Korea's Cultural Beauty Standards

Which country do you think has the highest rate of plastic surgery in the world? The U.S.? Brazil? Nope, it’s South Korea. For this blog post I have gotten my information from three sources, two of which are from personal stories and one on research and surveys. Many aspects of Korean culture has a great influence on the consuming choice of women, cosmetic surgery being one of the biggest.

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Personally, growing up it wasn’t at all that uncommon to hear from family members that I was getting fat. Or that my skin was getting darker and I needed to invest more on skin-lightening creams and skin care products. When I politely declined their offer, the next thing I know are packages of skin-care products sent from Korea. Despite constant picking and nagging about how I should look, they justified bullying my self-esteem buy saying it was for my sake. There’s a limit to how far cultural values should go. It shouldn’t go to the point where it wrecks families and more unfortunately, yourself.

As pointed out in the opening of Beyond Beauty with Grace Neutral, the pressure felt by women to conform to beauty ideals is experienced across many cultures, but South Korea has one of the highest, if not pickiest standard. “It could be summarized as large eyes (with a crease, of course), straight, small nose, V-shaped jawline, and poreless, porcelain skin. But that's just the face. You'll also need to be thin and tanned skin is frowned upon — though currently, the trend is also to be more muscular in a subtle, sculpted way.” These characteristics are just some of the things society expects all women to have. And the expectations sometimes hit too close to home. Sabrina Shim, the author of What It’s Like Growing Up With Korean Ideals shares a personal experience of hers: “She [her mom] would tug on the tip of my nose to stretch it somehow. She talked a lot about how it was necessary to be pretty and smart in order to succeed. She delighted in the fact that I didn't have a flat face and that I already had relatively large eyes, despite the mono lids. She kept me out of the sun. As I became a teenager, weight became a concern for her even though I was slim. "Be careful, the Shim family genes means you'll be fat," she regularly warned. I was immediately sent to a dermatologist once I started getting spots. She bought me "brightening" (ie, lightening) skincare products. Needless to say, my self-esteem became a little fragile”.

As Patricia Marx of the New Yorker puts it, Korean pop culture “shapes not only what music you should listen to but what you should look like while listening to it,” adding that nose jobs and double-eyelid surgeries are now common high school graduation presents in Korea. According to the BBC, 50 percent of South Korean women in their 20s have now had cosmetic surgery. Julianna Haahs stated, “I'm sharing this personal story because I want to change culture.” Like me and Sabrina, her family told her that she used to be pretty, but she gained weight and her "appearance has 'deteriorated'" since her last visit. Despite the fact that these commenters were her elders, she retorted that they couldn't talk to her like this, because it was hurtful (not to mention factually incorrect). Her family said she should be eager to hear this kind of critique, because “Americans aren't as direct”.
Although the growing popularity of cosmetic surgery and product usage isn’t going to die down anytime soon, the culture behind it and the crooked mentality of how you're supposed to look to represent your country should be changed to focus on the love the women should have of her own body.