Today Virginia is chatting with Elise Hu, the author of the brand new book Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital, which explores the intersections of beauty culture and diet culture in South Korea. If you have ever purchased a sheet mask or a babyfoot peel or any other K beauty products or if you’ve just been aware of the absolute phenomenon of Korean beauty culture, you need to read Flawless.

Remember, if you order Elise's book (or any books we mention on the pod!) from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, you can get 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)

If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes. 

Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she gives are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.

BUTTER & OTHER LINKS

TED Talks Daily

babyfoot peel

mothers get held responsible for their children’s weight

but what if I just want to lose weight?

Heather Widdows

Escape the Corset 

the squiggly noodles from Trader Joe’s

 new spring Birkenstocks.

FAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.

CREDITS

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram or Twitter. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell. Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism!

Episode 96

Virginia

You lived in Seoul for four years to be the NPR bureau chief there. What did you know about Korean beauty culture going into it? Did you think there would be a book in it?

Elise

Never. No. I did not think there was going to be a book in it at the time and I still can’t believe one exists, knowing my personality. I have a very short attention span. I also don’t like to write alone or even be alone with my thoughts. And as you know… 

Virginia

There is some of that required. It’s hard to get around that. 

Elise

I didn’t know a whole lot about Korea, period, when I got posted out there. I think that was part of the motivation for NPR. They liked my journalistic style of being a fish out of water and exploring a place and explaining it and reporting it out with the listener. That was the end of 2014 when we first started having conversations about opening up a Northeast Asia Bureau. So by the beginning of 2015, never having set foot in South Korea before, I moved my husband, my toddler, my geriatric Beagle, two cats, and a baby in my belly all over to Seoul, a place where I hadn’t so much as had a layover at the airport.

Part of the excitement in it for me was that it was Northeast Asia, a place where we hadn’t turned the lights on as a news organization before. We just really hadn’t had anybody permanently posted there. So I would cover not just South Korea, but also North Korea and Japan—and what an exciting region. There’s a huge US military presence there, too, that I think gets under-covered. I think half of all of US military stationed overseas is in Korea and Japan. 

Virginia

Oh, wow. I didn’t know that. 

Elise

There was so much to learn. What did I know about Korean beauty culture at the time? I knew that sheet masks were getting cool. A lot of my friends who were the more in-the-know, hip ones, the ones that read The Cut every day and knew about all the coolest ingredients and the best treatments that were available, they were really into K beauty culture already. Because K beauty culture, as I found, is often not just years ahead, but a decade ahead when it comes to various skincare innovations.

So I knew about sheet masks, I knew a little bit about the packaging, I knew that Chinese tourists were going to Seoul a lot to try and load up on various products. I knew about the plastic surgery. I think I really saw it as vanity at the time. I had my Western judgmental attitude about it, when I first got to Seoul.

Virginia

You really explode this concept of vanity and this myth that women engage in beauty work because we’re shallow or we’re looks-obsessed. You talk about understanding beauty work—whether it’s skincare, plastic surgery, weight loss, all of it—is a survival strategy, particularly in a culture with high rates of lookism and fatphobia.

Elise

It absolutely is. I mean, the entire concept, the term “lookism,” was new to me. When we say lookism, it’s appearance-based discrimination. Lookism works in all these insidious ways, obviously to marginalize people, but also it can reward those who do focus on their appearance and do the work of improving it to better match the prevailing culture and beauty standards of the day.

Having good looks is framed as your personal responsibility. Obviously it’s a very feminine look—you’ve seen Korean K-pop girl groups—so that generally is the model for how a Korean woman should look. If you don’t at least try to match that standard or if you fail, it’s seen as a personal failing. And hard work then means work on your body. And it problematizes all sorts of bodies that don’t fit. Something that I learned very early on was that my size