Vanity, thy name is pain

11Aug07

I was going through Popseoul and found some interesting posts — all of which concerning the concept of beauty in Korea. This is the same country where the majority of the celebrities and any other public figure has had some sort of plastic surgery. The most popular (and this applies the majority of East Asia and some of Southeast Asia) are the nose jobs and double eyelid surgery. It’s considered that a higher nose is more attractive than a flatter one that many Asians tend to have. The double eyelids is for the people who have small eyes and want to “open” them up. I think the concept of bigger eyes being beautiful is universal though. Basically, they want more “Western” features, since that is considered to be more attractive.

Painful surgeries to cure all of your complexes:

• If you want to be taller: very painful process of breaking the bones in your shins, pulling apart the two halves of the bones so there is a small gap, and have the bones grow in between the gap. All of this agony can make you a couple centimeters taller.
• If you want a smaller face/v-line: very painful procedure to reshape your jaw. Ow.
• Higher nose: reshape the nose with the use of silicone and many other things. Don’t go overboard like Michael Jackson though.
• Bigger eyes/double eyelids: process of making a partial incision on the eyelid so the extra skin can fold up more, thus creating the double eyelid and bigger eyes.
• Bigger breasts: breast augmentation which is pretty much stuffing silicone into your existing (or non-existing) breasts to make them larger. Although, the bigger the breasts the more prone you are to back pain and whatnot.

I’m not exactly sure how many people actually go through the pain of the surgery to make you taller, but the ones that do must be extremely determined to be a couple centimeters taller. Seriously, ow. The same goes with the procedure to reshape the jaw, although I think the procedure is more popular than the leg one. The last two are extremely popular, although you really don’t want to end up like Wacko Jacko when it comes to the nose jobs. *shudders* And women who are considering breast augmentation should also keep in mind that after a certain point extremely large breasts look gross.

Qualifications to be beautiful in Korea (especially if you want to be a star):

• A small face. Examples on how to measure your face can be found here, here, and here.
• Double eyelids/big eyes.
• A high nose.
• For females to have a v-line — to have the chin in a V shape. Example can be seen here.
• For females to have an s-line (curves or an hour-glass figure). Example.

There are probably more, but those are the major ones. Now, I don’t exactly have a small face. I measured it with some measuring tape and it’s 20 cm. Not exactly sure how that translates into terms of beauty in Korea, but I’m assuming anything 20 cm and up isn’t good. I covered my face up with a CD and took a picture of myself to see how it looked. I tried to look at myself in a mirror while doing this before I realized that the CD blocked my line of vision. The majority of my face is covered just like in the example, so I guess that’s a good thing. And the last bit for the small face is that if your face is bigger than two fists, then well… you get the point. I tried this and I think I would need a third fist to cover it up. Then again, I have very tiny hands which would equal to tiny fists. So, I guess I have a medium sized face after averaging out everything. I already have pretty good sized eyes, and I’m fine with that. My entire family seems to have good sized eyes when they were younger without having to resort to surgery, so I guess I’m lucky. I guess I was lucky to inherit a higher nose from my dad, although I think the luck ends there when it concerns any of the genes I inherited from him. I have somewhat of a v-line and s-line. So, does that mean I would be considered cute in Korea?

Also, I’m quite jealous how a majority of Asian people have thinner and softer hair. I inherited my dad’s hair and it’s very thick and a bit coarse (especially when it’s at the 50% dry/50% wet stage). The texture is really weird — it’s either coarse, silky/smooth, or frizzy. Usually, it’s a combination of all three. He also gave me a large head, which makes it a bit hard to find hats large enough to actually fit. Some people said that my large head means I’m housing a large brain inside. Others said that it means I have a very thick skull… I think it’s a mixture of the two. Bleh, I hate genetics.

Filed under: babblings   |  7 Comments
Tags: beauty, plastic surgery