Stepping Away from the Mirror by Dohyeon Kim
“Hey, don’t I look so fat in these jeans?”
“No, you’re NOT fat. Look at my thighs.”
“Oh, come on. You’re already so skinny. Ugh, I hate my stomach.”
“No, I’m the one who need to go on a diet”
I see women around me engaging in such conversations on a daily basis. Also known as “fat talk,” casual shaming of the bodies of our own and others is alarmingly pervasive. So many women hate their bodies, so many women struggle to be thinner. My girl friends constantly talk about tips for losing weight, often skip school meals, and take diet pills. I hope it was just about losing weight, but it’s not; The Korean society’s standards of feminine beauty are strict: To be perceived beautiful, you need to have pale and dewy skin, V-line face, pointed nose
with a high nose bridge, big eyes, double eyelids, long eyelashes, and so on.
In order to fit into the box, many women devote vast amount of time, energy, and emotional resources in wearing makeup. The global popularity of Korean skincare and cosmetics, also called K-beauty, belies the ugly reality in which women are pressured into wearing makeup. The pressure to hide our imperfections starts from young age. By the time I entered the 8th grade, virtually every girl in my class were wearing makeup. When a girl spent a day barefaced, which rarely happened, my classmates would casually ask why she looked so “tired” and “sick.” Many of my friends confessed that they hate their natural looks, that they can’t leave their houses without putting a full face of makeup.
We are taught as children that it’s inner beauty that matters. But is it? We live in a culture where women are judged and defined by their physical appearances. What’s more, the modern concept of beauty is extremely exclusive. Every day, I’m exposed to commercials that glorify unrealistic, retouched image of women. I see male stars making fun of their female counterparts’ body sizes in TV programs and still being tolerated. I walk by dozens to hundreds of advertisements for cosmetic surgery plastered in subway stations suggesting that we need to change our bodies to be perfect. I see people judging their own daughters, friends, and students with comments like “You’re pretty but you’d be prettier once you’ve lost some weight.” I intellectually understand that our culture is problematic, but I can’t avoid influenced by it. I feel trapped when I find myself comparing me with other good-looking girls on social media.
A 2016 national survey revealed that over 60% of Korean women either were or wanted to go on a diet. The number was even higher for minors; 72% of girls thought they needed to lose weight, which was the twice of the boys who think so. Korea has one of the highest rates of plastic surgery in the world, with 1 in 3 women ages 19 to 29 saying
they’ve undergone procedures. Sales of cosmetics for children are soaring and we can easily find Youtube makeup tutorials made by girls as young as 5 years old. This is far from normal. We must start talking about how our culture affects the way in which women and girls evaluate themselves. We must talk about how a culturally reinforced fixation with beauty depletes women’s health and well-being.
Of course, there are beauty behaviors that we actually enjoy. For some women, makeup is a tool for self-expression and creativity. But if we simply conclude that beauty practices are not a problem as long as they are freely chosen, we fail to see the context—entrenched norms and cultural pressure—behind women’s desire to be beautiful. If we really want to engage in beauty practices “for ourselves,” we first need to tackle the current system that views beauty as the number one attribute that women should strive for.
Although policies like requiring labels for retouched photos of models and fining employers who ask for photographs of applicants can help, real change starts at the individual level. We should stop focusing on minute physical flaws of our bodies. We should stop feeling obliged to wear makeup every single day. We should stop telling our friends they’re pretty or skinny but instead, tell them how resilient, thoughtful, and brave they are. It is time for us to talk less about beauty and more about our other qualities. By stepping away from the mirror, we can all become freer.