Korean Women, Part 2: “Exercise” and Cosmetics
Update: By coincidence, just after I finished writing this post I noticed these before and after pictures of Korean female stars wearing make-up. Needless to say, I find many of them more attractive before they were wearing make-up, although admittedly not all of them.
Introduction
To recap, in Part One, I discussed the phenomenon of so many Korean women having such negative body images, in particular viewing themselves as obese, despite the considerable evidence to the contrary. I first made that observation back in 2000 when I was single and dating, and, judging by what lucky bastards commentators on that last post with more recent experience have said, little has changed since.
(Photo by brandon shigeta)
Of the Korean women that told me that they were overweight, all said to me that they would be dieting to lose their (alleged) extra weight, and I was struck then by how few would consider doing exercise instead of or in combination with dieting, as in my experience it’s a far superior method. I accept that the word “diet” has a lot of connotations not in the English (see the above ad for instance), but that observation of mine was borne out by the findings of Minjeong Kim and Sharron Lennon in their journal article ”Content Analysis of Diet Advertisements: A Cross-National Comparison of Korean and U.S. Women’s Magazines” (Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, October 2006), which was the inspiration for this and the last post (downloadable here). In sum, they found that Korean women’s magazines overwhelmingly promoted passive dieting methods (e.g. diet pills, aroma therapy, diet crème, and diet drinks), overall giving the impression that “dieting is simple, easy, quick, and effective without pain, if they consume the advertised [products]“.
(Photo by 台北BoA)
Against that observation is the equal amount of physical education female school students receive, the high numbers of gyms in Korea, the large numbers of women that go to them, and the advertising and media images of exercising women that I’ve decorated these posts with. In particular, I think the ads with BoA, Nike Korea’s front woman in 2007, wouldn’t look at all out of place in New Zealand. But just like I discuss in these recent posts of mine, these similar-looking images belie fundamental differences in the way Koreans perceive and react to the images in reality. I think fellow-blogger Gordsellar puts me/it best:
Korean culture really is truly more alien in some ways than suggests itself to us, because all around is clothing, music, iconography, and self-presentation that seems so familiar. Yet as James notes, the undercurrents are also quite unlike the undercurrents of our own Western culture.
Korean Exercise Culture in Reality
At some of the first ever Korean gyms I went to, the friendly “trainers” would often cheerfully suggest I have a break in between sets by sharing some of their steamed potatoes, cigarettes, and coffee from a coffee girl with them (girl hanging around and chatting with us included). It happened often enough for it not to be exceptional. I could go on and on with other bizarre, anti-exercise examples, but you get the idea: Koreans may have the same aims when they exercise, but their attitudes to exercise and methods can be very dissimilar to those of Westerners. And to my mind, women gym-goers illustrate the differences more clearly than the men.
Some caveats: sure, that last may simply because I was naturally paying more attention to women at my gyms than the men. I also haven’t been to a gym in Korea since 2004, and I’m sure that at some Korean gyms out there that there must surely be some Korean women drenched in sweat, slugging it out on the treadmill and/or grimacing while doing ab curls. But I have picked the brains of my friends who do go to Korean gyms regulary, and they have confirmed the vast majority of women at gyms never lift weights, would often bring books and magazines to read on the bikes or treadmills, the pedaling and walking those often almost a slow, plodding afterthought to the reading, and would spend copious amounts of time on the “fat-jiggling” machines.
(Photo from here)
In short, a very passive approach to losing weight and/or exercise, just like the article says. And it defies all common-sense: you don’t need a copy of Weight-Training for Dummies, for instance, to know that - unless you’re extremely obese and/or are attempting exercise for the first time - if you’re not drenched in sweat on the treadmill, muscles aching and struggling for breath…then you’re wasting your time. As I type this I realise that for many Korean women (and men), the same themes that underlie, say, Korean adults turning up to a conversation class and never speaking, or driving an SUV despite Korea’s population density, packed roads, and mountainous terrain, may also apply here: going to the gym is just element of culture capital that signifies membership of the modern Korean middle class. Exercising isn’t the purpose, being seen to do so is, and so not enough Koreans have ever stopped to think about how effective their exercising is and/or how it could be done better.
