By: Sydney Volkerts
While it is important for any educated consumer of information to note that any statistics may be arguably biased to some degree, a sweep of the available data overwhelmingly suggests that approximately one in five South Korean women has undergone at least one form of cosmetic surgery – but the numbers don’t stop there. An increasing number of South Korean men are also going under the knife, and many, if not most, South Korean women undergo much more than simply one single procedure: as VICE news captured in their interview with a Korean woman, “In Korea, we call doing your eyes and nose the basics. They’re the standard procedures.”
This twenty percent of South Korean plastic surgery patients is, statistically, at least, remarkably high, especially in consideration of the United States average (oftentimes listed as being the second or third world leader in cosmetic surgery) of one in twenty citizens seeking surgical perfection. The beauty myth and pressures for women to seek its ideal is certainly nothing new – although undeniably stronger than ever with the aid of increasing mass media, online social networking, and photoshop – and yet, South Korea is by far the world’s leader in plastic surgery per capita, indicating that, at least for now, this new phenomenon bears a unique geographic distinctness.
Reactions to this new beauty paradigm for South Korean women range from enthusiastic support to contemptuous disgust – but all too often, attention, especially as it relates to the later, centers solely on the role of the female actors, without consideration for any underlying reasons compelling their behavior. However, taking too narrow of a view is problematic, because – as with any social issue – behaviors are multidimensional, and as such, the trend in South Korea simply cannot be dismissed as an issue of low national self-esteem or vanity. The difficulty in understanding why these women get such radical surgery, lies in the fact that we are socialized – that is, we are raised and repeatedly taught how to see and feel the world around us beginning at such an early age that we hardly, if ever, notice its strong, lasting grips on our thoughts and personality – to downplay or ignore the underlying reasons behind it: patriarchy, global capitalism, oppression, and exploitation.
This post is by no means a comprehensive account of these issues, nor am I attempting to give the impression that these four issues alone are the only factors contributing to the escalating South Korean plastic surgery rate. Rather, it is written with the aim of spreading awareness about an increasingly growing international trend that merits much more examination than is currently given to it, and briefly summarizing what I believe to be points that are crucial in both promoting cultural understanding, as well as contributing to a larger discussion of the positions women continue to face in today’s society – without demonizing the women themselves.
MARX
Marx had a lot to say about a variety of topics, and at times can be a pretty dense read; but his basic – and perhaps most famous – point is quite simple: when society advanced from feudalism (agricultural families working on their farms) to capitalism (industrial families living and working in the city), a groundbreaking, radical shift in humanity happened. We witnessed the rise of two predominant social classes – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie were the individuals in power; they possessed direct access to the means of production (things ensuring human survival and comfort such as food and hobbies) – that is, they had the money, property, power, and influence to oversee and control the emerging industrial economy: these were the politicians, the businessmen, the factory owner, and so forth. On the other hand, the proletariats were the common people: these were the factory workers, the average joe, and the assembly line grunts, who possessed indirect access to the means of production – meaning they were completely dependent upon the bourgeoisie (capitalist) to survive – the proletariat must sell their labor power in order to survive. Capitalism brought with it an increasing focus on and demand for speed, productivity, and efficiency, all mechanized through our growing technological advancements. Hence, what was once a struggle and burden for families to sustain their farmland and grow suitable crops (feudalism) now became a struggle and burden to produce as many products as possible in as little time as possible (capitalism). The emergence of capitalism not only birthed these demands for a better, faster, newer product, but also brought the re-evaluation of capital (money): in other words, the bourgeoisie were concerned not just with a better, faster, newer product, but how much (i.e., the least amount of) money this process would necessitate.
