Learning a bit more about Korean culture – from an angle that I haven’t seen before. When we visit Korea we are often passing beauty shops, people wearing post-surgical braces and bandages, and have seen the unrelenting focus on appearance in the media surrounding K-pop idols and music stars.
Thanks to a unique blend of circumstances this book was able to be written and the writer could confront this issue head-on. There is a lot to unpack here, and plenty of cultural landmines to avoid. Somehow it all worked out well for us, the readers, and we could really get a good look at what kinds of things are at work behind this huge beauty industry.
The scale is wider than just Korea, however, and I liked how the author frequently brought things back to America or other countries. It was extremely well-researched, with footnotes and sources, and thanks to this it is all easier to believe. Because really, the intense focus on one’s outer appearance seems unbelievable. The effects that your appearance has on your family, career, and everyday life are significant and pretty much unavoidable in Korean society.
With social media comes an even wider audience to view your outside to make judgements on your inside. The writer takes a social media-focused lifestyle as a given here, and so people that aren’t so addicted to posting online will probably have less interest in what it all means personally.
The book is written for any kind of reader but I really felt like the writer was speaking to a female audience more often than not, and so for me I had less at stake than a woman reading this might. Sometimes I felt the writing tending to extrapolate what is happening in Korea a little too far and wide in an effort to create a sense of urgency or relevancy, but maybe that comes from writing as an NPR correspondent. A little less hyperbolic tone might have been better for a book rather than an article. But I’m glad they took the time to address the issue and all the ramifications here.
Excellent book – and I’ll be keeping my eyes open next time we’re visiting Korea! The next book I am reading is The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang.
