Lee
[00:00:00] I I'm Lee C. Camp and this is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
Elise
What I was learning about was a kind of '-ism,' like sexism and racism, that isn't talked about and labeled very often, and it's called "lookism."
Lee
That's Elise Hu, a writer and journalist whom you might know as the host of the TED Talks Daily podcast.
She's describing the discovery that prompted her new book, Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital.
Elise
And it situates our looks as a matter of personal choice.
Lee
Elise
That having good looks is your personal responsibility. And if you fail at it, it's your personal failing.
Lee
Today she discusses the issues with the world's growing obsession with conformed standards of bodily beauty, and why we may be beautifying ourselves into an aesthetic oblivion.[00:01:00]
I'm Lee C. Camp. This is No Small Endeavor - exploring what it means to live a good life.
Beauty, truth, and goodness have long been understood as realities worth living and dying for, giving a life for. And though it's not uncommon to hear poets and intellectuals refer to this trinity, it may be less known that the lineage of the trinity runs back to medieval theology.
Beauty, truth, and goodness were understood as so-called 'transcendentals,' which transcend cultures, place, or time. The medieval scholastics were picking up a line of thought from earlier Greek philosophy, and as that line has run now all the way to the 21st century, we, like they, may find ourselves confronted with questions about the nature of truth or goodness or beauty.
We can see the ways playing fast and loose with the notion of truth may eviscerate [00:02:00] the common good. And similarly, it may turn out that making beauty a matter of a marketable commodity may eviscerate a sense of self-worth and goodness. If beauty, truth and goodness are seen as sharing a common unity, and if truth is meant to set us free, then surely notions of beauty that lead to bondage or even self-hatred ought be examined, questioned, challenged. Or at least those are the sorts of considerations raised for me by today's guest.
Elise Hu is the host of the podcast, Ted Talks Daily, and she's the author of Flawless, a book exploring K-beauty - that is, the so-called beauty industry of South Korea, where cosmetic surgeries are a norm and where companies have checklists of beauty expectations for women when they apply for or show up to work.
Here is our conversation.
Elise Hu is the host of the TED Talks Daily podcast, as well [00:03:00] as host at large for National Public Radio. Elise served as the founding bureau chief and international correspondent for NPR's Seoul office, where she was based for nearly four years. She's an honor's graduate of the University of Missouri Columbia's School of Journalism. She's received numerous awards for her work, including the DuPont-Columbia, Gracie and Edward R. Murrow Awards.
Today we're discussing her new book, Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital.
Welcome, Elise.
Elise
Thank you so much. It's a delight to be here.
Lee
It's a delight to have you joining us on the show. We're, uh, we're grateful to get to talk to you about your new book. Congratulations on the new book.
And, um, in my academic field, in working with various traditions of ethics, uh, one that we talk about a lot on the show is virtue ethics.
Elise
Lee
Which, going back to the Greeks and, you know, they're, they're constantly asking the question, especially around the virtue of magnanimity, how does one go about [00:04:00] improving oneself? How, how do you think about your life as a canvas for every possible part of yourself growing, becoming the better you, the better self that you can become?
Elise
Lee
And in some ways, I read your book Flawless as a, say-- as a sort of shooting up a red signal flare and saying, that can potentially go really badly. That there are at least some areas or ways of thinking about self-improvement that are potentially problematic.
I don't know, is that, that a fair way to kind of start into the conversation?
Elise
Yeah, it's fair. And it's quite a layered question, because what is the self?
What I found in Korea, which is kind of futuristic - I describe it as First World Plus - it is an increasingly virtual and visual society. South Korea is one of the world's first truly wired nations. And as a result, as soon as I got there, in the mid-tens, I could see, just, screens wrapped [00:05:00] around buildings, me never losing my streaming film or television shows even when I was deep in the bowels of the subway...
Lee
Elise
...giant floor to ceiling ads just barraging me all the time with advertisements and images of ideal Korean women, ideal Korean men. And it really underscored the way that the self has become conflated with our physical selves, with our outsides.
Lee
Elise
And that is where I think things get really problematic.
Lee
So tell us then, unpack more how your experience there in South Korea gets you into asking the sorts of questions that give rise to Flawless.
Elise
Well, very quickly in South Korea, I felt like I was unwelcome in my body. Like, that my body was always a sight that could be improved, whether it was freckles - freckles are very frowned upon - so whether it was my having freckles, or whether it was [00:06:00] my being large size - I would be yelled at from the shopkeepers in front of stores saying, “large size, large size,” as a way to lure me in.
