One big change I noticed in myself in my second year in Japan (all those years ago), was that I became more and more reluctant to go to the neighbourhood convenience store in what I deem home clothes. And while I have pretty much steadfastly refused all forms of makeup (even after going through finishing school and after being in a company that mandated makeup in a certain style), I carry with me this reluctance to “dress down” when I’m out. Hence me in a skirt or dress while the rest of my cell mates are in T-shirt and shorts on a cell group vacation.

This is just one small example of how our surrounding culture can change how we show ourselves to society, and it is nothing compared to the beauty culture that Elise Hu was presented with when she moved to Korea from 2015 to 2018 for NPR. I’ve actually heard of this book, but I was convinced to pick it up by its Japanese title (and because it came highly recommended from the Japanese book podcast I listen to), which translates to “There are 1000 steps on the staircase to being a beauty and I’m about to be crushed but I’m believing in this sheet mask” which… is actually a pretty enticing title. It just sounds so fun, though the topic is not really that fun once we get into the pressures of beauty culture. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

What I really appreciated about this book was Hu’s commitment to writing it from “speaking nearby”, where she is close to her subject (which she is! she lived in Korea, she tried these treatments!) but not speaking on their behalf or in their place or on top of them. It’s a very respectful attitude to take and I appreciate it. I think the only thing that would make it better would be if there was more reference to Korean and Asian thinkers and cultural analysis rather than going back to the same American writers that we have pretty much always heard of – like, I like Helen Anne Peterson, but this is Korea and I would love to have this to be such an Asian-focused book, especially since Chinese and Japanese beauty standards are A Thing and we should be looking at how all these communities interact and influence each other in turn. As a non-American, I don’t really need everything to reference back to American cultural norms, though I also appreciate that many Americans may like that.

Before I get into the points that caught my attention, I thought it might be fun to talk a bit about neo-Confucianism, which Hu mentions as having particular influence on Korean culture. While “neo” may make you think it’s new, Neo-Confucianism actually came about as early as the Song dynasty (1000 years ago) and had more Buddhist and Daoist influences, and also codified gender roles into cosmic order. That’s how we get the Neo-Confucian saying “A woman’s greatest virtue is obedience.”

Ok, now back to the book. Some points that were new to me and that I found interesting were:

• How beauty was used subversively but has since become codified as a requirement. Hu points out that the early twentieth century Modern Girl look helped women to escape class distinctions and even their ethnicity (important as Korea was under Japanese rule at one point) which gave them a mobility that they would not have otherwise enjoyed.
• The link between Korean culture and Korean national pride – which may make people hesitate to criticise it on an international stage as that may not be seen as patriotic
• Korea as a hypermodern society, where surveillance technology and self-improvement technologies feed off each other in a vicious cycle, so you not only are able to look good, you feel the pressure to look good because you’re being watched all the time!
• “In a capitalist hustle culture, there are actually tangible rewards. By beautifying themselves, women are making economically rational choices to turn the self into an investment opportunity. Beauty work can be separated from sexual desirability, as this is not a wholly sexual pursuit. It can empower, economically, or as a form of self-protection and expression” – I feel that this quote sums up the complexities with endorsing choice feminism wholeheartedly. Because, yes, technically one can choose not to take part in punishingly high standards of beauty but when the stakes are so high, do you really have the choice to opt out if all you want (reasonably) is to live a comfortable life?
• In the same vein, Hu describes well the paradoxical way beauty care works – “The financial and psychological drain created by the beauty industry is, for many of us, exhausting. But working to get to our ideal self or even just temporarily getting close rto it is alluring and psychologically affirming, at least in the short run. The pleasure and feeling of power that we derive from improving ourselves may be deceptive and fleeting, but they are also very real.”

This is not exhaustive, by the way. Hu also manages to cover her experience as an Asian foreigner in Korea (I’ve always felt that the Asian foreigner experience in East Asian countries is different from the Caucasian experience that forms the most common narrative that we encounter, and of course likewise it is different for each other ethnic group), as well as explore the impact of beauty culture on parenthood and children. It is a fascinating book, one that reveals South Korea as a place that is both traditional in how they think of themselves and are very much influenced by their past cultural history, but also have managed to combine medical technology in new ways (sometimes not imagined of in Western medical fields) to meet new beauty standards. It really is a mix of traditional and modern (which is also present in marketing – another concept explored in the book) and it also sounds exhausting to me, someone who is very much not in line with beauty standards.

I talked about how the way I dress changed after moving to Japan. I should also probably mention that after a few years, especially after using apps like Snow which let you easily edit yourself to look slimmer, white, etc, I started to hate the way I looked. I never could measure up to the “me” that I could edit myself to be, but thankfully because beauty medical culture was not as advanced (and also because I could never figure out how to put on makeup effectively, even after lessons), I opted to delete the apps rather than embark on a 1000 step routine for beauty. In the long run, I think that’s the better choice, though being on Chinese social media does make me doubt myself sometimes. Because of this, I think it’s clear that Flawless explores a lot of issues that are both contemporary and are likely to have resonance in the future as well.