I watched this film last week and I saved it in my favorite folder. I guess I wanted to watch it repeatedly and share with others. I watched it again tonight, I had to finish my third reflection though. when I have an assignment which is difficult to handle, I usually do anything that I do not have to do.
The producer focused on two things about korean high school students. one is academic stress and the other is one standard of beauty which makes high school girls gotten plastic surgery. The idea of getting plastic surgery is popular in korea, which I do not agree with it though. My daughter is in third grade in middle school and one of her friends already got the eyelid plastic surgery as a present of her mother. How ridiculous it is!
While I was watching the film I thought most of the students were beautiful because they are young and fresh even though they do not notice yet. I always talk to my daughter how beautiful she is, however she refuses to accept it. She always does the same thing as I watched at this film(drawing eyelid and glue her eyelid to make double eyelid) Because she has a specific image of beautiful girl like most of korean girls and she does not fit the ideal girl that is why she draws eyelid everyday and makes resolution to lose her weight every month. I have tried to change her idea of beauty however I did not make it. This film reminds me of my daughter who is pretty however does not accept the fact at all.
Who gave this kind of concept? Why people can not accept that there are different style of beauty? Because of homogeneity???
Wow! What a great video! Thanks for posting it. I really want to see the finished documentary. Apparently it will be finished sometime in 2013. As a foreigner, I have often wondered about these same things. It seems particularly sad to me that perfectly beautiful young girls(and boys)feel this relentless pressure to conform to one, single, very narrowly defined ideal. There doesn't seem to be enough critical reflection by Koreans on the media's role in creating this perception, as well as, on societies part in this. I think what is needed is social pressure to be formed in the opposite direction: to see young people accepting themselves and loving themselves for who and what they are. Does plastic surgery happen to young people in my country? Yes, it does! But, it only happens in one aspect of our culture (one sub-culture), and it's frowned upon by most South Africans as superficial. I find it really difficult to understand how a mother (like in the documentary)can tell her daughter that she is beautiful only once she has had plastic surgery. Honestly, my emotions when I hear that are extreme. I find it disgusting that a mother would act that way. If that is happening a lot, how can children think of themselves positively? Check out this short video from Arirang TV (of all places!) on the relentless pressure placed on Korean woman to fit an ideal in order to get employed and be eligible for marriage etc: http://thegrandnarrative.com/2010/04/28/korea-cosmetic-surgery/
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