Flawless
Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
One of Porchlight's Business Books of the Year | One of Vox's Best Books of 2023 | An NPR Book of the Day | Required Reading from New York Post | One of Nylon's 13 May Books to Add to Your Reading List | One of PureWow's 14 Books to Read for AAPI Heritage Month | One of W Magazine's 14 Books to Dive Into This Summer | One of Betches' Best Summer Reads of 2023
An audacious journalistic exploration of the present and future of beauty through the lens of South Korea's booming "K-beauty" industry and the culture it promotes, by Elise Hu, NPR host-at-large and the host of TED Talks Daily
K-beauty has captured imaginations worldwide by promising a kind of mesmerizing perfection. Its skincare and makeup products—creams packaged to look like milkshakes or pandas, and snail mucus face masks, to name a few—work together to fascinate us, champion consumerism, and invite us to indulge. In the four years Elise spent in Seoul as NPR’s bureau chief, the global K-beauty industry quadrupled. Today it's worth $10 billion and is only getting bigger as it rides the Hallyu wave around the globe.
And fun as self-care consumerism may be, Elise turns her veteran eye to the darker questions lurking beneath the surface of this story. When technology makes it easy to quantify and optimize ourselves—from banishing blemishes, to whittling our waistlines, even to shaving down our jaws—where do we draw the line? What are the dangers for a society where a flawless face and body are promoted and possible? What are the real financial, physical, and emotional costs of beauty work in a culture that valorizes endless self-improvement and codes it as empowerment?
With rich historical context and deep reporting, including hours of interviews with South Korean women, this is a complex, provocative look at the ways hustle culture has reached into the sinews of our bodies. It raises complicated questions about gender disparity, consumerism, the beauty imperative of an appearance obsessed society, and the undeniable political, economic, and social capital of good looks worldwide. And it points the way toward an alternative vision, one that's more affirming and inclusive than a beauty culture led by industry.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
NPR correspondent Hu debuts with a thorough examination of South Korea's booming "K-beauty" industry and the national obsession with physical appearance fueling it. Noting that South Korea is the world's third largest cosmetics exporter, Hu describes Seoul as a skin care mecca, where dermatology and cosmetic surgery clinics are as common as hair salons. A Korean term, oemo jisang juui ("looks are supreme") encapsulates the "stubborn social prejudice against those who fail to meet certain appearance standards," which are set by impossibly thin K-pop girl groups, social media influencers using Facetune and other filter apps, and beauty industry conglomerates like Amorepacific. Hu forthrightly reflects on her own "vacillating enthusiasm and unease" for Korean beauty products and interweaves startling statistics (according to a 2020 survey, one in three women between 19 and 39 has had cosmetic surgery) with profiles of plastic surgeons, former K-pop idols, and activists who signal their rejection of beauty norms by cutting their hair short and appearing in public without makeup. Throughout, Hu persuasively links oemo jisang juui to Korea's "punishing gender imbalance" (among developed nations, Korea ranks worst in the gender wage gap, women's labor participation rates, and other metrics) and warns that "narrow, industrialized beauty norms" driven by mass marketing and digital technologies are spreading around the world. Nuanced, wide-ranging, and fluidly written, this peels back the layers of a powerful cultural trend.