Enter Marx’s most poignant criticism of this new radical shift in humanity: through capitalism, the bourgeoisie were able to keep their power, money, and influence for themselves at the total expense of the proletariat by exploiting their labor power. The deadly combination of increasing demands and reduced wages for meeting them resulted in a disparaging condition for the proletariat: alienation. Work became not just a struggle and a burden, but a competition as well. Failure to perform at the level required of you resulted in your replacement – and the crisis in terms of keeping yourself and your family afloat. Not only did coworkers and peers become potential rivals, but you became alienated from yourself as well: long hours of repetitive dribble in return for a salary so meager it just barely ensured your family’s basic survival created the dreary somnambulist (i.e., blank eyed-sleepwalker going through the motions of life without any tangible reward) worker we often poke fun of today (how enthusiastic are your average workers at Taco Bell, for example). The exploitation of the proletariat purely so that the bourgeoisie could reap all the rewards (money, power, influence) and the resulting alienation meant that, according to Marx, capitalism was only beneficial for some (the bourgeoisie), while the majority of others (the proletariat) suffered a less-than-meaningful or prosperous life.
MARX WITH A FEMINIST LENS
Patriarchy, in its most general form, describes a system of unequal power relations within a society or government, in which men largely possess power and women are largely excluded from possessing power. Whereas Marx viewed unequal power relations in a capitalist society through a social class lens (i.e., bourgeoisie and proletariat), Marxian theory can easily be (and often is) applied with a gender lens, in which those with stereotypic masculine gender identities (biologically born males) possess a largely unequal majority of power, while those with stereotypic feminine gender identities (biologically born females, homosexual women and men, transgender individuals, or gender non-conforming biologically born men à basically, anyone who is not a cisgender male who also exhibits stereotypic masculine gender qualities) possess next to no power.
The diagram above illustrates a provocative point made by feminist scholar (and personal hero of mine) Catherine Mackinnon: “Sexuality is the feminism what work is to Marxism: that which is most one’s own, yet most taken away.”
MacKinnon argues that we can compare the struggle of the proletariat to the struggle faced by women in society. However, she argues that the liberation of women is not to be mistaken as a replacement of the class struggle of the proletariat, but, importantly, that it is a distinct struggle that exists alongside class struggles and as such, requires a separate effort if women are to be liberated.
Just as the proletariat is treated as nothing more than their labor power (what skills they can offer to the bourgeoisie in exchange for survival), women are treated as nothing more than their sexuality – that is, sexual bargaining power is all women are left with once one considers who composes the bourgeoisie: (gender conformant, biologically-born) men.
Women, statistically, do not comprise the bourgeoisie. By and far, an overwhelming majority of CEO’s, corporate partners, politicians, and world leaders are (gender conformant, biologically-born) men. Granted, at the time MacKinnon was writing, women occupied even fewer spaces in the labor market than they do today, but nonetheless, the fact remains that those with direct access to the means of production are (gender conformant, biologically-born) men. What’s a woman to do? What does she offer that her competitors in the struggle for means of production (survival) cannot? The obvious answer is her sexuality. Anyone skeptical of this fact must ask themselves: name the ways in which women make the most amount of money in the quickest way possible. Even today, no women underestimates the power of a smartly-aimed coy smile, a giggle, or a certain type of clothing. And why is this? According to MacKinnon, women are subordinated by virtue of their biological sex: as such, they are dependent upon men if they are to access the means of production and survive. Adding to this is the fact that, in terms of unequal gender power relations, men also possess a crucial element which women have come to equate with their prosperous survival: love. What woman, at some level, hasn’t been instructed from a young age to look forward to her wedding day? Indeed, women are taught that a lifetime of self-sacrifice for the needs of others can, at best (if she works hard enough!), result in happiness by means of acceptance of who she is through the legal formality of marriage.
Women’s labor power is undeniably worth less than that of men (look at wage gaps, for one). Therefore, the unequal power structure created by men for men necessitates that, if they are to survive, women must sell their sexual labor to men. Alienation, in this sense, is even more profound, as women are not just selling their abilities to the powerful, but they are selling a part of their own body. By saying that “femininity is women’s identity to women as well as women’s desirability to men”, MacKinnon is illustrating the deeply internalized subordination that women experience on a day-to-day basis: women often aren’t even aware that this subordination even exists.
GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND THE MALE GAZE
According to the powers of the internet, globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and government of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology. From a Marxian lens, however, globalization can be said to encompass the process of bourgeoisie countries (i.e., the West) exploiting proletariat countries (the global south, many parts of Latin America and Asia) through the spread of capitalism solely for the benefit of the bourgeoisie. A crucial point to remember, for this section and the ones outlined above: people in power do not want to give it up – rather, they have an invested interest in maintaining that power, and do so through the internalized subordination of the powerless. Bourgeoisie both trick (believe in the capitalist dream!) and force (you must sell your labor power in order to survive) the proletariat; men both trick and force the women, and, globally powerful countries both trick and force the developing countries. It’s the nature of the capitalist game.
So where does this come into play with South Korean plastic surgery? The (Western) male gaze.
The “male gaze” is most often associated with Laura Mulvey’s famous 1975 essay, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Mulvey argues that, in film, men are the watchers while women are the watched. Thus, the vantage point of cinema at the time was constructed with a male audience in mind. This resulted in women being construed as an object of male viewership, in whatever form males found most pleasing. Of course, Mulvey’s essay focused on film, but her basic concept has been stretched to apply to nearly every facet of media we have today. Who controls what the women in porn, in advertisements, or even the “status quo” look like? The answer is men. And why is this? Because the idea of the male gaze has yet to die off; despite documented female viewership of movies and pornography, for example, the “vantage point” is still assumed to be that of a male – what males find interesting, beautiful, provocative, exciting, and so forth.
This continual use of a “male gaze” to construct images of women can be traced to MacKinnon’s arguments about the internalized nature of female subordination. Without a doubt, makeup advertisements are targeted towards women as the audience, and not men – so where is the male gaze in these circumstances, some skeptics may ask. According to the unequal gender relation, women are consciously self-conscious, while remaining unconscious of the male gaze’s role in their own perceptions of what it means to be a woman. This is a difficult concept, so I’ll outline it more briefly:
1. the idea of “women need to be beautiful” was started, at the capitalist level (that is, at the level of advertisements and dissemination of ideas to the general public), by men, because women at that time were not able to take part in the corporate discussion (they were forced to remain at home, with the children).
2. the idea of what kind of beautiful women need to be was thus also started (at the capitalist level) , necessarily, by men.
3. for any cult movement to work, you need to convince your followers (in one way or another) that they must accept your conditions, or else. This works in Marxian terms, as the bourgeoisie controlled the money and “convinced” proletariats that if they wanted food, they must work in order to “earn” it. If you are a cult leader and you want to convince everyone to drink the punch with you, you must first make them believe that they are benefiting somehow and that their lives will be worse off without doing so.
4. If men simply said “women need to be X type of beautiful” and left it at that, women would probably stare blankly. Hence, men needed to come up with a way to convince women to buy their bullshit. Protip method: come up with an idea of love, disseminate it to the public, and socially ostracize women who don’t meet your (i.e., men’s’) needs. This creates a demand for a prototypical woman that men are completely in charge of, and thus the standards women are subject to.
5. Complete refusal to “buy in” is often not an option for the oppressed – a woman might say to herself, “screw beauty standards, I want to grow a full mustache”, but what will the social reactions to her action be? Similarly, a country might say “screw capitalism, we’ll do it our own way”, but what is typically the West’s reaction to that?
6. The “beauty standard” is disseminated to the masses (i.e., through media, advertisements, etc) largely by men, because men by and far, remain the ones with the most corporate ownership, power and influence, etc.
7. no idea materializes out of nowhere; everything (according to Marx) is a struggle between one class or another, and women (often regarded as “second-class citizens) are no exception; thus, the idea that women need to be beautiful in order to be loved and accepted was created by men and continues to be enforced by men – who stands to benefit from a beautiful woman? What kind of prestige does a beautiful woman enjoy?
