Beauty

My last week! I can't believe how quickly the time has passed. My goal is one post a day until the end (technically I meant to start on Monday..but...stuff happens)

One of the things I've often wondered about after coming here is who decides what is considered beautiful. After a series of conversations with a couple of my Korean classmates and a half Japanese/American classmate, I found myself in awe...and a little sad. One of my Korean friends taught me the word "tuni" or plastic surgery. Apparently when she was younger (maybe 13,14) her mother told her she needed to get a tuni and she agreed. So she went to the hospital and underwent a surgery to make her eyes bigger. Now, I have to be honest...when I looked through her before and after pictures..I didn't see much of a difference. In fact, in some of her before pics her eyes looked bigger than they are now..but that whole situation just blows my mind. And it's really common in Korea. One of their biggest pop groups, Girls Generation, have a ton of before and after pictures floating around online. Almost every girl in that group looks drastically different from the way she did before surgery. And while my friend showed me the pictures she said "See? Korean girls have tuni so they can be pretty."

Then I had another conversation, this time with a guy. He told me about how he doesn't like his skin because it's too dark. He told me that Koreans only think pale skin is beautiful, so he is ugly because he has tan skin. So much so that his last girlfriend broke up with him because she thought his skin was too dark. He also said that many Koreans call him Mexican, which he doesn't like. So I asked him, "in Korea, am I pretty?" and he was like "I'm so sorry but no...your skin is too dark."

Since I've been here, I've often heard that Japanese people love blond hair and blue eyes. Many of the pop idols I see in billboards dye their hair blonde (or a color very close to it) and wear contacts. Most of the girls in my Japanese magazines are pretty pale as well. I think the most drastic thing I discovered was from talking with Shinya (Japanese/American), who told me about girls who cut the outside corners of their eyes with scissors so that they can be bigger.

Now, we all know America has its self image issues, but I was really surprised by what I learned. Most Koreans are born with small eyes, Japanese people too. Why wouldn't that be seen as beautiful? Many Koreans have darker (than pale) skin. Why is that ugly? Why was it OK in my friend's mother's mind for her to take her daughter for (dangerous) plastic surgery? For beauty?

Before I came here, the most common physical traits I thought of Japanese people were small eyes and small bodies. I even worried that I would feel very self conscience because I knew I would be taller and bigger than most people. Also, I'm black, and I wasn't sure if I would often catch people staring at me because of how different I look. Then I got here, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that aside from maybe three people (and I'm pretty sure something was mentally wrong with one of them) I haven't had a reason to feel uncomfortable in my own skin.