Plastic surgery. It’s a thing. All around the world.
My first memory of plastic surgery was when I was watching a really old Korean variety show called X-Man. My favorite celebrity was on the screen, Bin, and I told my mom to pay attention because she was my favorite and was so pretty.
My mom, in disgust, said, “Her face is so fake. She ruined it.”
After that first encounter, I started noticing it more and more: plastic surgery.
Now, by no means is this blog trying to shame plastic surgery. I think you should be entitled to do whatever you want with your body. And if you believe it’s the best decision for you, then more power to you!
But I would like to comment on its prevalence in my culture and share my own personal experience with it.
My last blog post was about K-pop. What I didn’t talk about was how much plastic surgery each K-pop group needs before they are even considered fit enough to debut.
Arden Cho, a Korean American actress, said that when she wanted to make it in Korea, they told her she would need to get plastic surgery. And it wasn’t just a few minor things. They were asking her to do at least 20 different surgeries fixing her nose, jawline, eyes, etc. And yet, Arden Cho was able to make it- at least in America. And maybe this is due to the fact that Asian beauty standards are very different from American beauty standards.
But plastic surgery has become so normalized in Korea that as a graduation gift, parents have started to award their children with double eyelid surgery.
Double eyelid surgery is one of the THE most popular and inexpensive surgeries to do in Korea.
Now you may be asking, what is double eyelid surgery?
Source: Wave Plastic Surgery
It’s the concept of making monolids (eyelids that don’t have a crease in them) have a crease, thus, making them double eyelids.
People usually get this surgery in order to make their eyes appear bigger.
If you’re not Asian, you may have never heard of the concept of double eyelids.
That is because most people who aren’t East Asian have tall nose bridges that help create double-eyelids. For East Asian people, however, they usually have lower nose bridges, which result in no crease forming on the eyelid, thus, a monolid.
Because most of America’s surgeries focus on fillers and injections, they don’t really notice eyelids as much.
But if you ask any Korean, they notice. Boy, do they notice.
Growing up, I never really noticed anything wrong with my eyes. That wasn’t until my mom started asking me to crease one of my eyes to match the other. I have distinct memories of taking a bobby pin with glue and creasing my left eye.
Eventually, I realized this was because I had one monolid and one double-eyelid.
Here’s some photographic evidence of my uneven eyelids:
PLEASE disregard the goat (Her name is Apricot). I was looking through my photos to find ones of my eyes - this made me realize I should take more pictures of myself.
ANYWAYS: The red arrows point to my monolid.
After this realization, I kept noticing the imperfections in my eyes.
Sometimes, I wished that I just had two monolids or two double eyelids. Like sheesh, my body couldn’t pick one or the other, so I’m stuck with both?
Nonsense.
I eventually started noticing the imperfections in my nose, jawline, etc. And I would start to think: if I just had surgery here, this would be gone. And I would look better.
I visited Korea in the summer of 2016.
My mom took me to get a Korean facial for the first time - 11/10 would recommend because Korean skincare is the best.
After the facial, I had what I thought was a skincare consultation.
Quickly, I realized it was a plastic surgery consultation.
They said the surgery would be very simple, but they would have to operate on both of my eyes in order for them to be even.
I called my dad to ask why my mom had brought me to get my eyes done. And he said that I’d thank them later.
Honestly, if I had grown up in Korea, I probably would have been thanking my parents for wanting me to get plastic surgery. But growing up in American, I was mortified.
It was kind of ironic. In the beginning, my parents told me how fake people looked with plastic surgery. But now, they were telling me it was okay to fix my imperfections.
I really almost did it. I almost said yes to plastic surgery.
I’m not sure what snapped me out of it. I think it was me saying that when I become famous, people will know I didn’t have plastic surgery because my eyes are uneven.
But I also thought, my whole life, my parents told me I was pretty. Now they’re saying they want to pay to fix me?
I love my parents and I know that it wasn’t their intention to make me feel ugly. But it hurt.
And from that moment, I knew I did NOT want plastic surgery. And I want to tell my children that society was not able to dictate my decision of whether or not I should have plastic surgery. And I want to tell them that society shouldn’t dictate theirs either.
Catch me in 20 years - with uneven eyelids and hopefully on TV :)
NOTE: Again want to reiterate: I’m not trying to bash plastic surgery. I have many friends and family who have had plastic surgery. And in trying to understand why they did, they said that it was a decision that they had made for themselves and no one else. And I think that’s awesome.