the reason is simple. Yesterday, he was that guy. Today, he’s that guy all over the web. And anyway, doesn’t the woman have to say “I do” or pop a feather or something to signal assent?
  Why am I asking these things?

• [Anonymous]

  South Korea, pillows are just like girls, you don’t always have to marry them to sleep with them!!!

• [JohnCJ]

  Here in California, it’s perfectly ok, as long as the pillow has a picture of a girl. If it’s same sex pillow marriage, it would weaken the sanctity of marriage! Think of the children!!

• [John Greg]

  All your pillow are belong to us!

  Sorry. I just had to.

• [Anonymous]

  If this pillow can find a man, you single ladies got to come up with another excuse.

  • [llazy8]

    Snort!

• [CoffeeBlack]

  South Korea is an odd place, where men marry pillows, Star Craft is a sport and parents abandon their real children to death by malnutrition because they are too busy doting on the virtual one that they spawned in an MMO.

  http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178246

  Not that our country is any less weird, but still. Two of those things happened in the same month and the same year.

• [se7a7n7]

  Who pays for that wedding?

  • [dculberson]

    The pillow manufacturer. Think of the publicity!!

• [pendraphen]

  Am I the only one who remembers how Lars and the Real Girl ended?

• [Anonymous]

  http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2010/01/30-rock-james-franco-an-anime-body-pillow-and-liz-lemons-pajamas.html

• [Anonymous]

  regardless….pity the poor SOB if he forgets their anniversary

• [funkadelic73]

  I’ve always wanted to put my wife in the washing machine… maybe he’s on to something.

• [Sal Paradise]

  What’s his Boing-Boing handle?

• [Anonymous]

  So if someone else wants to marry their body pillow with the same character on it is it considered cheating? Can the body pillow get a lawyer and file for divorce? Is it polygamy if he decides to buy a younger body pillow and marry that one as well? Is it cheating if his doctor tells him he needs a tempur-pedic pillow for his horrible necks pains?…. So many questions

• [defacebook]

  I’m sure they’ll have lots of romantic “pillow talk”.

• [Shay Guy]

  There’s a lot of self-insertion fan fiction out there, but I don’t know of any that comes from east Asia — any doujinshi or anything. And much SI, if not most, involves the SI character getting it on with their preferred character. It makes me wonder if the concept of “fictional character as object of desire” actually manifests differently in the different cultures. In this case, the “desire” seems kind of vague. I don’t think this guy’s actually “interacting” with Fate, even in his imagination. And she can’t give informed consent. She WOULDN’T, anyway, because she has Nanoha; besides, what would HE be to HER? Some guy from Nanoha and Hayate’s planet, one of apparently thousands who buy figurines and posters of her.

  Unless he thinks of it as marrying the pillow itself, in which case the logic and emotions of it are completely alien to me.

• [Aloisius]

  So wait… if he dies, does the pillow inherit his money?

  • [Boondocker]

    Nah, until the pillow reaches the age of majority, the mattress will hold the money.

• [Anonymous]

  I think Body Pillow could have done better…

• [Lucifer]

  I used to date that body pillow but things didn’t work out between us. I’m glad it moved on and found someone who deserved it.

• [Anonymous]

  But at one point, people need to step in and say “this isn’t good for you, you need help.”

  Real friends and family would help this man, not pretend that it’s his “way of life!”

  What companionship, conversation, LOVE could a pillow ever give you? Poor guy..

  Of course he’s no harm to anyone else…but I cannot believe that anyone of a sound mind would prefer the company of an inanimate object. What does this say about his view on women?

• [Anonymous]

  Nothing wrong with this – he’s removing himself from the gene pool.

• [AudioTherapist]

  Looks like it will be a nice comfortable relationship with a well padded partner…

• [Anon]

  If he got into an argument with his spouse, would that be considered a pillow fight?

• [Anonymous]

  On the one hand, I think it’s obviously kind of sad and pathetic.

  On the other, I find his forthrightness about the whole thing kind of inspiring.

• [Pantograph]

  And thus the battle for the prestigious title of “East Asian country with the most screwed up nerds” heats up. Now wait until China’s children of the one child policy join the fray.

  • [dculberson]

    Forgot to add.. the one child policy was enacted in 1978, so many of the children of that policy have long since joined the fray. I would love to see what effect it has had on their society and on the individuals.

• [bbbaldie]

  I’m sorry. I know you boingboing folks are the epitome of open-mindedness, but this is just SICK!!!

• [Anonymous]

  Who knows what happened in this poor guy’s life. Maybe there’s some sort of horrible reason he felt he had to do this. Perhaps he’s allergic to women, or lost his “bits” in some tragic accident.

• [simonbarsinister]

  All the ronery people…
  Where do they all come from?
  All the ronery people…
  Where do they all belong?

