The Big, White Elephant in the Room

Note: The pictures in this post were taken from the web – they were not taken by me.

OK - I'm responding quite generally to a respected fellow thinker in the Korean blogosphere, Nora of "Nora Knows Nada?"

Generally, the gist of the point she was making (and that others make) about the tired, tired subject of plastic surgery in Korea is that women aren't getting it to "look white," in the way viewers from the West who don't know much about Korean society and thought patterns seem to believe. Rather, it is argued, women are simply trying to "improve" their appearance by exoticizing their features along an aesthetic that has become Koreanized.

OK - fine. I can buy that to some extent. I also don't believe that Koreans are trying to look Caucasian or actively think about the looking "whiter."

And yes, white skin was a premium, as it was in most agrarian, pre-industrial societies in which possessing skin undarkened by the sun was a sign of extreme privilege. Such standards did pre-exist contact with the West in Korea, and such a beauty standard was influenced by Chinese culture as well, which held similar standards of beauty that held great influence on the peninsula.

That being said, let's break down these two ideas – that of trying to "look white" and the coveting of white skin – with a little more realistic, structural analysis. If we want to limit these ideas to the notion that desiring features that are undeniably rooted in one dominant "race's" beauty standard still occurs within a Koreanized context, it is easy to do so. If we argue that desiring white skin pre-existed contact with white people, that's easy to prove as well.

But this is a dangerously simplistic inductive logic, resting on a limitation on the analysis, and not pushing certain hypothesis to the point of an actual theory of how things came to pass. The logic of such arguments don't offer any explanations – and they can't – not with the lack of any explanative element. What happened to the older beauty standards? What about the timing of the change? What about the fact of the psychic commitment required to alter the body (the pain and suffering that results from cutting skin, shaving jaws, snipping nerves)? Does the fact that women are willing to go to extremes to alter the bodily traits that generally do not occur within their geno-hence-phenotype mean nothing qualitatively? Is this really the same as Jewish women getting a nosejob, or black women simply using hair relaxer?

When you look at plastic surgery in relation to Korea, you have to not just look at the limited aspects of the issue, but also see

the big, fat, white elephant in the room that is America and the West. You have to consider how having white skin here in Korea is not simply a matter of lightness anymore, of being a sign that one doesn't have to work outside in a field. The relative pallor of one's skin is now inevitably linked to notions of civility and class that are also reflected against the very real presence of white people, who are not surprisingly, positively associated with notions of civility and class.

As a foreigner with brown skin and "raced" as Black, who speaks fluent conversational Korean and knows a lot about the culture, I can tell you that this buys me not even the same treatment as an American white man who stutters out a jumbled "an-nyong-ham-ni-sheekers" that never fails to get him a boisterous round of pats on the back and girls simply yearning to ride on his jock. And nooooo – this is not my sour grapes sentiment – it's actually the same embarrassment for the Korean people when I see displays like that. Can we say "sa-dae-ju-ui" for the 21st century? Deference to white skin here is so alive and well, how can one deny that it plays any role in the decision to get one's eyes cut larger, nose Romanized, old-school high cheekbones shaved down to size, breasts enlarged, asses and lips pumped full of silicone, and nerves in the calves snipped? One can say that plastic surgery in the States or the West is also in major effect these days, but the crucial difference is that Westerners aren't getting their epicanthic fold removed, breasts reduced, cheekbones raised, nose bridges removed, or calves fattened up. Let's get real here – cultural sadaejuui goes in one direction. That's what makes the case so sad when it comes to one culture trying to attain a beauty standard set by another one.

And granted - if plastic surgery were really just a function of "personal choice" or whatever, people would be getting whatever suits them: big-ass J-Lo asses, cute flat chests, quaint "radish legs," or even ritual scarring, tatoos, etc.