For sure, if I posed those points to many Korean gym-goers, they’d naturally take offense to my suggestion that they’re unthinking drones, and I’d get lots of logical-sounding justifications for say, how strapping a belt to your body and then doing complete fuck-all is a simply great way to lose weight. They could also point to the above two photos perhaps, to which I’d point out in turn that both things depicted were dismissed as useless in Western countries in the 1970s (see the link to the first photo).
I do concede that I am sounding a bit cynical and passive about Koreans in this post though, but then conversations about “fan death” have left me a little jaded (and, admittedly, arguing in forums about the subject of my last post hasn’t helped either). On the other hand, Western readers may agree about the futility of many Korean beliefs about exercise, but may also think gym-going as cultural capital is reading too much into it. Possibly. But then the amount of time many female gym-goers spend on their make-up or hair at the gym suggests to me that exercising is not their primary reason for going to gym. Hell, according to my friends, some of the guys spend almost as much time on their appearance there too.
The Purpose of Cosmetics
(Photo by seoul of you)
Needless to say, oil and water don’t mix, at least at Korean gyms. I’m all for looking good while working out, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still pay attention to that when I’m jogging or cycling myself, but if I didn’t know any better I’d be very suprised at how female gym-goers don’t thinking healthy, toned, fit-looking, flushed and sweaty women, looking like they’re ready to get really dirty, aren’t attractive to men. But choosing to whiten their faces under thick make-up instead mirrors what they do outside of the gym too (no pun intended).
What it the purpose of cosmetics? To hide imperfections for one. One unintended consequence of my being partially bald sporting a fashionable and convenient shaved head is that, rather than being compensated by having no dandruff as one might expect, instead I have more, and have to liberally apply moisturizer to it everyday (”Fate, it seems, is not without a certain sense of irony”). I also remember what George Orwell said in Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), where he’s on an English channel ferry in the morning and notices men rubbing dirt off their face with their sleeves, but women covering it with make-up instead, and he jokes that maybe it’s a secondary sexual characteristic. On a side note, it’s a pity that Orwell is best known for 1984 and Animal Farm, because they’re both depressing as hell, whereas most of his other books are actually quite funny.
But back to the topic: make-up, as well as clothes and body alteration, is indeed also used to accentuate our secondary sexual characteristics. And what is the purpose of secondary sexual characteristics? To attract the opposite sex (sounds obvious, but not enough Koreans seem to know this as I’ll explain). Hence the evolution of breasts on female humans for example, because they swell slightly during ovulation, signalling to mates that they’re fertile, in turn meaning that those with already larger breasts were more likely to mate and have children to pass on the trait to, in a feedback loop that gave human females exceptionally large breasts for primates (see here for more, but NSFW in a medical-textbook sense). Hence also my seeing no contradiction between, well, liking women in bikinis, and claiming to be a feminist, although I’m now wise enough not to put any pictures of those on blog for the sake of being treated seriously. But I do think that all too many women seem to resent men’s interest in their breasts, and while I can understand and do have the social graces to look at a women’s face and listen to what she’s saying, I’m never going to apologise for being a human male and reacting to female body parts in the fashion that nature intended.
But the main purpose of cosmetics for women is to disguise when they’re not ovulating, and has been ever since humans started decorating their bodies. Consider the following two pictures, take from this article:
On the left is a composite image of 10 women when their oestrogen levels were at their highest: ie, when they were ovulating. On the right is a composite image of the same 10 women at the opposite part of their cycle, when their oestrogen levels were the lowest. On the left, the…er…let’s say woman…has curvier cheeks, fuller lips, and most importantly, a flushed, redder, healthier-looking face. And that’s just her face. The woman on the right, in contrast, looks frigid and cold. Not to put too fine a point on it, the women on the left looks fuckable, the woman on the right doesn’t. And if I was her partner, if she looked like she does on the right then you’d find that I’d be spending more time with my friends etc. etc. away from her than normal, confident that if she cheated on me than at least it wouldn’t lead to a child that I’d be tricked into raising for her. And this applies to “couples” even in platonic relationships. Somehow, men pick up the signals and call more, visit more, and spend more time and attention on women when they’re at the most fertile parts of their cycle.