[Both laugh]
And, uh, I, I was just constantly getting messages that I didn't quite fit the ideal of the time and of the place. And that's obviously very marginalizing and, and made me feel self-conscious.
But what I was learning about was a kind of '-ism,' like sexism and racism, that isn't talked about and labeled very often, and it's called lookism.
Lee
Elise
It is an umbrella for fat phobia or anti-fat bias, because beauty standards include thinness. But it really means an appearance-based discrimination. And when you are discriminated against for your looks, then you can also be rewarded on the flip side for having good looks.
And as a result, it further tightens [00:07:00] that conflation of good looks for a good life, beauty equals morality, even though that's dubious, and it situates our looks as a matter of personal choice.
Lee
Elise
That having good looks is your personal responsibility, and if you fail at it, it's your personal failing.
Lee
So what are, what-- give us some more examples of the way you saw lookism at work in that culture.
Elise
I was shocked to learn that when you go get your passport photos taken, at any passport photo shop, that they automatically Photoshop them. So they automatically will smooth your--
Lee
Elise
--skin and thin down your jawline. Yes. They'll try to--
Lee
Elise
--widen your eyes. Yes. For, even for your passport photo.
So many headshots were required on resumes. Sometimes your height and weight were required too. And this is for accounting [00:08:00] jobs, this is for government jobs.
Lee
Elise
It's not for acting, which you would assume was kind of normal.
There, there, there were constant before/after photos everywhere, where I was sold on this notion that if you didn't look good enough, your body was malleable and you could fix it to look better. And so that's an important dynamic of this story, right?
There was supply of medical and aesthetic upgrades driving demand, such that it was only logical for you to fix yourself when the solution to your physical problem existed and you could purchase it.
Lee
Huh.
So early on in the book, you point to a tension between a rightfulness, a legitimacy, maybe even a true good, in notions of self-care and what we, what one might mean by care for beauty.
And then on the other hand, the dark side or the [00:09:00] oppressive side of that. So could you maybe unpack that tension for us a little bit?
Elise
Yeah. I mean, I think there are such, so many ways to care for our bodies that really do feel nurturing and feel like a step deeper into myself. So much of self-care doesn't have to be consumption based, right?
It could just mean exercise and feeling that sort of inner appreciation for your body. It doesn't have to be aesthetic necessarily. But we are seeing culture increasingly sell self-care as sheet masks or multi-step skincare regimens or ways to aesthetically upgrade yourself, whatever, to whatever the standards are of the day.
And I think that's where things can get really ego-driven and too focused on the individual at the expense of the community. But I did meet so many Korean women, especially the older ones, there's a whole chapter on ajummas, which is the term for older Korean women, who were able to cultivate an appreciation for their body and a care for [00:10:00] themselves that was situated around reciprocity for the community. So sort of just showing up in a way that was clean and respectful, you know, with, among their group, but also in a way that really nurtured their bodies and what they felt like they needed.
Like, there was one woman who likes to go get a facial every month, and she said that she felt blessed when she did it. So it almost felt like a spiritual experience. And it's one of the few times that she was touched by another human, was when she was touched by a beauty worker, because women are so often outliving men these days, and so there is that opportunity to have nurturing touch come from beauty work.
What I think is insidious though, is in our twenties and in our thirties, which is very common in South Korea, where it feels like a choice to do a lot of aesthetic labor, but it really isn't a choice, because you are professionally sanctioned, you are socially sanctioned, uninvited to family gatherings, or getting [00:11:00] dinged at work, or getting bullied on the street if you don't look the part of an ideal Korean woman.
Lee
Uh, related to that sort of being bullied, you have a chapter entitled 'Beauty is a Beast,' and you've kind of pointed to this already, but what-- unpack more elements of the way in which beauty is a beast in that context.
Elise
Yeah, so in the professional sphere, not only are women potentially discriminated against in terms of getting jobs, and already women in South Korea have the lowest women's labor participation rate in the developed world and the largest gender pay gap. So already, it's hard to get your foot in the door and get into a leadership position. But on top of all the rest of the credentials that you need to meet, you also need to meet certain aesthetic standards.
There is one Korean firm that has 20 requirements, from head to toe, of how a woman should show up when she comes to work. So appearance requirements.
Lee
Elise
Whereas, for a man, the one rule is don't wear a mismatched suit.
Lee
Elise
And so, [00:12:00] so you're walking this real tightrope that takes a lot of time and energy. And I think time is really important to consider because it's such a key lever of our freedom.
