Apparently, many South Koreans are taking that to... the
knife. Smile surgeries, such as the Smile-Lipt, are one of the latest
fads in Seoul surgery. For a mere $2,000, you, too, can smile forever.
I always wanted to look more Korean (I live in Alaska, most
people think I'm Alaska Native), but it seems that Koreans want to look
less Korean? Eyelid surgery was always known to us; Mema had double
eyelid surgery. Make-up tattoos have been known of for a while; Mema
said she wanted to "always wake up looking beautiful". These were things
known, but never spoken of. Double eyelid surgery is, allegedly, so
commonplace now that they don't even refer to it as surgery anymore.
And it's not just for women! South Korea has the HIGHEST number of
plastic surgeries per capita. There's even one of those tumblr pages dedicated to it. Is K-pop to blame?
And now I have so many questions! On average, do people gain or lose confidence after facial plastic surgery? Has the rate of depression gone down in South Korea since plastic surgery has increased so much? How does this correlate to the rate of alcoholism? Does it correlate? Do people's moms really stop harping on them so much about beauty after "fixing" all of their "facial deficiencies"? Or do their moms complain anyway because that's just what they do?
I'm certainly not condoning, nor am I condemning, cosmetic surgery. It's prevalence in the Korean community was just brought to my attention recently and it piqued some interest. I just hope all those people getting all those surgeries, like everyone with tattoos (and I do have 2), don't later regret their youthful choices. And if they do regret them, well, hopefully, they can live with them anyway. But, hey, maybe they all turn out well :)
-Rikki