I can’t find the link for where I read that at the moment sorry, but other results include lap-dancers not on the pill (which disrupts this cycle) making the most tips, and at the most fertile times of their cycle too, women feeling and dressing sexier when they are at their most fertile, women finding other women uglier when they are most fertile and competing with them themselves, and women unconsciously walking more sexually when they are not fertile, in this case to attract the attention of males and, if a partner is picking up on her other signals that he can go and spread his seed elsewhere and not worry about her for the moment, to maintain his interest and concern.
I could go on, but you can read more for yourself here and here (although when you do bear in mind that some of the conclusions are based on a very 1950s and 1960s, male-breadwinner view of ancient societies that is very much open to debate), and much of it is common sense. But in Korea, the cultural imperatives to look Caucasian, which I’ve touched in other posts recently, mean that Korean women try to make their skins look as white and/or as light as possible, not only not disguising when they are not fertile, but even disguising their fertility too. It sounds glib, and of course there’s more important factors, but as I type this the thought came to mind that no wonder Korea has such a large prostitution industry when so many Korean women are making themselves look, well, as unattractive as possible. Recall that body sizes too small to reproduce with are the cultural ideal too.
(Photo by seoul of you)
It’s midday here and I’ve spent 8 hours on this post in the last week (I kid you not), so I’ll put this subject to rest for the moment and concentrate on studying Korean for my test on Sunday. But let me leave you with the above cosmetics ad with 송혜교/Song Hye-gyo, which on the surface looks like any Western cosmetics ad…but are you seeing a theme here? In 8 years here, I’ve never actually seen a Korean woman wearing pink blusher on their cheeks…it’s all about looking as white and pallid as possible. As per always, the relatively few media images of Korea and Koreans that are received outside of the country, in this case via Flickr, are not at all like the reality.
(Update: Naturally, in the week after I wrote that, I’ve suddenly noticed hundreds of Korean women wearing blusher. I think it’s a conspiracy myself, but I admit it could just be that they always did, and that I simply didn’t pay as much attention to it previously)
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Good article, but I wanted to address two points:
1. In my experience, and from everything I’ve read, when losing weight, diet is 80% of the battle with exercise being a mere 20%. All exercising does is increase the calorie deficit a little more (cardio)/prevent muscle loss (weight lifting), or some combination of the two.
This doesn’t refute your greater point, about Korean gym culture being a lot of smoke and mirrors (which I agree with, and also believe is relevant to many many many other areas of Korean culture), but I thought it was worth noting.
Now if you want to spend 3 hours in the gym doing long steady-state cardio, then the caloric deficit will be much greater, in which case I’d agree, but who the heck has time for that these days, especially when a 20 minute HIIT workout can increase your metabolism for the next 24 hours. If you’re talking efficiency, and you don’t want to diet AND exercise, I’d pick diet, as it’s a lot easier to find time to just restrict calories than it is to exercise the requisite 90-120 minutes a day for a similar effect (and considering that you’ll probably feel MORE hungry from such an effort, self-restraint on the diet is going to HAVE to come into play at some point).
I’m not an expert though, so if I’m wrong about something in there, I’d actually like to know about it because it would help me in my own weight loss efforts.
2. In regards to Korean women trying to whiten their skin in order to look more Caucasian, I used to agree, but as I’ve learned more about Korean history and culture, as well as seeing traditional dance performances, I’ve come to conclude that Korean women have been painting their faces ghostly white for a long, long, time because it makes them look more upper-class in the sense that they’re not out working the fields in the hot sun.
Nowadays, though, I think that it may be playing a part (like, 30-40%), but I still don’t think attempting to look Caucasian is the motivation. I think a Korean woman might say “I buy face whitening cream to look more beautiful” but highly doubt she’d say, “I buy face whitening cream to look like a white woman.” You still don’t see that many Korean women with dyed blond hair walking around, after all.