And I was just really surprised that in an otherwise hyper-modern place, a place that has just grown to be one of the 10th largest economies in the world, that is a cultural force and a real juggernaut when it comes to K-pop, K-drama, K-film, it masks-- I feel like all of that growth really masks a huge tension and disparity for women, an ongoing gender battle, and beauty is one of the places that that shows up, because it affects how we are allowed to occupy space and move about the world safely.
Lee
Hmm.[00:13:00]
What other major societal trends of Korean culture, or then increasingly as it kind of, as Korean culture moves into the West, what sort of other major cultural trends are feeding lookism or the sorts of dynamics that you're describing?
Elise
I think technology is a huge part of it, right? I mentioned that South Korea has among the fastest internet in the world, and it has an IT infrastructure that was just very forward looking and established in the early 1990s.
There is a nationwide broadband infrastructure that the US still lacks. And that, the transmission of images and the platforms where images and visuals in general can be transmitted is an important part of the story because it means that more of us are seeing ourselves on screens constantly, so we're scrutinizing ourselves more because of the presence on screens.
We're also taught, by [00:14:00] what we're seeing on these algorithms and the echo chambers of our social media, what we're supposed to look like, right? These filters that are now available, that are often generated by AI tools, they're now being used to make TikTok effects and Instagram filters. And those effects and filters are showing, are exemplifying the beauty pillars of the day.
It's smoothness. It's plumper lips. It's very made up eyes. It's arched eyebrows. It's a slimmer jawline. We are seeing ourselves change into the more glamorous version, or the so-called more glamorous version of ourselves on the filters, and then wanting to change our physical selves to match those digital avatars.
So the strain of Korea in which the digital is more important than the physical self, or the physical self is sort of subordinate to how we're presented on screens, is something that I think has come to pass in the United States more and more.[00:15:00]
And then finally, the other part of technology, that I think doesn't get talked about enough, is self-improvement technology. That if it weren't possible to change our physical bodies, then we couldn't seek actually slimmer jaws or actually more narrow waists. But now there are more and more procedures and treatments available, injectables and whatnot, to help make our bodies malleable and constantly upgradable in the same way that fashion changes with the trends.
Lee
How do you see, how did you experience these developing notions of beauty eating away, or not, at deeper, longer traditions of what community meant or of what deeper character meant? What, what, what was that like?
Elise
Yeah, I think this is really tied into an hyper-individualism, right? And, and what I-- I talk about [00:16:00] neoliberalism a lot--
Lee
Elise
--in the book. Because I see neoliberalism, as in philosophy, that really is about sort of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, the market rules all, no need for institutions, we are all our own individual self-entrepreneurs.
And this ties into situating our looks as a matter of personal choice. And if our bodies are malleable, then it is labor that we need to be doing and upkeeping. When I talk about beauty culture, I talk about how I see it as hustle culture, but just reaching into our skin and muscle and tissues.
Lee
Elise
And what that promotes is this idea of sort of trying to match technology in continually changing and upgrading in some areas, but then also staying the same and not changing with nature in others, like youthfulness. You're just supposed to [00:17:00] magically appear as if you're 30 years old, even when you're 40 or 50 or 60 years old.
And nature crucially takes its own time, as you know, if you've ever done any gardening. And, and we-- and our bodies are dynamic, they are never fixed. Nature, nothing in nature ever is, right? And I think that the idea that we're supposed to be kind of Ad Astra, just striving constantly, and making our bodies projects to be worked on forever, really negates what is natural about the human experience, and then also pits us against one another.
Because when there are metrics to aspire to, then you're comparing yourself to that metric, but you're also comparing yourself to one another in a way that's highly competitive and hierarchical. I see this as hyper-capitalist, you know, in which you're constantly in competition rather than in a web.
Lee
Elise
But, like I mentioned, [00:18:00] if good looks is framed as personal responsibility, and if you fail it's a personal failing, then if you don't work on your looks, then you are seen as lazy or incompetent.
It's almost, it becomes unacceptable just to be as we are and believe that we're worthy. That ends up becoming a radical position to take.
Lee
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
You're listening to No Small Endeavor and our conversation with the TED Talks Daily podcast host Elise Hu, on her new book, Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital.
I love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee@nosmallendeavor.com.
You can get show notes for this episode in your podcast app or wherever you listen. These notes include links to resources mentioned in the episode, as well as a PDF of my complete [00:19:00] interview notes, as well as a full transcript.