But they don't. The fact is that the media and the fashion industry play a big role in setting standards for a great many people, and in the Korean case, those standards are set in the West, or even other countries that receive the same cultural messages from the West before internalizing them – namely, Japan. And a quick look at all the fashion magazines (and most fashion trends) are just rehashed American and Japanese ones. And the domestic Korean ones certainly don't set the standard that bounces out across the ocean to the West. It's big eyes and big titties for everybody, all while trying to get as much ass as you can get while starving yourself to the point of what many Korean doctors call "thin obesity," which is the strange-but-not-uncommon medical condition in Korea in which a person is at or under-weight but is possessed of so little muscle mass relative to fat that she (usually) is actually defined as medically obese (as usually defined by a set percentage of body fat). You've seen these people on the street. Just watch for girls who are as thin as rails whose calves and upper arms jiggle as they walk. Or you might just see a woman whose knees are the widest part of her leg.

Yeah, yeah. I know – everybody's trying to be thin these days. But everybody ain't cutting their faces and bodies according to the psychoses of their own culture. If Korean people had a fucked up body image problem in which women were all trying to look like Chunhyang, with the delicate features, small eyes, long black hair, and porcelain skin – that would be one thing. But middle school girls too young yet to cut their faces who get by by taping their eyes wider, who awkwardly glare their eyes as wide as possible for their euljjang cellphone camera pictures – these is what defines it as different for me.

Who are Korean people trying to be? It sure ain't any brotha man I know about. Smells like the "other man" to me.

Comments

[bluejives]

Thanks for calling a spade a spade, or in this case, the kettle calling the china tea cup white. BTW, you forgot to mention about Korean/Asian women dying their hair blonde. Not highlights. Completely blonde like Barbie. If you saw them from behind you'd be completely fooled.

Korean women claim they're not trying to be White? Yeah, them and Michael Jackson. If their intentions, whether consciously or subliminal, were totally innocent, then shouldn't their response be "well, what's wrong with trying to look White?" rather than getting all defensive about it?

This is why I respect Black women. Pound for pound, Black women have a lot more dignity, self-respect, and pride in their identity than Asian women. There's no hiding being a Black woman in a White man's world and the day she tries to be something different is the day she dies.

[benazir]

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[Asian Elephant]

I'm Asian as in Far-Eastern as defined by white Eurocentric view that all geography is viewed from a European perspective. So even if Europe is east of Asia, in the white-world view - Asia is EAST in relation to EUROPE.

Of course, I'll never be considered American because America is deemed a white nation. If you're black, you're not an American but a BLACK American, and then there are the NATIVE Americans, etc. So we all know who the real Americans are - they're white - because they don't have hyphenations and don't need to because they are the majority and pretty much own or influence the entire world!

These Asians are in DENIAL that they are heavily influenced by superpower whites and they simply want to look white. It just shows you the global grip that white nations have on this planet. If these Asian folks were living during the days of Jim Crow, they would try everything to PASS for white. It's been done before, and the blacks who looked white were able to be accepted in a white world at the cost of denying their multi-ethnic backgrounds.

Everyone's trying to look white or more white. You never see anyone trying to look black or like some South American aboriginal or a dark man from India.

It's a white bread world out there, but try to balance it with whole wheat!

[Jamie]

Asian Elephant,

I'm trying to look black, I don't what you're talking about.

The issue of people being "African-American" "Native-American", etc., has very little to do with white people (directly). I think it has to do with people wanting to find their own identity. So blame African/Native/Asian/Irish/Indian/Italian Americans for that, not "white people".

For what it's worth, I'm Canadian. My parents are Scottish. So, I actually have the requisite parental history to be able to say that I am Scottish-Canadian, b ut I don't because that's retarded. I was born in Canada, I am Canadian. For me, it's about culture, not blood, and the culture you tend to take the most from is the one you live in, not the one your great-great-great-uncles came from.

If I had my way, we wouldn't use any of those names. But I must admit that I refuse to believe that race and sex and religion matter. (I force myself to be ignorant of the way the world actually works.)

Sure I'm naive. Sure, I get disappointed by many of the people I meet. But when I think about those I haven't met yet, and many of the ones I have, I realize that my world is populated with an awful lot of really nice people who don't give a fuck if I'm white or Canadian or male or non-religious or a space geek.

(Sorry for the tangent, Michael. I was tangentially arguing the previous poster's tangent.)

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