As far as the double-eyelid surgery is concerned though, I think if anything that trend has come about from Koreans’ own desire to conform. I read somewhere (actually, I think it was an MTV documentary by Soojin Pak, but I can’t remember the title) that a certain percentage of Asians naturally have the double eyelid, so it’s not as if the feature is alien to Korea/Asia. What they see, though, is all the rich and famous people in the world sporting the double eyelids, combined with the Koreans that already have it, and now the double eyelid is considered trendy and beautiful. Again, it doesn’t strike me as overtly trying to look like a Caucasian person. It seems like Koreans are fascinated with big eyes as well, a feature that tends to creep me out more than anything, and I suspect the double-eyelid surgery may have us much to do with giving an appearance of having bigger eyes than anything else.
So, yes, it LOOKS like Korean women are trying to look Caucasian, but that doesn’t mean that’s the real motivation, and I haven’t seen any evidence to really suggest that Korean women are running around trying to meet a beauty standard intended for the whole purpose of appearing like the very Caucasians Korea is continuously trying to keep at arm’s length.
I’m very pleased to see a spike in your use of sociobiology! :)
You very last point, by the way, is spot on. Of course, I’ve said the same thing myself a bunch of times, so of course I agree. Still, you might find this post — where (I think) I coined the term “ciphersexual” to describe a lot of things you’re discussing — interesting, perhaps of use. I’ll be referring to it in my upcoming response to your thoughts on the Wonder Girls.
Erk, I should note –the things you’re discussing in another post — the Wondergirls one. Though I think it links up to the bigger themes…
Hmm. I think I have to disagree here. I’ve been working out in gyms off and on for my five or so years here in Korea and I’d be hard pressed to notice much of a difference in the way people work out. In fact, I might argue that Koreans are working out harder. Certainly harder than me.
That said, I’ve tended to go to gyms that are on the campus of whatever school I’m working at. Maybe students who are spending 10,000W per month at a cheap, low-quality gym are more inclined to have a serious workout than at a designer jimgilbang. Maybe university-age female students are feeling the negative body image pressure more directly as well, and thus workout harder.
I also would take issue with the idea that Korean women are (at least consciously) trying to look white. After all, as far as I can tell the double-eyelid obsession was in place BEFORE they met us folk, since some percentage of Koreans are born with it naturally (like my fiancée, for one). Paleness, again, would be a sign of domesticity, and thereby a sign of higher status. (And anyway, there’s lots of anecdotal evidence that even in very remote, non-Westernized societies, there are preferences for paler members of the group… my mom has observed it in many groups living in the bush in Malawi, for example.)
I’d say Korean women, at least younger ones, are trying more to look like Hyori or Jeon Ji Hyun or some other icon of Korean femininity than, say, Julia Roberts. There’s no shortage of students who are happy to suggest that contemporary images of Korean femininity are *fueled* by Western icons of “beauty,” but I think it’s worth throwing in a grain of salt, since many of the same students who are talking about this now, were one semester ago regurgitating rather distorted versions of Edward Said’s Orientalism. *shrug* I’d be curious to see how advertising that exploits depicts iconic beauty has changed in the last 30-40 years. (Like how, in old Sapporo ads I saw at the Sapporo Beer museum in Sapporo, you can see prints of really old posters of Japanese flappers, or 60s Japanese women in the girlie clothes of the era, and so on.)
As for exercise, I’m not at all knowledgeable on the subject, but my fiancée has been explaining the biggest theories in weight-loss/health maintenance in Korea, and has said that the best thing to do is (a) not eat after a set time, like 7 pm or 8pm, never to snack at night, and to do weight-training consistently to build bigger muscles which then use more energy in daily activities like walking around as well as cardio exercise… with the theory that having bigger muscles consumes more calories in every activity, and thus reduces the amount you end up storing away as fat. Also, that it’s best to do weights so as to burn off the available energy in the muscles, thus to help speed the shift to aerobic work sooner. I don’t know how true any of it is, though: I’m pretty lax in my research of, and interest in, exercise. (Though I’d better change that soon.)
Thanks for the comments guys. I’ll respond to them to them in reverse order.
