PLASTIC SURGERY PHENOMENON AMONG SOUTH KOREAN WOMEN. THE INSTRUMENTAL BODY IN A RITE OF PASSAGE TO THE NORMATIVE “INNOCENT GLAMOUR”
PLASTIC SURGERY PHENOMENON AMONG SOUTH KOREAN WOMEN. THE INSTRUMENTAL BODY IN A RITE OF PASSAGE TO THE NORMATIVE “INNOCENT GLAMOUR”

Summary/Abstract: The study explores the plastic surgery phenomenon among young South Korean women and aims to depict the motivations of women as agentic subjects and social pressures that lead them to undergo facial modification. The research consisted of direct observation between 2008–2009, in Daegu (South Korea) and continued in Bucharest (Romania) in 2011, with a group interview followed by individual structured interviews with four South Korean students. The study additionally includes mass-media and pop culture analysis, secondary statistical analysis, and literature review. This research suggests that their motivations are derived from a pragmatic, instrumentalist view of the body as a vehicle for success in life, with two main goals: professional and personal. It is also argued that the social pressures of a collectivistic, competitive, consumer society that upholds a very strict and almost singular standard of beauty, has a normalization force on women’s bodies. I want to depart from the view that the change is done towards a Caucasian ideal and argue that modern South Korea has given birth to its own blend of a beautiful body, a “V-line”, “Innocent Glamour” that mixes Caucasian and local aesthetic physical traits. This blend’s characteristic is that South Korean standard of beauty converges to an innocent look. The women undergoing surgery are embodied selves in transition, they are preparing their personal narrative of success and transformation, performing this practice at key moments in their lives, as a rite of passage to maturity. Plastic surgery can be viewed as an expression of the right to beauty that, in the South Korean context, can be equated to the right to succeed.

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