Meet the South Korean women rejecting their country’s intense beauty standards
- South Korea is a deeply conservative country, and experts say its patriarchal society encourages rampant sexism
- But rising feminist movements and changing values among South Korean women are redirecting depictions of beauty
As she pursued her dream of becoming a fashion model, veering for years between extreme dieting and overeating, Park I-seul realised she had a problem: She was not tall and skinny, like typical runway models, nor was she big enough to be a plus-size model.
So Park, 25, began calling herself a “natural size model” – a nearly unheard of term in South Korea – which she defines as someone with the same kind of body you see in daily life, as opposed to a difficult-to-attain ideal. She began to get work, and she started a popular YouTube channel where she introduces fashions for women who look more like her than like the women in fashion magazines.
Her new-found positive view of her body makes her part of a growing movement by South Korean women to resist what they see as extreme pressure to look a certain way.
Hundreds of young women have taken to social media with the hashtag “talcorset”, or take off the corset, to encourage others to free themselves from social stereotypes about their appearance that they feel have long bound them.