Aaron, I do think it depends when and where you work out like you say. Things may also have changed since I stopped going to Korean gyms too (about when you started), and Korea is a fast-changing place, but I shouldn’t make too much of that.
Personally, I went to small, pokey gyms in the afternoons in Jinju in 2000-2003, and then I went to one across from my hagwon in Busan in 2004, and had to be back to teach classes in the evening at 6 or 7 before most of the students came in. So although there were some young students and young people there that did work-out like I described, most of the people I worked-out alongside were bored-looking ajummas, and we all know that they don’t operate according to the normal rules.
My friends have found students and young people to be generally the same at their own gyms, but your experiences are equally valid too, so based on what you say I’d have to admit that exercise culture here is probably much more mixed than I suggest in the post. Still, naturally I think that the phenomenon I describe is still big and unique enough to warrant the attention I give it!
Gord…oh man~ I knew you’d been commenting on other people’s blogs 4 years ago, but I didn’t realise you’d been blogging yourself since at least then. I’m already burning through printer ink going back and printing off selected posts of the Metropolitician’s (they’re that good) (up to Feb. 2006), and now I’ve got yours to do as well now? Thanks a lot!
Skinny Steve, regarding #1, Not that this refutes your points, but I should have been more precise. The vast majority of women who said that they needed to diet to me were already eating very healthily. Maybe a little too many instant noodles, and Koreans as a whole are definitely eating more junk food and are more sedentary than in the past (especially children), but it’s still almost impossible to avoid eating healthily here. Korean food can be samey sometimes, and there aren’t enough foreign restaurants, but off the top of my head I could list probably 15 cheap and readilbly-available dishes that one could eat exclusively and still live a healthy life off. So when these women said to me that they intended dieting, I visualized them rejecting such fattening dishes as…rice and vegetables.
Also, it’s easy for me to say this because I was skinny for most of my life (due to food allergies) and first went to the gym to bulk up rather than lose weight, but I still think that if a person is eating healthily and exercising sufficiently, especially cardio, then that person isn’t “fat”, regardless of what their actual weight is.
Sorry if I’m stating the obvious. I’m getting very tired as I type more (11:45 now), and now I realise that the above may all be well and good, but little help for those who did eat unhealthily but are not now, but still have a great deal of excess fat to lose.
On that note, sorry to any nightowls, but I’m going to have to sleep on your second point Skinny Steve and your second comment Gord. But for now I will part with saying that:
a) I may well be wrong about the wanting to look Caucasian thing.
b) Yeah, not doing it consciously is an important distinction.
c) I’m not completely convinced though, and think that, at the very least, both factors are equal influences.
I’d already decided to more directly address your second point in Part 3 Steve, and now Gord’s comment has just reinforced that. So instead of commenting in the morning, you may well both have to wait for that instead sorry!
Night all (12:02am)…yawn…
James,
Well, actually, my most interesting (in my opinion) posts on Korea are probably all invisible to you right now — I was using a different privacy filter, and when I changed over, everything marked as “access restricted” flipped over to “Private Post.” I’m slowly going through them, but have a long way to go. I’ll probably be making a best-of list sometime, though. I’ll let you know. (A bigger priority right now for me is finding the disc with the backups for the first six or twelve months of the blog, which disappeared at some point, I think during some failed import attempt or something.)
But my posts on Korea tend to be less hardcore theoretical than Michael’s. (And I like Michael’s blog, mostly, though sometimes I’m a bit… hmm. And I wonder why he almost never replies to my comments. Maybe he dun’t like me?)
Gord,
after my muse visiting me and forcing me to write the next post until 4am, I’ll have to put off writing Part 3 for a little while now…zzz…
Good to know I concentrate on only Michael’s blog for now though. And as for him not replying to your comments, I wouldn’t take it personally: his reticence has been noticed by me and many other bloggers as well. I know you know that already, I’m just saying. But having been barraged (relatively) with numerous emails and comments upon comments as my blog hits new levels of popularity (yay…zzz…) in the last week, then I can understand why he lacks the time and energy!