We would be delighted if you’d tell your friends about No Small Endeavor and invite them to join us on the podcast, because it helps to extend the reach of the beauty, truth, and goodness we are seeking to sow in the world.
Coming up, Elise Hu and I continue to discuss how standards of beauty affect both men and women.
As you examined these trends, what sort of psychological impact did you begin to discern? Uh, you, you mentioned at least some trends towards, uh, eating disorders and the like. Uh, what, what, what, what are various things you noted there as far as the psychological impact of lookism and this focus on beauty?
Elise
A few. One is [00:20:00] marginalization and all of the isolation that-- and loneliness that causes, right? So if you don't measure up, if you are fat, let's say, in Korea-- and to be fat in Korea is basically being straight-sized everywhere else in the world, because the thinness standard is so thin. So if you're fat in Korea, or your skin is too dark in Korea, or you have blemishes or your hair isn't right, you are very easily marginalized and unwelcome in society.
And just to be discriminated against has so many psychological effects individually, but also, you know, collectively I think we become nastier to each other or we judge each other more harshly, and that's terrible.
But for all of us, and we, when we live in an extreme beauty culture, there is a sense of anxiety and exhaustion because we all end up on this hamster wheel, and even the thinnest and the most beautiful, often those are the ones who are most anxious, right, because beauty becomes a, a, a way to get in the door and a way to maintain class and status. And so there is that anxiety that comes as a result of having to [00:21:00] maintain and keep up with your appearances in order to maintain your class and status.
You know, I'm somebody who suffered from an eating disorder when I was 19 years old. I remember the toll that it took on me and just how much brain space it took up, just trying to maintain a certain thinness standard.
And so, it's a situation in which, you know, we individually suffer, but really socially all suffer, because our worth is far too wrapped up in appearance, which is something that, you know, is unequal to begin with.
Lee
You've alluded to this as well already, but I'd like to hear a bit more commentary on the notions of gender disparity in notions of beauty, commodification of the female body, and so forth.
What, what are some significant markers or social realities that you saw around that in Korean culture?
Elise
To be fair, South Korea has a lot of labor protections now and a lot of [00:22:00] gender equality written into its constitution. And so legally, there are, there are protections for women, but as it plays out, it feels as though women are second class citizens because men are in positions of power in every major sphere, whether it's politics, whether it's business. We are seeing, just, once again, you know, the largest gender pay gap in the developed world, the lowest women's partic-- labor participation rate in the developed world, and the smallest percentage of women in leadership positions.
How that plays out now, is South Korea has a major problem with depopulation coming up around the corner because--
Lee
Elise
--the birth rate has dropped to below one per woman, and it is the lowest birth rate in the world for one of the richest nations on the planet. And what we're seeing is more and more women sort of suffocating and chafing under the conditions in which they live.
It's the same situation that we see across the [00:23:00] West too, in which, you know, there are all these expectations of household labor or childcare that don't fall evenly in households, such that women are working second shifts and third shifts.
But on top of that, you know, aesthetic labor is a part of this discussion, because you're not only supposed to excel and be educated and be, you know, poised and have good character. You also have to do the work of looking the part. And that is also exhausting.
Lee
Elise
And so what we saw in 2018 was a bunch of women, this is following me too, which did oust a lot of Korean men from power at the end of 2017, but there were more rallies and what women in South Korea ended up protesting was a lot of the restrictions on how they were supposed to look and therefore how they were supposed to behave.
And that freeing themselves from a so-called "corset"-- this movement was called 'Escape the Corset,' fittingly. But freeing themselves from this corset and, and, and restrictions and, and [00:24:00] judgment actually allowed them to kind of find peace with who they are, find a deeper sense of self, find community among other activists in a society in which mental health treatment is still largely stigmatized.
They called this very therapeutic, to be able to sort of step back, to participate in a general strike against appearance labor. And I think it's just so impressive, and these women are exceptional, and I really wanted to highlight their stories, because the risks that they took socially, and they still take, are huge compared to the risks that I would take by showing up without makeup or with a short haircut here in the United States, because they stand out so much there.
And also, appearance discrimination or lookism is so rampant that they're constantly fielding the discrimination. They're getting uninvited to family gatherings...
Lee
Elise
…some have been reportedly assaulted. Their bosses will ostracize them. They will make lots of comments on their appearance.
