Being ugly hurts in South Korea: why it’s so hard to say no to K-beauty
In a country known worldwide as a mecca for plastic surgery, a movement against lookism has caught fire as women join forces to protest impossible beauty standards
While South Korea’s #MeToo and anti-molka (hidden camera) movements continue to explode, the nation is also in the grip of “Escape Corset”, a social-media-based movement protesting the country’s impossible beauty standards.
This summer, women went barefaced on Twitter, Instagram and other online communities as they threw away their CC cushion compacts and lipsticks, while some even cut off their hair as they railed against the lookism so prevalent in South Korea.
“I hated my ugly face. I had low self esteem and wore make-up like a mask [all day],” an Instagram user wrote beneath a photo of her destroyed makeup collection. “We don’t have to do it. [I realised] we don’t have to be pretty … and took off the mask that was ruining my life.”
Beauty YouTuber Lina Bae published a video of herself applying makeup along with comments she’d received about her appearance: “Your skin isn’t good [as a] woman, please apply BB cream … I would kill myself if I [looked like] her.” By the end of the video, Bae had defiantly removed all her makeup.
The Escape Corset movement confronts core beliefs about why women must care about their appearance, according to a Harvard gender-studies scholar who asked not to be named in this story. “Radical feminists in Korea began the movement by shaving their heads, removing their makeup and dressing in ways that allowed their bodies to be more active,” she said.