Girls' Generation (Hangul: sonyeosidae; RR: Sonyeo Sidae), also known as SNSD, is a South Korean girl group formed by S.M. Entertainment. The group is composed of eight members: Taeyeon, Sunny, Tiffany, Hyoyeon, Yuri, Sooyoung, Yoona and Seohyun. Originally a nine-piece group, Jessica later departed from the group in September 2014. Girls' Generation debuted in 2007 with their Korean eponymous debut album.

Although most Girls' Generation's releases are written by songwriters for S.M. Entertainment, some members occasionally participated in songwriting. Member Yuri wrote the lyrics for "Mistake" from their 2010 EP Hoot. Sooyoung penned the lyrics to "How Great Is Your Love" on the group's 2011 studio album The Boys. Members Sooyoung, Yuri, and Seohyun wrote the lyrics for "Baby Maybe" and "XYZ" on the group's 2013 studio album I Got a Boy. The group's main lyrical themes as characterized by Chris True from AllMusic are "dance party" and "girls night out." Girls' Generation's songs have been criticized by Western media outlets for not portraying female empowerment but promoting the opposite. Ceejay Lee from feminist magazine Fem criticized the "generic" themes of Korean girl groups like Wonder Girls or Girls' Generation as "sexist": "[They] infantilize themselves to emasculate males by pandering childlike, puritanical innocence [...] It only reinforces that females are weak beings that serve to gratify males and that males need to be 'man' enough to 'protect' them." Stephen Epstein from the Victoria University of Wellington and James Turnbull from Dongseo University expressed concern that the lyrics of K-pop girl groups may raise considerable questions about the empowering nature of "Girl Group Fever"--particularly with singles "Gee" and "Oh!" Writing for The Harvard Crimson, Soyoung Kim wrote that "the representation of females in K-pop has been problematic" and singled out Girls' Generation's "Gee" as an embodiment; its repetitive lyrics "What should I do?" (eoddeohge?), "fool" (babo), or "I don't know" (molra) suggest that the girls are "utterly clueless children" who "dumb [themselves] down" just to attract a partner. He further cited the single "I Got a Boy" as an epitome of the group's non-empowering lyrics, with lines such as "I got a boy, he's awesome / I got a boy, he's kind / I got a boy, handsome boy, my heart's been taken away [...] My prince! / When will you rescue me?" Kim came to the conclusion that "female K-pop artists orient themselves around men in order to gain attention." Despite the criticism, several of Girls' Generation's songs, such as "Run Devil Run", "Hoot", and "Bad Girl" (from their 2011 eponymous Japanese album) are noted for portraying "confident young women with their own opinion", which is a departure from their early singles. The group's 2011 single "The Boys" was noted for conveying a feminist theme and was compared to Beyonce's 2011 single "Run the World (Girls)" for the same "women-powered" content; Eun-Young Jun in the book The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global (2013) noted its lyrics for depicting "sexually daring women" who are confident in their sexuality. CANNOTANSWERAnswer this question using a quote from the following article:

Why was they criticized for their theme?

criticized the "generic" themes of Korean girl groups like Wonder Girls or Girls' Generation as "sexist": "[