When I graduated from high school, my mother offered to pay for my double eyelid surgery as a graduation gift. I considered the offer for exactly two days and refused, not necessarily because I wouldn’t want my eyes to be rounder and bigger, but because I was absolutely terrified of the concept. Imagine removing a thin strip of skin — and fat and muscle, if necessary — from your upper eyelids and stitching it all back together. Who in their right mind would do that voluntarily? Many South Koreans would.

South Korea has the most plastic surgeries per capita on Earth, with over [980,000 operations recorded in 2014 alone] (https://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-vainest-countries-in-the-world-2015-8). This is a whopping 20 procedures per 1,000 people. This is mainly because of the societal norms that actively encourage people to prefer large eyes, a straight nose and plump lips on a small, V-shaped face with flawless skin, topped off with a slender figure. Double eyelid surgery, the costs of which range from $500 to $1500, seems to be the simplest and cheapest change one can make to their appearance. Rhinoplasties, commonly known as nose jobs, make one’s nose straight and pointed at the tip and are just as common; breast augmentation surgeries and liposuctions are for the more daring, as they lead to more side effects and are significantly more costly.

This fixation on certain features is reinforced by the society’s focus on physical appearance, and a culture which is blinded to a very one-dimensional perspective of beauty; unique, individual features are not glorified. Trends must be followed, and these trends are definitely more harsh on women than men. South Korea’s Confucian cultural roots result in women ‘listening’ to societal norms and strictly conforming to them, adding to internal feelings of insecurity and inferiority in exchange for a mask that provides a shallow sense of confidence. In South Korea, being ‘presentable’ does not simply consist of proper attire; physical appearance is considered a sign of respect and diligence that each individual seeks to project from their persona. Certain occupations, most notably flight attendants, explicitly state ‘physical requirements’ for their potential applicants; anyone who has boarded a Korean Air flight in the past is likely to remember that all the flight attendants have similar features with flawless skin, and are dressed in the same blue uniform that clings to their slender figures.

Another possible cause for this phenomenon is South Korea’s classist culture, where looking ‘wealthy’ is a beauty standard. Fair, flawless skin is idealized because even in the past, wealthy people did not work out “in the fields”. In contrast, tanned skin is associated with the working class. While tanning is a common practice amongst people in the West, ‘whitening’ products are an inextricable part of the South Korean cosmetic industry, or the “K-beauty” trend. Skincare product advertisements always have the select adjectives of ‘youthful’, ‘pale’ and ‘dewy’, as do daily skincare routines that may take up to 10 steps. Foundation is usually only offered for lighter skin tones, as companies rarely manufacture and produce products for the more tanned, natural Asian skin tones. K-pop stars, who hold wide spheres of influences in South Korean society, are the faces of this industry — both explicitly, since they publicly advertise beauty products, and implicitly, since the correlation between their popularity and features enhanced by these products upholds the beauty standards of South Korea.

A growing number of women are challenging this national attitude by partaking in the feminist movement known as, “Escape the Corset.” South Korea has the highest gender pay disparity among all [OECD countries] (https://www.oecd.org/korea/Gender2017-KOR-en.pdf), and has also ranked 115th out of 149 countries in terms of the gender gap between men and women, according to a 2018 report from the World Economic Forum. In a society which remains deeply patriarchal, South Korean women who don't conform to beauty standards set by men face disadvantages in the workplace. One notable case from November 2018 was of Yogerpresso (a coffee franchise popular in South Korea) firing a female employee on her first day because she did not have any makeup on.

In response, inspired by the global #MeToo movement, young South Korean women are now destroying expensive makeup and cutting their hair short in a protest against South Korea’s male-dominated society. Despite significant resistance from the young male population of South Korea — 76 percent of South Korean men in their 20s and 66 percent of men in their 30s opposed the country's feminist movement — women are now realizing that a change in the South Korean male mindset is as necessary as their own rejection of the existing standardized femininity and myth of the concept of ‘beauty’.