Jo Moon L&S Social Sciences
Beautiful Work: Lookism and Aesthetic Labor in South Korea
South Korea’s embedded oemojisangjuŭi culture, meaning ‘looks are supreme’ and shorthanded to ‘lookism,’ defines the national prejudice against those who do not meet idealized appearance standards—leaving little escape from cosmetic treatments, products and procedures as solutions. In order to best understand the development of Korean beauty culture’s current landscape, my analysis starts from its proliferation under the period of Japanese colonialism. I argue that Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945) was an essential contributing factor in not just establishing the Korean cosmetics economy, but beauty labor itself, linking consumption with modernization as a means to attain beauty. While there is existing scholarship both surrounding the development of beauty consumption in a colonized Korea, and of the modern Korean beauty industry, there are no studies that directly view the unpaid work and time individuals spend on aestheticizing themselves—whether from engagement with cosmetic advertisements, deliberation of going under the knife, or waking up early to doll up—as productive, contributive work from the colonial period to the modern economy. Therefore, I seek to fill this gap through framing beauty as labor and asking: How does South Korea’s pervasive ‘lookism’ today, from tracing its transnational roots in colonial occupation to modern prominence, impact the social, cultural and economic decision-making of young Korean men and women?
Message To Sponsor
To the Landau Foundation, I want to express my gratitude for believing in this research. This summer research fellowship was transformational to my growth as a scholar and even cemented my decision to go into academia surrounding the Korean peninsula. As a part of the Korean American diaspora, I felt a sense of due diligence when at archival field sites in the suburbs of Osan, and a painful heartache of solidarity when I visited the only museum in Japan that recognizes their WWII and colonial atrocities against Korean women. I gained clarity in why I was so interested in researching this in the first place. SURF—and your support—was instrumental in my development not only as a scholar, but in my identity.