Korean Beauty (part 2)

Sadly the most read post on my blog is, by far, an older post on Korean Beauty. The title is a little misleading, perhaps even at odds with the actual text of the post, as I was talking more about the high plastic surgery rates in Asia. So after so many comments I thought I should do a little bit more digging and resurrect the topic.

Korea’s massive rates of elective surgery seem to be fuelled by the unrealistic beauty standards, massive cosmetic surgery industry, and possibly even the remnant Neo-Confucius ideals as to the role of women in Korean society. There is a pressure on even the youngest girls to grow up feminine and beautiful, and even the elementary kids wear make-up and talk about what it means to be beautiful. Then again teens around the world all want to look better, or at least different, then their genetics allow. Yet knife and toxin can have unsurprising physical and mental side-effects.

surgery can go wrong

One of the overlooked facets of the plastic surgery industry, practically invisible in Korea, is the danger of elective surgery and the complications  that can arise from even the simplest procedure. A simple rule of thumb is that every surgery carries risk. There are no 100% safe procedures.

Of course the desire to change the body isn’t restricted to Asia, or even to surgery. Women around the world (and to a lesser extent men) suffer through fad diets, uncomfortable cloths, and assorted beauty products all in order to look better then they think they are; a few of them even succeed. We all want to be something else, to wear a mask that makes us feel powerful and untouchable. Sometimes the mask comes from success, sometimes from a tube of French face putty makeup, and sometimes under the tender touch of a scalpel.

Korean Plastic

Women of Asian descent are the recipients of the worlds most performed plastic surgery, a process that results in a double eye-lid instead of the more common Epicanthal fold. This isn’t even restricted to woman living in Asia, the procedure is equally common in the west, as can be seen in one rather interesting blog here. Equally scary is that after a few minutes searching forums you can find literally hundreds of example of people saying how their single eyelid keeps them single, how its less attractive, and so on.

A particularly worrying post is shown below, but this whole thread can be found here

“Single eyelid + small eyes (Which the most asian people have) = not very beautiful
Single eyelid + big eyes (well, the most go under surgery, but lots of people have from the beginning big eyes) = they are very beautiful
Double eyelid + small eyes = very cute and beautiful
Double eyelid + big eyes = Very, very beautiful and handsome/awesome”

The Epicanthal fold seems to be most common in the peoples with Mongol heritage, from Eastern Asian to the American Indians. These are people that many westerners consider to be very attractive as a race, perhaps showing once again that humans often look at anything they find exotic as attractive. The strange thing is that when you ask many Caucasians about what makes these folks attractive as a race, it is often the eyes that draw their attention.

Thankfully Korea lacks any real protection against false advertising so plastic surgery will continue to be trumpeted as the completely safe cure-all for all those blemishes that distinguish between android-like perfection and real people. This means that the rhinoplasty cash cow will continue mooing and Korean youth will, as a result of their lack of developed critical reasoning skills, continue to line up to go under the knife.

As the metropolitician says “Look at it objectively, without having become accustomed to this new look. Genetically, we’re not talking much change over the last 30 years, but Koreans on television and on the streets are actually starting to look like a different race of people.“

Now I haven’t got the balls top intrude on the Grand Narrative’s turf and talk about women in the Korean media, so I’ll keep this as a light opinion piece and leave with you with Lucy Lui one FHM’s sexiest woman in the world, and Kurara Chibana, Global Beauties‘ sexiest woman alive of 2006.

Lucy Liu

Riyo Mori

Useful Links

Cosmetic Surgery Risks

Risk in creating a double eyelid

Korean Education and Critical Reasoning

Cosmetic Surgery dangers in Australia

Eyelid Origins