Like a heart surgeon, Elise Hu cracks open the chest of Korean beauty standards under a glaring light of pragmatism and personal reflection. Although K-beauty has been widely hailed as a phenomena accepted, even embraced, by the average American, how many of them are aware of its dark roots or cultural implications? How can Americans consume an industry they know little about when it is one of Korea’s top exports, and capitalism reigns supreme?
“Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital” gives a comprehensive journey into the origins of what many Koreans deem “beautiful”: Hu digs into the political and historical origin, starting with social inequities and government oppression in the 1970s. During this time of South Korea’s industrialization, General Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship controlled the fashion industry. Park determined the proper length of hair down to the length of skirts so citizens could focus on national development, since beauty and fashion were distractions to productivity. Later on, as protests began to move the needle toward democracy, beauty and fashion were seen as less of a threat, and K-beauty began to bloom. Flash forward to today, where K-pop and homogenism are sold in the same package, and selling an image of a group is perhaps more lucrative than selling an actual product.
Hu breaks down the context of every facial cleansing step, from double cleansing to exfoliation, and ties it to a historical origin. For instance, one beauty process known as “skin bleaching” is a nod to Korea’s Gojoseon period, which ended in 108 B.C.E. Since pale skin meant an individual lived a life out of the sun — hence, labor free — the implicit association was that fair skin was desired. This preference exacerbated an intergenerational carryover of classism and value placed on the upper class. Even today, highly sought-after surgical procedures are only obtainable by the wealthy, leaving the remainder of…
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