Across Asia, there is a growing backlash against a culture of laborious skincare regimes, ubiquitous plastic surgery and the pressure to look perfect
Everybody wants to look beautiful when they step out of the door in the morning. But what happens when the pressure to be beautiful becomes too much?
Feminists all over the world fight against objectification, but in many parts of Asia there is an urgent need for change, as some women face unrealistic beauty standards that call for them to spend hours each morning applying make-up, and another hour before bed on 10-step skincare routines.
These rigid standards are well known, especially in countries like South Korea, where there is intense pressure for women to have porcelain skin, sharp chins, and big, doll-like eyes. To get there, there's a burgeoning 'K-beauty' industry that has become a global sensation, and a culture of plastic surgery that has become so normalised that a third of all Korean women have gone under the knife.
“The high-speed industrialisation of the 1970s and ‘80s that took us from a poor country to the eleventh largest economy in the world is the reason for this,” says Haesoon Jung, the director of fashion website, Styleintelligence. “The nation became obsessed with self-improvement and uniformity—there were even regulations for skirt lengths for women up until the 1970s. There was no space for individual human rights amid all this.”
South Korea may be known as the plastic surgery hub of Asia, but China is snapping rapidly at its heels. SoYoung—the marketplace app connecting prospective patients with clinics and other users—made its Nasdaq debut in early May. The Beijing-based “Yelp for plastic surgery” saw its shares surge up to 44 percent on the first day of trading, before settling at 32 percent higher than its offer price.
Social media, pop culture and the country’s fixation on selfies have all played their part in a nationwide epidemic of beauty dysmorphia. Meitu’s photo doctoring app Meitu Xiu Xiu, has been described by the New Yorker as having “almost literally transformed the face of China.” Meanwhile, viral short video and live-streaming apps such as Douyin (known outside of China as Tik Tok) have made it imperative to look good in motion.