Reaching high standards of beauty is a consistent crisis for men and women around the world. Young women in Japan are no exception. A 1999 study compared the Japanese version of Seventeen Magazine to the American one and found that the models featured on the cover of the Japanese version were portrayed as sweet and […]
I thought it would be interesting to interview my best friend, Sabrina, who happened to study abroad in South Korea for about half a year back in 2015. While living there, she conformed to South Korean expectations out of respect for their culture while learning about similarities to her own American background. You can listen […]
Some say the freckles are ugly, while others are claiming they’re beautiful. How much further will these (un)ideal beauty standards go? Since the ad “Beauty is Here” was released on Sina Weibo, a number of angry Chinese citizens have accused Zara of defaming China by depicting model Li Jingwen’s face with little make-up and clearly […]
Women destroy makeup as part of backlash against culture of laborious skincare regimes and pressure to look perfect In the wake of the #MeToo movement, which has spread rapidly following the Weinstein scandal, with millions of women around the world sharing their own stories of sexual assault and harassment in the workplace, a growing number […]
In 2012, Korean artist and well-known rapper PSY released the song “Gangnam Style”, which became a hit in both the US and South Korea and lead to the interest of K-pop amongst the American consumers and media. “Gangnam Style” has brought the spotlight for Koreans and international medical tourists to look for “Gangnam Plastic Surgery.” […]
How do beauty standards manifest in different ways and negatively impact the happiness levels of people globally? In a recent study done last year by Kim and Chung on the side effects South Korean women experience in their 20’s and 30’s after plastic surgery found through the data they collected from participants using in-depth interviews, […]
A true personal story on why I’ll never fit in Korea and their [Un]ideal beauty standards. Despite loving so many aspects of my life being a mixed Asian of Chinese and Korean, I truly felt that my Korean culture had a very strong emphasis on younger women’s appearances that it became too much to handle. […]
In South Korea, particularly in large metropolitan areas like Seoul, plastic surgery is a common beauty ritual. Through aggressive advertising, people are led to believe that they aren’t attractive unless they are white, scar-free, and have double eyelids with smaller facial features. This rhetoric is so widespread that even people from neighboring countries travel to […]
White skin versus tanned skin: both are beautiful in their own right, but unfortunately, skincare companies, especially in Asia, don’t believe that. Fair & Lovely, featured in the advertisement above, is an Indian skincare brand that sells skin whitening creams all over India and Southeast Asia. Other than the terribly Photoshopped ad in the image […]
As far as makeup tutorials go, there are plenty of ways Asian people share their makeup skills and techniques online. One in particular caught my eye because videos from the site are often reshared on other platforms. On the Chinese video sharing app TikTok, users can make short 3-15 second videos or longer 3-60 second […]
[Un]ideal Beauty Standards 