Anne Lheem, '21, Summer Research Travel Grant for Korea, Summer 2019

This summer, I spent a little over two months conducting fieldwork on South Korean beauty standards and its association with the rise in body dysmorphia and plastic surgery in South Korea, particularly among young women. I dedicated this summer to conducting key informant interviews with twelve South Korean women, all aged 18-28 and who lived in or around Seoul. My main aims of these key informant interviews were to better understand what kinds of pressures – if any exist at all – young women experience regarding their physical appearance, from where they receive such pressures to be “beautiful” (as defined by the society in which they live), and how these pressures affect their physical and mental health, well-being, and self-esteem. Through my interviews and time spent with my informants, I was able to listen and see for myself just how central beauty has become in many women’s lives – while it would be wrong for me to generalize that all women take active measures to conform to South Korean beauty standards (e.g. extreme thinness, having double eyelids, V-shaped jawline, pale skin, etc.), the amount of influence young girls receive from all aspects of media and the normalization of practices such as restrictive dieting make it difficult for one to not place a lot of thought and attention on one’s looks while growing up. My informants spoke to me about the difficulties they have experienced because of their physical appearance and why those difficulties were able to arise in the first place – which led to conversations about gender discrimination and women’s rights, topics that have recently made the national spotlight. Hearing about what my interviewees had to say about their experiences as women growing up in a society with expectations around how a woman should act, dress, and look, was both insightful and thought provoking, heavily informing how I would like to continue my research moving forward and in what ways I would like to see my research influence certain aspects of social change.

One of the most noteworthy parts of my time in Korea was experiencing what it was like to hold the trust of so many young women like myself, who were (although hard to believe at this point) complete strangers to me before my conversations with them this summer. Getting to know my informants, not only as research participants, but as people, was gratifying, fulfilling, and exciting – I was able to make so many friendships throughout my time in Korea and am humbled to have had people open themselves up to me in sharing their personal thoughts and experiences, often in intimate detail. To be frank, I was a little surprised by the extent to which people were willing to talk about their experiences and struggles, and by how much they had to say about the issues I raised – I realized that because they, along with many others, have never been given a formal platform upon which to voice their thoughts and experiences regarding body image standards, general beauty standards, gender-based discrimination and the suppression of women, these topics have not been given as much attention as they deserve. I feel ever more determined to use what leverage and power I have to make these women’s voices heard, as I see it both as a responsibility and privilege to do so – and to approach this goal in the most ground-up, person-driven, and culturally respective way possible.

On a more personal note, this summer experience made me more aware of my cultural identity and heritage, which has made me become more interested in learning more about Korean culture, history, and political economy, as well as in further improving my language skills to hopefully have even deeper conversations and more comfortably handle first encounters with the people I meet. I will likely take more coursework on Korean history and language to delve into these interests further. Through this experience, I also became more fully aware of the direct impact social norms and popular media has on the everyday lives of everyday people, every day. This has made me more eager to engage in more advocacy and activism efforts to one, better inform people about issues that they themselves may not even recognize are being affected by (as in this case, raising awareness around the issue of high rates in eating disorders, body dysmorphia, stress, and anxiety around body image/physical appearance among South Korean women), and two, fight for change to see that such issues are actually being dealt with through structural change, not simply through the expectation of changes in individual behavior.

This experience has, overall, made me ever more grateful to have been given the opportunity to research about issues that I find not only personally important to me, but also necessary to shine light on to make ignored voices heard and challenge problematic norms that affect the daily lives of so many people. I sincerely thank the Korea Institute and grant donors for supporting my work and for making it possible for me to have had as amazing of a research experience as I did!