This is The New Yorker article about how Korea is the world capital of plastic surgery. Which is true. But a white American visiting Korea to find out more about its innate inferiority? I see a problem in that.
Definition of
beauty has transformed over time in the modern history of Korea. The standard
prior to Western invasion was the round, flat nose and minimized eyes arranged in oblong face.
The Portrait Of A Beauty by Shin Yunbog (1758~?)
Photograph of a gisaeng in late Josun dynasty
As American consumer goods and Hollywood
movies started to bombard the Far Eastern world, Japan began its imperialist
agenda to take over the rest of the Asia. While ravaging the “primitive lands”
of its neighboring nations under the supremacist justification, Japan developed
a very unique standard of beauty.
It started as slavish replica of Western
commercial illustrations. The imitation gradually evolved to become very
distinctively “Japanese” ideal, such as Nakahara Junich’s depiction
of women with overly exaggerated highlights in the eyes, noses as a simple line
and a dot, and lips smaller than a fingertip. The ideal was passed down to
mangakas such as Takahashi Makoto in 60’s, further popularizing the typical
cosmic-eye look. The style has gradually matured to become an emblematic
particularity of manga, attracting the younger generations from all sides of
the globe.
Illustration of Singing by the Plum Garden by Toyohara Chikanobu, 1887
Notice the Japanese ladies are dressed in typical late Victorian dresses.
Nakahara Junichi (
1913-1988)
Takahashi Makoto
The change seems pretty dramatic, doesn’t it?
The modernization
process of Asia was ferocious and shameless. Behind the adorable sparkly eyes
lies an endless record of bloodthirsty savagery: Asia was kept busy killing
each other while the West exploited its resources; Japan, allegedly to
compensate for their recent defeat by the West, conducted uncountable forms of
systematic torture in the colonized territories. The Japanese rule is
remembered in many of the colonized Asian nations as equivalent to that of
Nazis: human-body experiments and sex slavery still remains in the collective
memory of the people.
There was much blame put on women who lost their virginity
to foreign soldiers, even when they were forced into sexual slavery, as if
their stolen virtue was symbolic of the nation’s soil and resource. In the
midst of such horror was the new set of standards for women. As a result, they
not only strived to look better than their neighbors, but also as good as the
Hollywood actresses with long, lustrous lashes and flaxen locks.
Asian women born and raised in Asia
still suffer from the ideal set by the “modernized” men of the early
20th century. Westerners tend to read it as an intrinsically Asian problem,
blaming the collectivist mindset rooted in Confucianism. Patricia Marx, in her
article About Face, goes on to interview
a few scholars in Korea to examine the origin of such craze over plastic
surgery.
A psychology professor at Yonsei University, one of the most
privileged educational institutions in Korea, assures that collectivism is the
main attribution to the popularization of cosmetic corrections.
“In Korea,
we don’t care what you think about yourself. Other people’s evaluations of you
matter more… It’s not that you’re trying to stand out and look good. It’s
that you’re trying not to look bad.” He continued, “This is a very competitive
society. In the old days, if your neighbor bought a new TV or new car you would
need to buy a new TV or car. Now we all have these basic things, so the
competition has moved up to comparing one’s looks, health, and spiritual things
as well.”
The rest of the
article is about Marx interviewing various people in Korea or simulating social
situations as an undercover journalist to revalidate Confucianism as the most
powerful motivation behind the plastic surgery.
Which must’ve been thrilling. I
wish I could visit a presumably less developed nation just to discover more
about their innate inferiority.
Let’s assume, although I’m about 99.8 percent
sure this is not the case, that all Asian girls want to reach the average
because of their fervent passion for Confucius.
Then where did the definition
of the average emerge? Who handed televisions and cars to Koreans in the first
place? How did the “competitive society” formulate and what are they
competing against? Are they really comparing themselves to each other, or the Western
standards barraged on their land through magazines and movies?
Isn’t the
psychology professor, serving in this article as a reliable resource for Marx’s
argument, also an individual who had been “cultured” with exclusively
Western ideas? Psychology didn’t exist in Asian scholarship until the West
brought it to the East. The West reassures its superiority by repeatedly labeling
Confucianism as the source of every Eastern vice. What brings Asian girls to
the operating table is not Confucius, it is the internalized racism: the belief
that everything white is inherently good. No one in Korea is fighting to get dread locks
and tan skin; it’s the eyelids, higher nose bridge, lighter skin and thinner
lips they want. Or they’ve been educated to want. While Korean girls pay a
fortune to recreate their looks closer to Caucasian, an expert in the Western psychology
objectifies them as submissive and vulnerable, so he can elevate in this Eurocentric world.
Why do Asians compare themselves to others instead of being themselves? Because the West made us the perpetual Other. Because Asians had to kill and rape each other in order to prove their worth in the eyes of the West. Because the world keeps telling you that no matter how good you are if you’re not white you’re not good enough.
ugh 