8. The illusion of choice confounds the exploitation – women feel free to make autonomous choices about their appearance, especially under capitalism, and yet they are voluntarily subjecting themselves by trying to appeal to a beauty standard which is profoundly not their own, and ever-changing to meet instead the needs of the male consumers.
I’d like to note now that not all men are aggressors, NOR is it that only men are aggressors – unfortunately, many women are aggressors to other women! This, according to Marx and MacKinnon, is simply a demonstration of the incredible magnitude that the powerful (bourgeoisie/men) are able to influence – how many workers do you know who will encourage the “work hard and it will pay off” mantra? Likewise, how many women do you know who will encourage to other women the “be beautiful/play your cards right and a man will come sweep you off your feet” mantra?
In terms of globalization, the West was among the first to develop (when compared to Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc. – I am not saying that these other countries didn’t possess extremely advanced methods of trade, language, mathematics, and technology, because they did! I mean only in a modern industrial capitalistic sense). Because of this, it possessed a unique power that other countries industrializing do not – namely, the power to define. This is a central point in critical theory, as the powerful are unique in their position to define the status quo. As such, the West exhibited an unrivaled influence upon other countries to do as they did, spreading all the bourgeoisie misinformation and false expectation onto other countries as the powerful spread upon the powerful here. Some parts of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East (most notably Israel and Turkey) were quick to jump on the bandwagon, and because of it enjoy a moderate level of exploitation to this day. Others were not so fortunate. South Korea is one of those more economically fortunate Asian countries, like Japan, who “embraced” the capitalistic standard. This means that they are subject to the same criticisms of industrial capitalism that Marx leveraged upon the West. But every culture is different, and requires, like MacKinnon argued, an analysis that is distinct to the population concerned that exists alongside the larger struggle of reconciling class conflict under Marxian terms.
So, let’s look at South Korean exploitation, alienation, and cultural dynamics.
In South Korea, beauty, for women, means much more than aesthetic success – it means professional and economic success as well. Korean media and the rise in popularity of K-Pop music has resulted in an aesthetic that retains key aspects of the Western male gaze (such as an emphasis on light skin and large eyes), but at the same time, is completely unique. Thanks to this rise in popularity of Korean music and culture, the South Korean beauty paradigm has quickly spread across East Asia and the West’s standards of Asian beauty. Many have noted the increasing synonymy between South Korea and medical tourism, as it is not uncommon today for non-South Koreans to travel there specifically for the purpose of prestigious cosmetic treatment. According to VICE news, plastic surgery in South Korea is much, much more than a superficial beauty standard: it seeps into the sectors of professional and even academic success, with South Korean social norms now representing an ideal of the successful women as necessarily being beautiful by “South Korean” standards. Whereas we say in the U.S. that if two equally qualified people are applying for a job, the one with a college degree will get it, in South Korea, they say that if two equally qualified people are applying for a job, the one who is more attractive will get the job. Hence, enrolling your (female) child in tutoring programs and extracurricular activities is no longer a key for ensuring their economic success as adults, as it is now necessary to get them plastic surgery as well.
Take one look at an average advertisement (in magazines, TV, or the subway, etc.) and you will see clear evidence of the western male gaze’s effect on another country’s standard of beauty as a result of western globalization:
At the same time, there exists this cultural beauty standard that is different from our own, both in terms of aesthetics, but, more importantly, in terms of cultural reasons behind that beauty standard. As far as South Korea is concerned, plastic surgery is just a rapidly effective means of obtaining the end goal – namely, increasing one’s sexual bargaining power via physical desirability to men, and thus obtaining access to the means of production and love. From this perspective, South Korean women may be acting rationally, by using the tools available to them, given the irrational system (sexual exploitation) that they, as women, are born into. Such “rational self-objectification” is seen not just in South Korea, but across the world, and we cannot be quick to point out another culture’s perceived faults without considering the similarities within our own.
