Essay on "Reasons Why Cosmetic Surgery Practices Have Become so Popular in the Contemporary South Korean Society"

Essay 4 pages (1382 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Plastic Surgery in Korea

Plastic Surgery in South Korea

The South Korean's seeming fascination with cosmetic surgery is frequently reported on both in Asia and the West, largely for its recounted abnormal use rate by both women and men. Though there is a deficiency in dependable data regarding the amounts of individuals who select to endure cosmetic surgery in South Korea, the statistics are substantial. The estimations range from 15 to 30% of all South Koreans have endured some method of plastic surgery, the statistics pertaining to certain age groups of females being characteristically greater (Kim, 2010, p. 23). This is obviously a huge social issue, and one that eludes simplistic explanations, and perplexes academics and policy makers in Korea. What is emerging from this research is that this question eludes simplistic explanations, and in many ways we have only began to understand the multiple discourses that inform people's decision to engage with aesthetic surgery in Korea.

One is bound to be curious as to what are the causes behind this countries apparent fascination with aesthetics. Current investigation on South Korean plastic surgery characteristically structures it as being a female matter, and localizes it within women's want to adapt to male control organizations in order to increase their probabilities to thriving within such a system. Some researchers contend that women's wish to employ cosmetic surgery is an extension of the customary, pre-modern 'virtuous femininity' discourse that required upper class women to adhere to a strict Neo-Confucian decorum (Epstein, 2007, p. 100). Whereas males were projected to excel in all that was of the outward world, to develop into greater men, females were obliged to the intrinsic, in that women's accomplishment was principally decided upon by their power to imitate the idyllic convention within traditional gender treatises. This has lead some researchers to discern that in conventional Neo-Confucian conceptualization of the feminine form, females appear almost as subjectless bodies due to the manner in which they were forced to the bodily and the cultivation of the figures of others (Kim, 2003, p. 99). In conventional depictions of feminineness in the Korean cultural illusory, the females' fate is to writhe in that she should be recognized within the civilization and society of males, while men are allowed to be members automatically. In this perspective, cosmetic surgery is purely comprehended as a modern expression of women's obedience to this reason, in which females have to control their figures and be ready to suffer corporeal agony in order to develop into the perfect women.

An alternative, yet frequently mentioned impetus for plastic surgery is the assertion that Korean women merely wish to imitate Western aesthetic standards (Savage, 2011, p. 13). This reason classically comes from research into supposed 'ethnic' plastic surgery, which normally depicts minority ethnic people in Western countries as being subjected to hegemonic racism, outlining plastic surgery as an effort to escape persevering cultural prejudgment that compares their typecast inherited corporeal qualities. This research emphasizes double-eyelid surgeries, nose re-shaping and skin lightening, for example, as indication of an effort to be closer to a 'white' standard and, thus, evade discrimination. It is argued that a crucial issue regarding this current research on 'ethnic' plastic surgery is that their outcomes have regularly been universalized past the general boarders within which they were produced, so that they are appropriated to be applicable to the purported 'cultures of origin' of the residents or cultural groups they speak to in the West, and this also seems to be the case in Korea (Savage, 2011, p. 22).

Nevertheless, whilst double eye-lid surgery is commonly associated with Westernization, as it enlarges Asian eyes, many South Korean doctors would fervently refute that this is a Westernizing process, but instead one that wishes to produce a more sophisticated look, and abundant attention is acquired to pick the correct method for a specific type of eye to guarantee that the end product does not appear too Western, and thus abnormal.

The significance of looks has a long record in South Korea, which is more entrenched in the environment of conventional philosophical customs and common philosophies (Blum, 2005, p. 113). For the upper… READ MORE

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