What Asian beauty pageants reveal about Korean Culture
Asian beauty pageants are all about confidence, poise, and elegance. But underneath, they reveal a culture that believes beauty is not just skin deep.
Cheers rang out as teenage girls, backs straight and smiles wide, carefully lined up across a brightly lit stage. The night air was cold, but their faces didn’t betray it; they stood, beaming, in glittering evening gowns as a panel of judges deliberated on their performance.
In the past few hours, each of the ten contestants—all high school girls—competed with each other in the penultimate event of the 2019 LA Korean Festival, the Miss High Teen Beauty Pageant. After four days of food, culture, and celebration, excited festival-goers gathered around a brightly lit stage to see the girls partake in an event that would last throughout the night.
The pageant was not just a beauty contest, but a display of Korean culture as well. Right off the bat, contestants twirled around in Hanboks—traditional Korean dresses—as operatic music played behind them. They danced, perfectly in sync with each other, arms swinging elegantly by their sides so that every part of the wear can be appreciated.
Afterwards, each candidate was given time to show off their individual talents. There were a variety of performances, but all of them stuck to a common theme of Korean roots.
Some girls opted for a more modern twist, showing off their skills with a tightly choreographed KPOP dance routine. One contestant took out her guitar and jammed out to a song, while audience members held up signs of her face and screamed.
Others decided to go the traditional route, with two of the girls performing Ogo-mu, the traditional Korean drum dance.
As night fell and the contestants prepared to hear the results, the host spoke of the benefits of the pageant. “Each contestant will receive a government certificate,” he said, “which will be very useful in their college applications.”
On stage, every girl presented a variation of the same distinct look. Pale face, large eyes, and pink-red lips, the beauty standard so prevalent in Korean culture. Their gowns, while modest, were form fitting—emphasizing a lack of variety in body type as well.
Though on the surface the pageant may seem like a platform to show off different aspects of Korean culture, the undertones—of beauty, competition, conformity, and even academic opportunity—reflect much more about Korean culture than meets the eye.
Juri Watanabe, the 2016-2017 Miss Asia USA, said that despite the hardships pageanting is still worth it.
“I felt that I came out of each experience a stronger woman each time,” she added, “The skills I gained through these experiences has gone a long way, and positively impacted my professional life, even in an industry outside of beauty.”
South Korea, often referred to as “the plastic surgery capital of the world”, is home to some of the most prolific and lucrative cosmetic industries around the globe. It has the highest plastic surgery per capita of any country", with nearly one million surgeries conducted every year. Estimates suggest that between 1 in 3 to half of all South Korean women between the ages of 19 to 29 have had a procedure done. And it’s not just plastic surgery; Korean skincare has also risen to the top 10 beauty markets in the world, with an estimated $13.1 billion in sales in 2018.
For Koreans, the pressure to an idealized standard of beauty can be something that seeps into every aspect of their life. Not only does it affect romantic prospects, but it can influence job opportunities as well; many companies require headshots with their job applications. With how competitive the job market is in Korea, having work done is seen as just another way to make you more appealing as a candidate. Soojin Chong, a Korean-American student at USC, said the pressure to go under the knife is omnipresent.
“It’s not even a bad thing to say you should get plastic surgery,” she said, “It’s just something you do.”
Like every other industry, beauty pageants have evolved throughout the ages. Lisa Pecot-Hébert, a professor at USC and expert in beauty and body image, said that beauty pageants have progressed past being purely a “beauty contest” to now being a platform that can empower contestants.
“I absolutely think there can be a feminist positive to beauty pageants,” Pecot-Hébert said. “I’ve seen a lot of strong women gain self esteem by doing beauty pageants.”
Beauty pageants also give the opportunity for academic and professional development, a little known aspect of the event.
“There’s a scholarship portion to beauty pageants,” Pecot-Hébert said, “Often times the motivation isn’t just beauty...it’s being able to put something on your college applications, as leadership, as service projects.”
Yet despite these positive attributes, Pecot-Hébert acknowledges that there can still be a stigma attached to an event which is still, ultimately, a “beauty contest”. “It is still about judging people on how they look, so people will always have a problem with that,” she said, “but I don’t necessarily think it should get the negative connotation that it has.”
Watanabe said that she doesn’t think beauty pageants necessarily perpetuate a certain type of beauty. “The whole point of beauty pageants, in my opinion, is not to try to be someone you are not, but to try to bring out the best-self, both inner and outer,” she said, adding that “There is no doubt that the scoring in beauty pageants are subjective because in the end, there are no mathematical formulas to define beauty and it’s only judged by the human eye.”
Addressing the differences in beauty standards between Asian beauty pageants and Western beauty pageants, Watanabe simply stated they’re not the same.
“I think Asian cultures focuses on beauty just as any other cultures, just in its own way. As a Japanese-Korean and, to a certain extent, American, I enjoy incorporating beauty trends from all those cultures in my life.”
Just as beauty pageants battle stigma, so does Korean beauty culture. Media portrayal often paints Korean women as wanting to look white, attributing desirable characteristics such as “big eyes” and “pale skin” to Western influence. However, Michael Hurt—a sociologist and professor at the University of Seoul—said this is a stereotype that doesn’t necessarily hold merit.
“People make a big mistake when they say, “Korean girls just want to be white”,” he said. “Western beauty standards are there but in reality, there is a distinctly Korean standard of beauty. The attractiveness of big eyes and pale skin has roots in Korean history as well.”
This history he’s speaking of refers to Dr. David Ralph Miller, an American military plastic surgeon who was stationed in South Korea during the Korean War. Miller is widely credited with inventing the modern day “double eyelid surgery” in Korea, after a Korean translator with slanted eyes asked Miller to make him into a “round-eye.” The surgery subsequently proceeded to gain increasing popularity in Korea, with Miller eventually even publishing a paper on it.
However, Hurt said that the comparisons of western influence on Korean beauty is similar to western influences in KPOP. “KPOP borrows elements from American hip hop and rap, but it’s not equatable...KPOP is very much its own thing.”
Pecot-Hébert sees it differently. “For these Korean beauty standards...looking more American is the goal,” she said. “All [KPOP] is doing is emulating the NSYNCs and the Backstreet Boys...the 90s groups that we had in America.”