나도 잘할 수 있는데*

* = I can do better (nado jal-hal-su-iss-neun-dey)

I have so many things that I want to address, it's not even funny.

Firstly, I will offer that midterms were this week, and while I certainly don't think I knocked any of them out of the park (technically, there were 3: writing, speaking, listening/reading), I am really proud of myself for taking the tests reasonably well. This may be a premature celebration, as I'm nowhere close to done - we still have the actual speaking portion of our speaking midterm next week, plus I haven't received my actual grades yet and thus don't know for sure that I've passed - but today in class, I realized how much I was understanding, and it was kind of awesome. I even think my speaking might be getting better. Who knew?

I don't really feel like giving my usual spiel on the happenings of the week; instead, I'd like to devote a little time to some pseudo-cultural observations that I've made on some (very) select topics since coming to Korea. Feel free to skip this entire entry if you're not interested; I won't be offended, since this blog is as much for me to create a record as it is for you all to follow me as I'm so far from home.

1) South Korean women, standards of beauty, and plastic surgery
So a grammar pattern that we learned deals with acknowledging the truth of a previously spoken statement while offering a counter-argument (- 긴 하다); essentially, the English equivalent is, "That's true, but..." In our writing class, we were instructed to write a kind of mini-essay comparing the pros and cons of a said topic, making correct use of this grammar pattern. Our teacher offered us 3 topics; being a bit of an outspoken American, I opted to write on the final topic offered, which was the pros and cons of plastic surgery.

Because I am hardly at an intermediate level of Korean, my essay was rather pathetic and weak-sounding. Because it's short, I'll post a translation:

In Korea, a lot of women get plastic surgery. These days, a lot of men are getting it done as well. If one thinks themselves unattractive, then by plastic surgery one can make oneself beautiful. Also, many famous people have done it, and if one wants to be famous in Korea, plastic surgery can seem like a good thing. Among the members of So-Nyuh-Shi-Dae (Girls' Generation, a very popular Korean singing group, made up of 9 considerably done-up young women - I've posted a couple of their songs on here before), many have had surgery done and appear beautiful and thin. But if you want to be a beautiful person, your pesonality should be more important than your outward appearance. Many people thing that they cannot be beautiful unless they get plastic surgery, but just because this is so does not make this thinking correct.

There are, of course, good points to plastic surgery. If you don't like your appearance, then you can change it. For example, if you don't like your eyes, you can get new ones. Even if you are not beautiful, you can become beautiful. But in Korea, if you do not get plastic surgery done, it seems as though you cannot be considered beautiful. After plastic surgery, you might be beautiful, but the fact that you need to undergo surgery to get there is very sad.

Additionally, after plastic surgery, many Korean women do not even look Korean. This, too, is very sad; Korean faces are beautiful, but everone wants to look white. Not to mention, surgery in and of itself is dangerous, and unnecessary surgery should be avoided.

Even though a lot of people do it and you can be beautiful once you've done it, I dislike plastic surgery. Everyone wants to be outwardly beautiful, but a beautiful heart is more important than a pretty face. Besides, if you have a beautiful heart, why do you need surgery on your face?

Now, because I am not that competent in Korean, I could not say what I might actually have said. Which is:
I actually don't have much of a problem with plastic surgery. Yeah, people do it; but I've tended to view it, as my good friend Hayeon says, as a lie on your face/body. It seems to imply a lack of pride in yourself, or a belief that without picture-perfect features, the rest of you doesn't matter or can't make up for physical shortcomings. Okay, people are vain; I totally get that. Yes, there are myriad self-confidence issues that go along with being wholly unsatisfied with one's appearance. So even if it's technically "lying," I understand why people get surgery, and might even consider it myself, were I just a little less proud.

Now, why might I have a problem with plastic surgery in Korea? The answer lies in the fact that Korean women (young women especially) seem to be dissatisfied with their appearance because they look Korean instead of white. Seriously, the most popular plastic surgery that I see is the double eyelid job, done in an attempt to make the eyes larger and more "white"-looking. Google it if you don't think you know what I'm talking about. Nose bridges are also really popular, as is shaving your chin to produce a heart-shaped face. That is unfathomably gross. But people get it. They line up by the thousands for it here. And if you stand on a street corner in Sinchon and casually observe everyone who walks by, no doubt 30-50% of the girls you see will have visibly altered their appearance. It's sad; it's as if being Korean is something to be ashamed of, ashamed to the point where you are driven to make yourself look like something else. And everyone is doing it.

Don't believe me? Drastic transformations have taken place. The entertainment world is RIFE with it. Here's my favorite: meet Tiffany. She's an extremely talented singer from the aforementioned SNSD, and that is a picture of her before she debuted with the group in 2007. This is Tiffany now. When I saw these pictures, I was in total disbelief; I could not fathom that that was the same girl. In the words of Tiffany Woo (no relation to SNSD Tiffany), "I am convinced that they are two separate people and that the before-Tiffany was exorcised/sent to Mars and the after-Tiffany is just a robot who wanted to cash in."

I feel bad writing such distasteful things about Tiffany, because the whole world of Korean pop fans have already lambasted her for getting so much work done and I don't want to add my name to the list of haters. To focus on her appearance overlooks her tremendous talent and the hardships she had to overcome to get to where she is now. Unfortunately, it appears that one of those "hardships" was the fact that her face wasn't perfect enough (according to some ridiculous, totally unrealistic and idealized standard of beauty) to sell to the young Korean public, and so she went under the knife. And I'm not even picking on Tiffany - many of the rest of her bandmates have undergone similar procedures with similarly astonishing results. It makes me a little nauseous.

What's more nauseating is the fact that this phenomenon is not limited to celebrities. I am 100% sure that my speaking teacher has had work done (at least double eyelid); my listening teacher, about 80% sure; my writing teacher, I can't tell, but I hope she hasn't - I submitted that essay to her, and I would be terribly sad to have hurt her feelings. After she graded it, she asked me about my opinions on it - I responded as truthfully as I could without being unkind. And then Yukiko pointed out that she has a double eyelid. FML. While it's true that some Koreans have it naturally, the vast majority of double eyelids are surgically created. I can't tell with my writing teacher; truthfully, she's gorgeous, and I would expect her to be gorgeous with or without surgery. But maybe that's just because I see what I want to see: a great personality behind a big smile (she's my kindest teacher, and the one that I like the most). So maybe my vision's clouded. I don't know.

Standards of beauty here are for sure absurd. I've never felt this ugly in America. Korean women are under an insane amount of pressure to be stick-thin and constantly ready for a photo-shoot. I have gone out in sweats to buy food from the convenience store before, and I swear I have never seen another Korean women in anything less than a perfectly matched ensemble, perfectly put-together hair, and heels (okay, slight exaggeration, but you get the point, right?). The 9000 makeup stores on my street are a testament to the obsession with beauty, an obsession which I am slowly getting sucked into (more of my money than I would care to admit has gone into Korean beauty products, which are cheaper than most American things, but that doesn't say much).

I want to march up to the ridiculously dressed girl screaming into a megaphone in front of Etude, a makeup store near my goshitel about Etude's latest products and sales, snatch the megaphone from her perfectly manicured nails, and shout to all Korean women that they are beautiful in their own right. I don't think anyone would hear me, though. And I don't know that they'd listen.

What a downer.

This post is long enough. I'll start another one later, hopefully on a less maudlin and controversial topic.

화이팅.