• [Felton]

  She’s been down all her life, but things are looking up.

• [danegeld]

  *sniff* I’ll never find a pillow.

• [Reverend Loki]

  And here in the states we’re still having issues with same sex marriage.

  I can see the protest signage now – “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and the fluffy cushion!”

• [mkultra]

  Articles like this always seems to stimulate a bout of racial chauvinism in the comments… as if we don’t have plenty of weirdos of our own. Why is this? Is it just because they’re weird in a way which is surprising to us?

  I would rather have this guy than Karl Rove as a member of my society any day, and I bet he would be a lot more fun to know.

  • [Rich Keller]

    If he were a member of our society, I don’t think we’d even notice. I get the impression that he doesn’t leave his apartment very often.

  • [Moriarty]

    So you think this person is the Korean analog of Karl Rove?

• [Anonymous]

  So, in Korea you can marry a friggin pillow….but in the US same sex couples can’t marry because it “undermines the tradition of marriage?”

  Weird as this may be, it certainly undermines THAT argument.

• [Chuck]

  I think Lee Jin-gyu really needs to know that his body pillow was stalking me before they got together, and it still is.

  I certainly know I’d want to be warned if my body pillow was psychopathic.

• [Anonymous]

  Hey, I think this is absolutely fantastic.

  I hope he’s unerringly faithful to his pillowy bride, so there’s not a chance of his DNA ever taking a swim in the gene pool.

• [Anonymous]

  Okay, I like to think I’m as open minded as the next BB reader about man/pillow love, but there is just something soooo wrong about that image.

  Pillows can never give consent. :(

• [enchiladaplate]

  Similar to an episode of 30 Rock! http://www.hulu.com/watch/119677/30-rock-klaus-and-greta

• [christackett]

  Would not want to see that thing under a blacklight.

• [Anonymous]

  I hope he makes sure to wash her.

• [Enormo]

  I know Fate Testarossa and Body Pillow is no Fate Testarossa.

• [morrisleg]

  I find it more worrying that BoingBoing is referencing The UK Metro, a “free” tabloid newspaper that (IMHO) blights our public transport system and is aimed at the hearts and minds of the traveller with a reading age of about 8.
  As long as the guy and the pillow are happy together who cares ?
  I suspect that this is just another “look at stupid johnny foreigner” photo opportunity.
  If the pillow had a PHD they never would have published it.

• [Uncle Balsamic]

  How does the pillow agree to the contract?

• [mkultra]

  I’m sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but at least this is a marriage where only one person screws up their life, instead of the usual two.

  I bet the separation and divorce would be less traumatic, too, and with no danger of kids.

  • [Pantograph]

    So true. Poor Fate. She was destined to be with Nanoha and now she’s married off to a sweaty otaku.

• [Anonymous]

  With most marriages, you don’t have to wash you spouse until you’ve been together decades. It’s one of those growing-old-together things you don’t really look forward too.

• [Anonymous]

  I bet once the color fades on his current pillow bride, he’ll dump her for a new, vibrant pillow.

• [AlanJCastonguay]

  Uh oh.. Nanoha is going to be upset.. beware the White Devil.

• [hadlock]

  Ever since that 30rock episode I’ve wondered, what happens when the silk screening wears off the front of the pillowcase? Is he attracted to that specific pillowcase, or can they be interchangeable? Would replacing a worn out case with an identical one be like dating “her” sister?

  Does anyone have pics of these guys carting their pillow-women around in public?

• [Rich Keller]

  I’m tryiing to figure out if the guys marrying these characters are doing it as a tongue in cheek commentary on their otaku subcultures, or if this is genuine or somewhere along a spectrum between the two.

  • [Anonymous]

    Well the DS guy did it for fun, this guy’s probably in the same boat. I remember reading articles about the kid marrying his DS character and they were talking about how he’s actually perfectly normal and is able to interact with other (real) people normally.
    I think these guys are sitting back at home and laughing at the ruckus they’re able to cause here just by doing something silly that, to most people, is pretty obviously a joke.

• [benher]

  I wonder who else was sitting on the brides side… maybe those Tonka plush WWF pillow dudes?

• [Phikus]

  What happens if he finds a more attractive pillow?

  • [Felton]

    What happens if he finds a more attractive pillow?

    For her sake, let’s hope he’s not a physician, police officer, lawyer, real estate agent, or engineer.

• [Anonymous]

  This is wrong. God defined marriage between a man and a biological entity. I was even there at the meeting when he formulated this socio-politcal arrangement. A pillow COULD marry a man, and not enact God’s fury, IF the pillow was made of organic materials, such as a dead camel, or a living camel, or some sort of camel variant. Also, organic bio-structures, or slurries, that are not camels.