Ugly People Stand Up Part 2

>continued from last week's reposting of "Ugly People Please Stand Up" >the original article and photos come from Shawn Noaman's brand new blog, FRESHPRINTS

Social pressures can become overwhelming. It’s not uncommon for Korean high school girls to go under the knife. In fact, it’s believed the earlier you have a procedure done, the more natural the look due to having more time to “grow into your features”. As more people get procedures, parents feel confused and coerce their children to getting work done. They don’t want their children to become the “ugly one”. Parents have even been known to “reward” their children with surgery at certain birthdays, or as graduation presents. It is widely considered a competitive edge, and is known to assist people in finding a good spouse, land their dream job, and have better treatment in general. Women are not the only targets, as the same standards are being applied to men to find the right wife and land their dream career, resulting in male-only clinics. As a homogenous society, with people having similar features, there is a very rigorous and narrow definition of beauty and this results in extremely low levels of self-esteem. Further lowering the self-esteem of the nation is the emergence of K-pop, Korean’s pop music industry, on the world’s stage. Stars such as Psy have publicly spoken out against the industry insisting on them completely overhauling their face to achieve success. Also, images went viral during the Miss Korea beauty pageants with many finding it difficult to differentiate between the contestants. Winner Kim Yu Mi spoke out about the controversy and defended her title by stating “I never said I was born beautiful.”

Advertisements bombard you in larger cities such as Seoul, Busan and Daegu in places such as subway stations, promising a “new, better you”. Medical tourism produced the equivalent of nearly $500 million Canadian in revenue last year. With the cost of these procedures being roughly 1/5 the price of the US, it is very appealing for visitors from other Asian countries and the US. Proving to be a very lucrative business, laws have been changed allowing doctors in South Korea to join in on the plastic surgery industry fairly easily. The industry is booming, growing at a very high clip every year and showing no indication of slowing down. As Shark Attack rolled on, we once again said “If you are handsome or beautiful, stand up”. Nearly the entire class sat down. Except this time, one boy and one girl remained standing. The girl, not exactly dressed in the height of fashion, had thick glasses, was an intelligent student and lacked the pocket mirror many girls her age carried with them. The boy had a full tracksuit and was quite athletically gifted. While maybe they were just eager to participate in the game, I saw it as two Koreans who refused to succumb to the cultural norm of low self-esteem and idolizing media figures. I saw it as two people who, for very different reasons, were comfortable in their own skin and were not afraid to show it. I had to applaud their courage to stand up.

Shawn Noaman

Shawn Noaman is a low-life turned English teacher from St. Catharine's, Ontario, Canada. He's a writer, comedian, poet, nomad, basketball enthusiast, and alternative health/wellness advocate (except when yangnyum chicken is involved). You can check out his blog at www.freshprintsblog.wordpress.com.