I interviewed one feminist [00:25:00] over this past weekend, actually, 'cause I was just checking in with them now that the book is out. And she told me she was a teacher, she was a elementary school teacher, and she's like, "I'm feeling really exhausted just trying to keep up this sort of strike," because she doesn't wear makeup now, and she's sort of trying to take a stand for her bodily autonomy. But her students will question her and be like, "Why aren't you, why isn't your hair longer? Why don't you show up looking more like a woman? My parents say that I can't trust you because you're a feminist."
Lee
Hmm. Wow.
Yeah, so that, that relates to, you know, the, the old so-called trinity of, of beauty, truth, and goodness that has been formulated in a variety of traditions.
How do you see, and/or experience, narrating beauty, truth, and goodness, and the relationship of those three, in what you have been writing on?
Elise
Beauty is not just physical beauty. Beauty is so much more than that.
To me, I think about [00:26:00] beauty in terms of nature. I think of the beauty that we see, you know, when our breath catches in a spiritual moment. Uh, when we see art, there's so much beauty in it.
You know, I think that it is very shortsighted and limiting to think of beauty as only, you know, what a magazine spread of a woman looks like, you know?
And, increasingly we are conflating physical beauty with morality, physical beauty with truth and goodness, when really I would rather us take the more historic and ancient ways of thinking about beauty and apply those forms of thinking to a, a much-- just to essentially think about beauty with a much wider lens, and then break that link between physical appearance and worthiness and value.
Because I think, what has happened in an increasingly visual and virtual culture, is that those two things have become conflated. [00:27:00] When we make New Year's resolutions now, they often tend to be improving our physical selves instead of improving our characters or our inner selves.
If you go back and look at diaries of American girls from 200 years ago, they would often write about things like, I, I want to think before I speak, or I wanna be more generous to my family members. You know, these were, these were ideas of goodness and beauty and truth that were not about, like, I would love to lose 10 pounds, I would like to increase my muscle mass, or all the other kinds of more physical and, and surface level aspirations that we see in our resolutions today.
Lee
Yeah. You tell a story about overhearing your, your girls talk one night at bedtime.
Elise
Lee
Yeah, would you share that? And, and how you've processed that?
Elise
Yes. Oh man.
Talking to my three elementary aged daughters about beauty is really thorny, [00:28:00] because about a year ago I was tiptoeing down the hallway after tucking in my then nine-year-old and six-year-olds into their bunk bed, and I overheard the younger one, Isabel, say to the older one, "Mama says it doesn't matter if you're beautiful, it matters if you're clever," or something like that, right? And the older sister replied, "She only says that because she's already pretty."
The children already know, from sort of existing in the world, about the pretty privilege, right? That there is a halo effect that's attached to being able to appear, you know, conventionally attractive, you know? And I'm a conventionally looking, cisgendered woman, so I have a lot of privilege in that, and I think that my girls could recognize it.
So when I tried to convince them, appearance isn't an-- isn't important, you know, it's what's on the inside that counts, it was a [00:29:00] really complicated form of gaslighting. And so I didn't want them to fall into the trap and the tyranny of vanity, and so that's why I was doing it.
So I feel like my intentions were good, because, because the pretty privilege excludes and marginalizes so many people and it makes all of us anxious, as I talked about. But I also was misrepresenting how society operates. I wasn't telling them the truth.
Lee
So, to the degree that you're open to this, what are other ways you have had to come to terms with choices that you've had to make about your own self and how you're going to-- whether, whether those choices are things that you're going to do and participate in physically or not, or--
Elise
Lee
--the way you're thinking about cultivating particular character traits in yourself.
Elise
Sure, sure. Yeah.
Crucially, obviously, this isn't an individual issue. I, I [00:30:00] often get questions like this, like, what are you doing? Are you doing Botox? Are you not doing Botox? But that's the wrong, that's the wrong focus, right? Because the focus is actually at the cultural level and cultural change. And if we focus, overfocus on the individual, then we are inviting more judgment of ourselves and judgment of one another.
Lee
Elise
And that is not helpful to the larger project of challenging beauty culture as it, as it exists today.
But I do think that we are important role models for the next generation, and we wanna be good ancestors. And so what I wanna do-- and I don't think that I can teach what I haven't learned for myself, so I have to really cultivate an inner appreciation for my body, and hope that I'm modeling that for my kids.
And so what I'm doing is, I'm caring less about my own appearance. I am never on a scale in front of my girls. I'm never lingering in front of the mirror too long. I'm trying to show them that I have a fulfilled and really content and full life without necessarily living up to whatever the beauty norms are, of the day.
And I think with [00:31:00] parenting, you know, it's show don't tell.
