This is simply amazing. I first saw the "Self-Esteem Campaign" in an ad on the side of a bus last summer in Seoul, but I'm glad to see it's a worldwide campaign.
This is one of the coolest videos I've ever seen, because it shows what The Photoshop Adept know about this amazing program. But for those of you who've dabbled in photography with models, it also shows you why they call them "professional makeup artists." People don't get called "professionals" and get paid salaries for nothing, you know.
Ever wonder why people get the "geisha" white look – especially Korean women in the 1990's – when a flash is used? Because everyday makeup and the makeup used for models, photography, and filming is totally different, meant to reflect light completely differently. Makeup artists get paid to apply gobs and cakes layers of makeup and make it look like there's none at all. Everyday women apply makeup so that its effects are actually noticed. Movie starts want to look great but natural, whereas fashion models want to have a mixture of both "accentuated" but also hiding the fact that they're doing a lot of hiding at the same time. These are totally different worlds we're talking here.
People are amazed that you can seamlessly erase reality with proper knowledge of the Clone Tool in Photoshop, but that's a single part of the arsenal. You can change face shape, size of key elements of the picture, pretty much anything you see. Perfect skin, cheekbones, and eye size is not usual ever there – models are just beautiful palettes to start with, from which the real work is done in Photoshop.
See if you can wrap your mind around the fact that this person below is the same person that will go on a billboard and make the glue so hot that the poster don't stick right.
Begin.
Models are a part of the art – and that's what all this really is, because it's not real – but more people need to understand just HOW MUCH of the final product isn't contributed by even the best genes, exercise, and good nutrition. From the raw contribution of the model's body, to the extensive makeup artists – several, usually – working her over, then to the computer wizards who really make her "perfect" – indeed, how could real women compete?
Makeup.
What strikes me is the extent to which in Korea, many women feel a direct pressure to really, really look just like the women seen on TV and on the big screen, whereas I think American women feel a more diffuse (but no less damaging) pressure to generally be thin, have "Madonna arms", to not have cellulite. Where this gets even more dangerous and sad is that the beauty standards applied here generally come from a place a race that is foreign to their own – eyes that are "better" the bigger they are, thin noses with an arch, longer faces, less prominent cheekbones, puffier lips, bigger breasts, longer legs, thin thighs – whew!
That's a tall order for a group of people who didn't even create their "own" unattainable beauty standard.
Evidence of the psychological damage is of the white beauty standard on black women in America. Light skin, blue eyes, long hair, etc. Most Americans know something about the contentious politics of this problem. It's hard to have heard nothing at all about it. In Korea, too, there are many social conversations going on about this, but this doesn't stop the stars from looking more and more alien to me.
Hair.
Sometimes, I'll catch a person on TV and ask a Korean person in the restaurant or bar I'm in (I don't own a TV) if that person is famous. Usually the answer is, "Are you serious?! That's XXX – she's so beautiful! She's one of the hottest new stars coming out these days!" I keep to myself that the reason I'm asking is that she looks – to my eyes – nearly deformed in her efforts to look "pretty" (read: more white).
Fan, lighting, touching up, etc..
One woman I saw – her eyes looked so big and scary with her obvious extreme surgery and big-black-iris contact lenses that I felt somewhat sick looking at her. It was past the strange urge I had to laugh when meeting hardcore players of the "big-false-eyelashes-and-enlarged-black-iris-contacts-Betty-Boop" extreme sport that was so popular a couple years ago. Sometimes, those people were a little scary, but this woman took the cake. I asked if people thought she was pretty – most replied – "Oh, my God! Are you crazy?"
I know I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but I think there's something to be said about people in Korea taking things to extremes. Whether it's "education fever" or the Gucci bag or the flatscreen TV – what strikes me is the strong envy and desire I feel here, the emotion I rarely ever feel, associated with "배 아프다", which means "my stomach hurts" (when looking at someone else who has something you really want.)
Adjusting reality – a longer neck.
Sure, there are things I want, but someone else having one of them really doesn't do much for me but remind me that I want it. But in Korea, there's something more going on, the dynamics of which are subtle and not so obvious, but once you've had to navigate a lot of social situations here, you realize that it's something I never really had to account for in one's previous American life.
