http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/htm...00405110008.asp
[Seoul Searcher]Plastic surgery craze
Cho Se-hyon
More than half of women university students have had plastic surgery to make themselves prettier and about 82 percent of those who have not undergone such surgery say they intend to do so in the near future, KBS-TV reported the other day. It said the Seoul National University Medical School conducted the survey of 1,500 women university students around the country.
The KBS report added that, according to a surgeon, women university students account about 60 percent of all women who undergo plastic surgery every year. The report didn't say but I have read elsewhere that South Korea leads the world in the number of appearance-related plastic surgeries.
The desire by women to look beautiful is, of course, a strong human instinct. But changing one's face dramatically through surgical means, however easy such medical procedures are said to have become, seems to pose a serious social problem; the new phenomenon indicates that a large number of women are not happy with the faces they were born with and want to look different than they really are.
What's more amazing and disturbing, really, is the fact that an increasing number of young men are also trying to change their faces through such surgery these days. Throughout the ages weren't men supposed to be less concerned with their facial appearance than women? Or has this preoccupation among today's young men something to do with the increasingly blurred line between the genders? I cannot say.
In any event, quite a few of these women students - and young men, no doubt - were said to have decided to change their facial appearance in order to improve their chances of getting a job during personal interviews. In other words, many of them obviously believe that it is easier for an attractive person to get a job, regardless of ability or other qualifications.
The other most frequently given reason by those who had undergone plastic surgery was that they wanted to increase their self-confidence. However, as the saying "beauty is only skin deep" goes, they may be able to impress other people, especially those with whom they come into superficial contact, but their personality and ability are bound to show through if you scratch the surface a little, to re-coin a phase.
To be sure, women with pretty faces may be able to go quite far in a society like ours where we put so much emphasis on outward appearances like face and height as well as clothes and cars. But what should give anyone real confidence is not how they look but what they can do and, more importantly, what they think and believe in. The face, to use a poor metaphor, can be like the sign of a store; the store cannot hope to do good business if it sells shabby or worthless goods, however hard it tries to fool customers with a beautiful storefront and bright sign.
So there must be what they call a "lemming mentality" at work behind the current craze for plastic surgery. Since "everybody" is doing it and since it is so easy, so many want to change their faces, some even so dramatically that the surgery involves cutting, scrapping or even reconstructing cheek and jaw bones.
What is really interesting though, is the fact that all these women who undergo plastic surgery want to look Caucasian. According to doctors, they all want to make their eyes big with double eyelids; most of them also want to raise their noses and make their faces oval in contrast to the typical round, flat face that is one of the characteristics of Asian men and women.
And this explains why more and more, I run into women on the streets whom I'm not quite sure are really Korean or not. Nor am I sure whether the "Caucasian look" that these women are striving to attain is inherently more beautiful than the typical Asian face with narrow - or slit, as they say - eyes and single eyelids and a flat, broad nose.
Of course, young people are coming under the influence of Western culture through instant communication like the Internet and media such as movies, pop music and dance. And it is only natural for them to try and identify with the heroes and popular personalities in Western society. This trend, however, is strange in view of the rising nationalist and xenophobic sentiment among South Koreans, especially among young people who reject or at least hold unsympathetic opinions of anything foreign.
The face is not the only thing these young women want to change; some want to become sexier by making their bosoms bigger with silicon implants, while slimming the body through diets and other means such as surgery. And many also want to become taller if they can. Anyway, going back to the KBS report, more than 95 percent of those who had undergone plastic surgery want to have surgery on other parts of their face or body.
This perpetual need to change our personal appearance comes from a feeling of inadequacy or an inferiority complex that, let's face it, most of us Koreans are afflicted with. But I am one of those who believe that a person who lives a healthy and wholesome life is most beautiful as the inner or spiritual life is bound to show in the face as well as the rest of the body. And people who believe in themselves tend to appear confident and reliable. This is why I hope that the current craze for plastic surgery is a passing fad and that it will soon blow over. And I hope people start enjoying being who they really are without modifying their face and body.
For most of his career, the writer was a reporter working in Tokyo, New York and elsewhere for an American news agency. He returned to his native Korea in the early 1990s. His e-mail address is
[email protected]. - Ed.
2004.05.11