The Yearning for Whiter Skin

An article in the Chosun Ilbo talks about how Koreans want whiter skin (stating the obvious).

Article Here

It says:
"White skin has always been a symbol of wealth and status and therefore a powerful standard for beauty."

I get that back in the day dark skin meant that you were a farm worker but in todays world dark skin means you could afford to go to Bora Bora for vacay no?

I am all for a porcelain complexion as much as the next guy but the girls here take it too far. They look sickly and its not hot.

Plastic, Plastic Everywhere

The plastic surgery ads are too graphic for my taste and they bombard you with grotesque images (I really do not need to see someone's rogue toes at 8 Am). As mentioned before, plastic surgery is huge here. Mostly to get westernized eyes or a bigger bridge in the nose. However, breast implants are also growing in popularity.

Sometimes, when I leave my Kindle or IPod at home, I play a game in the subway that I like to call "Guess the Surgery", it can potentially be played the whole duration of the ride. After all, 50% of Korean women have the eye surgery, including my dear mother. My father's mother actually insisted my mother get the surgery before he married her. Now you know where I get the bitchiness from.

To me it is unfortunate because everyone is starting to look like the same person when they don't need to. What I love about NY (as opposed to La La Land or Seoul) is that a girl can make it with subpar looks as long as she has great style. I suppose Korea is a very looks oriented culture, what developed nation isn't? If it makes a woman feel better about herself then who I am to judge. I just have a problem with a society that places THAT much emphasis on an eye wrinkle and force their kids as young as 12 to get the surgery (true story, happened in my friend's middle school class).

Korean standard of beauty below. As I walked past this ad I overheard a girl say to her friend "Who wants to see this girl, she got her eyes, nose, and lips done. Is that pretty?" My thoughts exactly. I suppose I have to hand it to her, her surgeon def knew what he was doing.