Lee
Elise
I could lecture them and tell them, you know, "You're-- it's your insides that count, you know, really cultivate your character and your kindness," and all those things. But it-- they would really fall on deaf ears, those messages would really fall on deaf ears, unless I was doing that myself and I was really focused on how my body is an instrument and not an ornament.
Lee
Elise
So there's two schools of thought that I wind up landing at towards the end of the book, that I really try and model.
One is body neutrality, which is an evolution of the idea of body positivity, because being positive in your body, and like, “every body is a bikini body,” still puts the focus on the appearance of the body.
Lee
Elise
And I didn't wanna do that. And so I focus on body neutrality, which is, 'all bodies are bodies,' you know, and let's focus on what bodies can do, what they're capable of.
But to move on from that and be more inclusive of those with different abilities, [00:32:00] there's an idea or a concept called 'sensualism' that came out of an academic named Celine LeBoeuf.
And sensualism is cultivating an inner appreciation for the body and what it feels, right, so how it feels after a particularly rigorous workout or how it feels when you're in connection and really in flow with your friends and, and thinking of your body that way instead of what it looks like, I think, has been really helpful for me.
So the way that I apply it with my kids is, the most practical way is when they're trying on clothes. Because I used to, like everyone else, like everyone else who's ever worked at the Gap, um, I would say like, “Oh my God, those shorts are so cute on you.” You know, like that's almost just, uh, automatic, I think.
But that's really still putting the focus on, on, on appearance. And so I try my best to ask them questions like, “Can you move easily in that? How does, how do the fabrics feel on your [00:33:00] body?” And, and really focus on kind of how their bodies feel and what they can do inside their clothes has been a, just one really practical change that I have made.
Lee
We’re going to take a short break, but coming right up, we discuss what healthy self-care might entail, as opposed to mere vanity, and where might we draw the line when it comes to so-called aesthetic labor.
So, I had no anticipation of raising this next question, um… but I feel like, I feel like I would lack integrity without asking this next question, so--
Elise
Lee
My journey with regard to some of the things that you're [00:34:00] pointing to, is that when I was, uh, let's say-- so I did seminary in my early twenties, and I would grapple a lot with, you know, questions about not wanting to get caught up in the externals, uh, the material, the physical, and focus on the spiritual, focus upon moral goodness and so forth, and my understanding of my faith and so forth.
And so, I maybe went tilt into a sort of spiritual arrogance with regard to not caring about any of that stuff.
Elise
Lee
So, so, you know, it-- the, the more ill-fitting the pants I could find at Goodwill became a sort of mark of spiritual elitism, I guess I would say.
By the time I turned 40, I realized, I am not taking good enough care of my body, and I'm way out of shape, and this is not going well.
Elise
Lee
And so the last 10, 15 years, I've spent a whole lot more time trying to [00:35:00] take care of my body. And, you know, one of-- you know, lose 10 pounds. That worked really well with Noom over the last half year.
Elise
Lee
And, and even allowing myself to buy clothes that I like and that I feel like I, I look better in, you know?
Elise
Lee
And so, with that sort of storytelling, how do you, what do you think about that? How do you, how do you react to that?
Elise
I think often-- I'll speak in my case, because I oft-- I think I do the same thing, where sometimes when I was in Korea, I felt like beauty standards were so prominent and pervasive that I just wholly rejected them. I would like purposely wear a very loud jacket so that I wouldn't be bothered and I would be easily marked as a foreigner.
Lee
Elise
So that folks wouldn't judge me. Like, I looked so bad that they must have just assumed I was rich or something, you know?
Because-- and, and I say rich because I think it's a privilege, I think it's a mark of privilege to be able to opt out so [00:36:00] noticeably.
Lee
Elise
And that it's not true if you are a trans woman who might not be safe unless you appear femme.
Lee
Elise
And it's not true for North Korean women who came to South Korea and are often stigmatized because they are not from South Korea, the modern Korea, and so they often feel as though they have to get plastic surgery in order to fit in.
I remember when I first went to Seoul and I saw a lot of the bandage faces or the silicone nose coverups from post-op patients. I regarded it as vanity, you know? I was just like, ugh, these people who care so much about changing their appearance, that they would do this to themselves.
You know, it was just this very, I think, shortsighted judgment that I had, from a Western perspective. But the longer I lived in Seoul and the more I saw that good looks were tied to social, professional, personal [00:37:00] success, and the notions of hard work and being a good person, the more I realized that it was completely rational to make choices like this to try and keep up and improve your station in life.
And in fact, if you didn't, you would be equally discriminated against.
