K-Culture and Perplexing Standards

So I logged into my Plenty Of Fish (POF) account last night for the first time in ages, which has the function of throwing your account back into the top-picks that pop up whenever anyone does a search - a ploy to keep people coming back for results no doubt. So this morning it was no surprise I had several new "X Wants to Meet You!" emails. One of them is a cute Korean girl from New Mexico who apparently just moved here. Made me remember something weird I heard about Korean beauty standards being very different than Western ones, and although I found her to be attractive enough, I wondered if she would be attractive by Korean beauty standards. So I Googled "pretty korean girl" to see what popped up.

I knew from previous experience that the Asian cultures in general tend to value pale, untouched alabaster skin-tones, and often make fun of us dumb Westerners for using tanning beds and paying for otherwise free sun rays to artificially tan ourselves.

Like Western culture, Korean culture seems to value big pretty doe eyes and thinnness.

However, they have an odd obsession with the "V-Line" facial structure, meaning a sort of heart-shaped face with a broad forehead and narrow, pointy chin. Apparently, given the natural propensity for Koreans to have more square-ish faces, countless thousands get cosmetic jaw-bone surgery to more closely resemble this ideal. I'd heard about this in a YouTube video I saw awhile back, and also found it again in this blog called Jen in Korea, about a skinny white girl working as a teacher in South Korea.

A quick Google image search brought me to this Korean advertisement, which literally made me LOL because it seems so comically culturally self-aware and hilariously self-deprecating:




This picture was sort of the point during my little random meandering internet expedition on the subject that made me decide I had to make a post to share this info upon which I had stumbled.

According to that blog and several other sources I found as I broadened my search, what seemed odd to me was, for one, the weird worship of the "double eyelid," where you have an extra little fold on your upper eyelid - apparently it's a wildly popular surgery over there as well since few Koreans are born with it. I can sort of see how slightly larger eyes could be more attractive, but they seem to fixate specifically on the double-eyelid skin fold thing.

But the thing that really made me squick, however, was reading that they value thinness so much that not only are they willing to forego most muscle mass in arms and legs (OMG can you say unhealthy?) for the sake of thinness, (granted, not unlike many Westerners), but that they have a very common surgery of calf-muscle reduction, which seems mostly to consist of slicing off layers of calf muscle to make legs thinner (and, consequently, weaker and with complications later in life). I find healthy, strong girls who work out at least to some extent to be much more attractive than a tiny, fragile little ultra-effeminate thing that I'd be afraid I would break in half if I didn't handle her like a butterfly. I mean I get that femininity is attractive, but not to the point that a woman is too frail or weak to run from danger, protect her child, or take care of said child in other ways that may require lifting things.

One other common thing they do that struck me as particularly odd is to insert custom-shaped silicone sub-dermal forehead implants under the skin, to make the forehead bulge out in a slightly more rounded fashion.

One thing I can surely compliment them on, however, is their tendency to always be dressed well and looking coordinated and sharp, unlike our horrifying American People of WalMart standard.

Given my propensity and fondness for cosmetic procedures, I'm in no position to bitch about any other cultures' practices - and I'm not - I guess I just find their specific fixations to be a little odd - why calf muscles, eyelids, foreheads, and tiny, undercut jawlines of all things? It seems like such a random, mixed bag of features. Westerners pay big bucks to get sharp, sculpted European-model-esque jawlines, and work out to have toned, muscled legs and arms, while Korean culture largely seems to strive for just the opposite.

K-Culture, I believe, has just recently (in terms of decades or eras I mean) exploded onto the global scene, and they are voracious about it - Given how big Japanese culture has influenced Western culture since it got super-popular in the last ~2 decades or so, how do you think the proliferation of Korea's often-contradictory norms will affect the it?

 

It'll pass.

I'm sure any dude that was of age in the early '90s remembers the absolutely gargantuan breast implants American women were getting.

People of whatever culture may have a wacky, unattainable body ideals but only a handful of dedicated nutjobs with disposable income will go under the knife for it.

Prime Examples: Synthol, calf implants, human Muppet syndrome and... I'm not even going to link Carrot Top as an example of why anabolic steroids are bad. That dude gives me nightmares.

...

As I mentioned in the plastic surgery thread, I once dated a Korean girl (very typical Korean round face, beautiful) and her mother had "Gwai Lo" eyelid surgery done in the '90s. They've always been into Western eyes.

...

I think we can all agree that natural modification is best.

One trend that I'm really happy to see (for reasons both above and below the belt) is women getting into the hit-the-iron, get-some-muscle, strong-is-sexy thing that CrossFit has created. Everybody wins when girls are on the squat rack.

Awww, yeaaah.

 

Does art influence the desire or is it the desire influencing the art?

 

Good point, anime characters certainly tend to have the "pointy V-Line face" look, along with the big puppy eyes thing.

Much props for the Gattaca reference, that's one of my favorite movies. I'm definitely a borrowed ladder in some sense or another.

Also, I've heard it said that Filipinos are the "mutts" of the Asian world, and I think it was Lisa Lampanelli who said the Philippines are Asia's "Mexico..."

Natural modification can only go so far, but I can surely agree that anything beyond that line should be done in moderation and with great care.

I agree 100% on the CrossFit thing, strong fit women are sexy women.



And the best for last... Synthol! For the low, low price of your future health and all the respect anyone ever might have had for you, you too can look like a horrifyingly disfigured douche-bag with massive man-tits and arm-tumors!

 

Isn't Brazil is also another hotbed of crazy nip and tuck action?

Can't have that many women looking like comic book characters without it.

 

The real issue of course is what is really a cultural trend, and what is a fringe activity.

For example, I was in LA not long ago and saw some really awful plastic surgery. Women who looked more like a caricature of themselves with exaggerated lips eyes and cheeks. Still very very few women in the country do that sort of thing. They get over talked about because its something to talk about, and talk badly about.

There are people on this forum which I'm sure have done body modifications that wouldn't be mainstream outside of their peer groups.

Another issue I think is that in the desire to be LOOK AT ME I'M DIFFERENT!!!11one, it continually escalates. It wasn't long ago that a single tattoo was rebellious, or a male with an earring was a rebel. Now that such are comfortably conformist nonconformist, those who would have been the rebel need to up the anti to achieve the same effect.

I see such modification as less to do with beauty and more to do with attention seeking. I'm not even saying thats wrong, why not, but the extremes people go to it makes me feel sorry for some in the long term.

 

Your LA experience sounds like the Human Muppet syndrome Plan9 mentioned.

As far as fringe/novelty versus cultural trend, I think K-Culture's propensity for these certain surgeries stems from a deeply ingrained set of cultural beauty ideals - so while they may seem outlandish or "fringe" to us, as long as their culture continues to love the facial V-Line and share America's weird love of freakishly skinny legs, I think those things might stay fairly mainstream for them. And if the fresh K-Culture hits the West Coast like a tsunami and the rest of the country by Internet over the next decade, I wonder how it will affect America beauty ideals? A fair amount of Japanese trends caught on and stuck around - although often in slightly modified Japanese/American hybrid forms. Western culture - particularly the subcultures on the West Coast - tend to share some cultural mainstays with K-Culture already, so it might not be a far cry from being be a mutual cultural love affair.

 

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JXUA8oFWCc

 

Of vague relation - Normcore: The new "Rebellious"

Normcore: Fashion for Those Who Realize They’re One in 7 Billion

The Real Meaning Of Normcore, The Fashion Trend That Went Oddly Viral

 

Time to get that tramp stamp.

 

Am I a bad person for always liking the tramp stamp?

 

I think it's a classic, as long as it's well-done and not overly trashy