Being "green with envy" is a way of expressing that back in the US that I know, but here, having too much of something others want can actually land you in social trouble. The first time I ran across it was in 1995, when I had agreed to play with this middle school girl who had won the KBS violin competition (it was Chejudo, so the pool was pretty small and it wasn't that hard). Since my cello skills were on a par with her violining ones (again, the pool was small), somebody thought that it'd be cute for us to play a duet together. I was one of the first foreigners on the island and a teacher in a school, so the local board thought it'd be a hoot.
Well, little did I know that the girl had to actually make a big decision. Another teacher explained it to me pretty simply: "If she goes on stage with you, and the other kids realize that she spent all this time with you and got special treatment, they will hate her."
Changing shapes and sizes.
Huh? Why? Was she a snooty kid? Was she mean? No, the teacher explained. She was a really nice, sweet kid – but they will just hate her. "It's just the way Korean students are," she explained. Huh? Didn't make sense to my American mind. And it still doesn't. It's not really a logic that can be explained, and individual/social psychology doesn't lend itself to easy explanation in terms of large-scale, structural explanations. It's just a logic that needs to be understood a priori and accounted for.
Another example comes from the former former Fulbright director, whose story of his adjustment might equally baffling to the non-American. He decided, as a new manager, to liven up the work culture a bit by offering an "employee of the month" thing in the mostly-Korean Fulbright office, giving a small bonus at the end of the year for the person who made it the most.
It was a huge bomb. In the end, it caused so much trouble that the office women demanded that the system be canceled, since it was causing so much tension that it was about to be big trouble. No one wanted to be selected, and was actually having the exact opposite effect on performance and morale. Instead of a pretty light award that no one took that seriously, but was a nice pat on the back sometimes at best, and at worst, a slight irritation to someone who never got picked, as in America – in the Korean case, the reality was that whomever was picked was going to suffer social consequences. To my mind, and to that director's mind – this was a total shock. He cancelled it immediately.
"Perfection."
I know people who speak English well but purposely act like they don't, because it has the potential to piss off certain people who think that she's "trying to look better than me." I quickly realized that my student-laptop, $1700 notebook – cheaper than most people's Sonys and Samsungs and IBMs here in Korea – makes people think I am "bragging" if I use it in public. I don't know. I'm not being convincing here.
There are a million anecdotal examples, none of which would actually help convince you of how different Korean-style envy "feels" or how "heavy" the looks are when people size you up here because of how you look, what kind of car you drive, what brand you are sporting, what school you came from, where you live, how many pyeong your apartment is, how pretty your girlfriend is, etc.
I mean, it's like being in LA! (Which is why I tend to avoid Kangnam, because it's like LA-squared).
In the end, I think that's why there are so many "beautiful" Korean women, the ones Korean men always like to brag about ("Aren't Korean women beautiful?") but never like you to be visibly romantically involved with (I've been told countless times in a "friendly" way to "don't date Korean women" because you are "taking away from me" – yeah...ha ha).
The street.
I wonder if people ever really think about how much Korean-style envy differs from American-style envy – instead of wanting to "have arms like Madonna" it seems in Korea that it would be "I want to be Madonna" to the extent that willpower assisted by whatever surgical techniques time and money will allow. I look at it like this – Kate Moss may put extreme pressure on American women to be thin, but too many Korean women I see would get it in their head that they need to look just like Kate Moss. And that's where the surgery begins.
And I have the sinking feeling that this ain't going in the reverse direction anytime soon – while things are starting to look more like the Korean situation in the States, if shows like The Swan or other disgusting claptrap are any indication.
It's a universal tendency to envy, but the Korean tendency to the extreme seems to heat that up quite a bit. Whether it's "my kid's gotta go to Seoul National University" or "98 on an exam means you were lazy" or "I can't speak English like a native speaker!" (umm, because you're not one – what's the big deal?) – competition can get hot here.
Here's to a campaign that may, with the powerful knowledge that it offers, bring that heat down just a notch. Knowing that there's some "touching up and stuff" is one thing – seeing the extent of the "lie" is quite another.
And again - don't forget to watch that video!
Big props to Dove!