Lee
Elise
And so now I'm much kinder and more compassionate about, you know, the work that other people have to do, because I don't hate on the player, I hate the game.
Lee
Elise
You know, I hate a system that forces all of us to do this.
Lee
Yeah, that's a great saying. That's really helpful.
You mentioned the work of Rene Girard and his mimetic theory?
Elise
Yes! You're the first person to ask me about this.
Lee
Elise
I also get Foucault in there. There's some Michel Foucault.
Lee
Yes, I was, I was impressed. I was impressed.
Elise
There's the panopticon...
Lee
Elise
Lee
Very impress-- very impressive, very impressive.
Of course, Rene Girard has been very important in Christian theology because of the way in which he talks about scapegoating and this mimetic theory and so forth. But I, I find it [00:38:00] fascinating the way that you're using that to point to one way that we might think about beauty is that it's this cultural production. And of course that relates as well to these notions of gendered norms of beauty.
But for those who haven't thought much about the ways in which beauty is itself a cultural production, or it, it's a concept with a history, what did you learn about that sort of notion?
Elise
I think that a beautiful image, or the idea of a beautiful image, ends up being a mold, and then that mold finds imitators, and then imitators of imitators.
And then on the social internet, there are millions, if not billions, of imitators because we are now sort of flattened into a global internet.
Lee
Elise
And what it does is, it flattens difference, I think. There were a lot more regional preferences for what was beautiful, probably, before the internet. And now, a global mean has emerged, [00:39:00] which emphasizes four rather global pillars of beauty, which are firmness, smoothness, thinness, and youth.
So--
Lee
Say, say those for us one more time.
Elise
Firmness, thinness, smoothness, and youth.
Lee
Elise
So even in a country with more diversity of races, say the United States, even if one pillar, like thinness, becomes a little bit more widened, such that there are different body types, or larger than, you know, very, very thin body types that are considered desirable or attractive, the other pillars stay firmly fixed - that you would still have to be smooth and hairless, your body should-- shouldn't be lumpy, it should be firm, and that youth is prized, pretty much everywhere.
Lee
When you think about that, you earlier mentioned hyper-individualism, and yet there's an irony there, isn’t there, in that, in the name of [00:40:00] hyper-individualism, there's a development of a sort of sameness that then all individuals are supposed to succumb to?
Elise
Yeah. You point out a real paradox. Right, you-- it's, it's such a thin line, right? Because you're both trying to fit in, but then be a little bit better than everyone else.
Lee
Elise
I think that's the way social comparison works, that you don't want to be so different from everyone else, but after you do fit in and you're part of the group, you wanna be the prettiest of the group or the best of the group, however, best is defined.
And there is a duality there, and I think that, you know, as a journalist, and just as a human, I really like to dive into dualities.
This is a spirituality podcast, so you'll know, I'm really into Carl Jung and I have a Jungian depth analyst.
Lee
Elise
And so we're constantly looking for the third or the concept of the third, right?
Like if we look at, you know, these opposites, what is the third that can emerge? And I [00:41:00] think that this book and the exercise of the journalism in this book is very much that way, especially with respect to beauty and all of the paradoxes within it.
Lee
Yeah.
So yeah, that was kind of one of the next places I wanted to go, is 'cause you speak some in the book about line drawing and you're asking sometimes the question of how, how far is too far?
And then another way to think about that is that, kind of, what are third ways, that you just pointed to? So what, what have you learned there for yourself about what kind of lines do you want to draw for yourself with regard to some of these practices, and/or what are some of the third ways that you're working on?
Elise
The most poignant answer I got to the question of, where do we draw the line on improving ourselves when technology makes all of this upgrading more and more possible... the most poignant answer I received was from a cosmetic surgery researcher who had herself undergone the jawline surgery, where she got her jaw broken and reshaped to be more feminine, and she regretted it.
She said, ultimately [00:42:00] you don't get to draw the line. Nature draws the line. The body will draw the line.
Lee
Elise
And so, it is kind of egoistic to think that we even get to make that determination.
And that has guided my thinking in the choices that I make, with regard to aesthetic labor, in that I really try to ask myself - and this means being reflective, it means looking inward, it means slowing down, which is so hard in modern culture - but I've tried to ask myself, does this practice or procedure take me deeper into myself, or does it feel more like a costume? Is it tantamount to something that I'm doing for other people?