Yawn…zzz
I recently decided to let my gym membership expire out of frustration, and of course because now the weather is more hospital for running outdoors.
I would do my 10-15 km run on a treadmill in the corner, since I am a “proficient” sweater, and didn’t want to spray sweat all over any passer bys. It amazed me though, how many people would use the tread mills, read a magazine while doing so and walk probably slower than they did to get to the gym. People riding the bikes would often come to a complete stop at what seemed to be a particularily interesting part of the article they were reading.
Outside the looks of shear amazement over my drenched body, their “leisurely” approach to exercise had no affect on my workout, except when it came time to do weights. People would sit on the equiptment, do some weak stretching, do a couple reps., sit for a few more minutes, may be read a bit, do a couple more reps. and so on. Regardless of the fact that they were doing very little to improve their health, they didn’t seem to get the idea that I was doing a planned routine that involved sequencing one piece of equiptment after another, back again, etc., and would simply tie up the equiptment, at times doing nothing but sitting on it while watching. It would not be uncommon to see each piece of equiptment tied up, with not a single person doing any exercise.
Of course, there were a few people, mostly younger, who seemed to actually be working out, but by and large I could not understand what was motivating the people to spend the gym dues, and the time, to lounge around. I presumed most people were simply, getting out of the house, away from the family for a bit, or else were there to use the sauna and have a nice long hot shower.
Plagiarizing fuckhead alert.
Thanks for passing that on. Fortunately because it’s a WordPress.com blog it can be shut down easily, so I’ve just finished reporting it.
That’s cool. Maybe the tool won’t even see my abusive comments. :)
It’ s gone now. Nice to be able to do something about things like that for a change.
And then I received this:
Your blog has a CC license.
They have attributed you.
They have fulfilled the requirements.
I have to therefore unsuspend them.
You cannot assert copyright for others.
Oh well. The temporary suspension was the 2nd time I reported them (it’s complicated and boring). At least the attributation was I think the result of me reporting them the first time. I don’t understand them the owner though. If it was a splog with ads I could understand, but wordpress.com doesn’t allow those and so the owner makes absolutely no profit. So why? Reputation? A 2 second glance at the site shows it for what it is.
The whole thing is bizarre really.
I’ve really enjoyed reading your articles. I’ve been finding them both challenging and “edutaining”. One parragraph really grabbed me. That is this one:
“As I type this I realise that for many Korean women (and men), the same themes that underlie, say, Korean adults turning up to a conversation class and never speaking, or driving an SUV despite Korea’s population density, packed roads, and mountainous terrain, may also apply here: going to the gym is just element of culture capital that signifies membership of the modern Korean middle class. Exercising isn’t the purpose, being seen to do so is, and so not enough Koreans have ever stopped to think about how effective their exercising is and/or how it could be done better.”
Being seen is everything in this culture. Form without substance. It reminds me of a T-Bone Burnett tune called “Hall of Mirrors”. It looks at how this car is you; this suit is you…etc. There is a lack of substance. It’s all about the other person envying how you “appear” to be. Envy is everything in Korea.
About women and wright: eating disorders is a big deal in this country. As a counselor, I see this a lot with Korean girls. There is this myopic view of a carnival mirror where they see themselves as grossly overweight~ when in reality, they are simply skin and bones. The advertising industry doesn’t help at all as they glorify this stupidity.
Thanks again for your insight. Things are changing around here. (I’ve been here 11 years, and one month!) Keep it up!
Thanks Yvon. What kind of counsellor are you? And you’re definitely right that Korea is changing, slowly but surely. I really should spend some time highlighting that for a change, and some Korean positives too, instead of always sounding like a whinging expat.
I confess, I haven’t studied the concept of “culture capital” that I mention in the section of the quote, but it sounds intriguing. If you’re interested in it yourself, you can read the part of the short story I heard it from at the end of this post.
Hi James,
Much appreciated. I’ll be sure to check that out. To answer your question: I’m an inter-faith pastoral counselor. I work both as an individual and couple’s counselor. My niche is Inter-cultural (Korean - Western) couple’s. For more info, check out our website at http://www.harpo.ca
Cheers!
Yvon