Flawless Author Elise Hu on Korean Beauty Standards

You’ve seen the look popularized by K-pop stars: smooth, flawless. “glass skin”, seductive hair and the most slender of bodies. As south korea pop culture — namely K-pop and K-dramas — travels the globe, its stars selling the world another cultural commodity: Korean beauty standards.

In Corea, k-beauty it’s more than a multi-step skin care regimen that begins with a double cleanse. It is also one of the pillars of Korean culture that the government has invested in as part of its experiment in soft power. South Korea is one of the plastic surgery capitals in the world, where double eyelid surgery is so common that it is a popular graduation gift.

When I was in Korea last year, a trip to a skin clinic was on the to-do list of every Korean-American I met. Non-surgical procedures like Botox or lasers to treat hyperpigmentation (think sun damage or acne scars) are a fraction of the price they are in America. So are injections that aren’t even available here, like Rejuran (derived from salmon DNA), which claim to reverse aging.

As fans of Korean culture travel to Korea, they also seek cosmetic procedures. But the options and messages can be overwhelming. Former NPR Seoul bureau chief Elise Hu, host of “daily TED talks,” explores Korea’s quest for aesthetic perfection in her new book “Flawless: Lessons in Appearance and Culture from K-Beauty Capital”, which was published on May 23. Interwoven with her own experience as a Chinese-American adjusting to life in Seoul, she has written a book that explores Korean beauty in the political, historical, and financial context that has turned the industry into a power player. world. .

POPSUGAR: What made you dive so deeply into Korean beauty? You could have written about this topic without delving into the history or politics associated with it, so why did you explore it the way you did?

Elisa Hu: I wrote it because I really wanted to read something like that, and it didn’t exist yet. I remember feeling like my appearance wasn’t good enough, in the comments I received when I lived in Seoul, and the barrage of images showing me the ideal Asian beauty around me. While that bothered me personally, it wasn’t until I spent more time in Korea that I saw the ways in which beauty is inextricably linked with politics, the economy, society, and global justice issues. I longed for a job that would tie together Korea’s rise of visual and virtual technology, its pop culture exports around the world, the growth of its cosmetics industry, and what all of these major transnational forces mean for the way we are expected to appear. in our physical bodies.

PS: What is the Korean beauty ideal? How do they get it?

HEY: Advertising, entertainment, social media, and increasingly virtual worlds in games promote the general pillars of beauty you see in a K-pop female idol: porcelain complexion, long shiny hair, heavy makeup, and tight dresses. or short skirts. The emphasis on large round eyes and a feminine V-shaped jaw has fueled a boom in cosmetic procedures.

PS: A K-pop scholar pointed out that things have gone from being racist in one way to another extreme, where now all Koreans are supposed to be handsome and skinny, like celebrities. Many tourists go to Korea now because of the Korean culture; Would they be in for a shock?

HEY: There is also a whole trend and tourism industry around women going to Korea looking for the K-drama archetype of a sweet and gentle Korean man. Korean men groom themselves more than the average man in, say, the US, but there is such a diversity of shapes, shades, and sizes in Korea. That diversity is simply not exported in all the promotion and marketing of hallyu (the Korean cultural wave). The pressure to look a certain way perhaps makes it seem like most cosmopolitan Koreans look “fine” or more presentable than what you’d see on the streets of Los Angeles.

But that pressure falls much more on women. School uniforms are supposed to be worn so tight young girls have complained of not being able to move comfortably in school, face pictures are often required on resumes, you’re openly judged for sneaking off to the convenience store and looking unkempt . Journalist hawon-jung noticed in her book about the rise of the feminist movement in Korea that in a company, female employees had a list of 20 appearance requirements to meet, from head to toe, where men were told to only wear matching suits.

PS: Ever since I was in Korea last year, my social media algorithms are constantly offering K-beauty or hair procedures. The tattoos and hair powder, the styling of baby hair. My conclusion is that there is no pore that Koreans do not touch to improve. It seems exhausting. Do you think it is like that for the people who live there?

HEY: For women in their 20s and 30s, yes. Even as an Asian-American in Seoul, I had a feeling that my body wasn’t good enough the way it was, and that I was less welcome in society because I didn’t fit in. I was too big for “one size (one size)” clothing (a US size 2) treatments to remove them?” So there’s a cosmetic fix supply logic that feeds demand: if you can fix that call problem, why wouldn’t you?

PS: Your book is about Korean beauty and everything related to it, but it’s not just about Korea. Why should everyone be watching this space?

HEY: Korea is exceptionally fertile territory for appearance-based industries to thrive because there is an emphasis on social harmony, a futuristic society that is increasingly virtual and visual, and hyper-capitalist ideas of “doing it” by getting rich. All this leads to placing our appearance as a matter of personal choice and our bodies as malleable. But the forces I just listed are not limited to Korea. They are just more pronounced there.

We often reinforce these industrialized beauty ideals with our passive participation. I know I certainly have. Reflecting on it was helpful and liberating.

Beauty is full of paradoxes. What feels luxurious and connective can easily become exhausting and regimented. Pain and pleasure take place on the same canvas: our bodies. I think it’s helpful to first take a moment and reflect on the ways in which we almost automatically empower the notion that our value comes down to how we look, and from there break that bond and be kinder to ourselves. We are not just a collection of body parts to be seen, and we can try to cultivate an inner appreciation of what our bodies can do and feel. That is a key change that I am trying to make in my own life.