And the question of whether something is soul driven or ego driven comes down to what you know for yourself and what I know for myself. And so, I can't, you know, give you a simple test or a simple tool to answer the question on, on line drawing and where you draw the [00:43:00] line, except I do think it's helpful to interrogate yourself and be aware of beauty culture and all the ways that we adhere to it in almost a passive way.
Lee
Elise
And with this awareness, we can then go to reflection and interrogation.
Lee
Yeah.
Yeah, so I, I like that move there. You, you're moving from focusing upon the drawing of the lines to a question about character traits or character habits of the self, right? You're trying to pay attention, and trying to ask questions of your-- slow down enough to ask questions of yourself. Yeah.
Another sort of practice I saw in your book seems to be, and you've pointed to this, I, I guess with the notion of sensualism, but--
Elise
Lee
--of leaning into simply learning to be at ease with our bodies as they are. And, and you tell this fascinating story about the delivery of your child in, in Seoul?
Elise
Lee
Which is a fascinating story. Yeah.
Elise
My labor in Seoul, yes. My labor in [00:44:00] Seoul.
[Laughs]
It was just a reminder that, you know, there's so much discomfort with a naked body. And I think, that's irrespective of gender, but I was giving birth, and I was giving birth on all fours, because it was just more comfortable for me that way. And at one point I just really wanted to rip off my top. I was wearing a bikini, a two-piece swimsuit, and I wanted to rip off my top because I was just so hot. It feels like, you know, I'd just run a marathon, so my hair was dripping wet, just sopping wet, I was about to push out a baby. It had been going on for 15 hours, day had turned to night, I'm screaming like a hyena, and I, I wanted my clothes off.
And the Korean midwife-- we had so much lost in translation because I speak almost no Korean, and she spoke almost no English. She kept covering me up with a blanket, and it was mystifying. I was so hot and she kept covering me up because I think she assumed that I felt ashamed of my naked body, and I didn't want it out there when I, when I was [00:45:00] just like, "Stop covering me up!"
[Both laugh]
And, and it was just this eye-opening experience, that even in probably one of the most primal states that, that I could possibly be in, that my body wasn't sort of-- and, and when my, my body wasn't prettified, obviously, my body was just in its natural state, and therefore it needed to be covered up or it was assumed I wanted it to be covered up.
Lee
Yeah. You, you, you summarize that by saying that that experience taught you that the, the cultural norm there was that a body should be hidden when not prettified.
Elise
Lee
Yeah. So as we move toward a close... so many people that you've interviewed, encountered, uh, in the writing of this book. Who are one or two that stand out to you as having taught you certain things that you wanna remember or that you might want to oppose as exemplary for your readers?
Elise
Yeah. Well the first is, um, the woman that I mentioned, [00:46:00] So Yeon Leem, who was the researcher in cosmetic surgery hospitals, who answered my question about where we draw the line on aesthetic upgrades so poignantly. Who said, you know, nature draws the line, and we don't really get a choice.
The other person that I think about a lot is a woman named Elizabeth Kwan, who I think is a 73-year-old Korean American woman who is in my chapter about aging. And she said something like, "Yeah, I'm ugly. And it doesn't matter." And I had this knee jerk instinct to be like, oh no, of course you're pretty. And then what it did was actually show me the appearance bias that was operating in my own life.
Lee
Elise
The idea that I really conflated prettiness with worth, and that you couldn't possibly be ugly because that meant you weren't worthy.
Lee
Elise
And that was actually what was broken and biased about me. And so she showed me something in that in, in being completely sanguine about her appearance. Because she didn't tie it to her enjoyment of [00:47:00] life, her ability to move about spaces, her relationship and connection to others.
Lee
Elise
And that was really beautiful to me.
Lee
Yeah.
I've been talking to Elise Hu, author of Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital.
Thank you, Elise. It's been a delightful conversation.
Elise
Thank you so much. I can't believe you worked Rene Girard in there.
Lee
[Laughs]
You've been listening to No Small Endeavor and our interview with Elise Hu, host of the TED Talks Daily podcast, and recently the author of Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a private philanthropic foundation supporting the causes of community development, [00:48:00] education, and religion.
And the support of the John Templeton Foundation, whose vision is to become a global catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing.
Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible - Christie Bragg, Jakob Lewis, Sophie Byard, Tom Anderson, Kate Hays, Mary Eveleen Brown, Cariad Harmon, Jason Sheesley, Ellis Osburn, and Tim Lauer.
Thanks for listening, and let's keep exploring what it means to live a good life together.
No Small Endeavor is a production of PRX, Tokens Media, LLC, and Great Feeling Studios.