The Impact of K-Pop on Body Image

Introduction

From the Korean skincare regimens you religiously follow to the Korean dramas you bawl at while watching, all of this newly integrated pop culture has impacted our lives due to the Hallyu wave or the Korean wave. At the heart of this sits the main source of the impact, K-pop. A $5bn industry as of 2018, K-pop has undoubtedly taken the world by storm and become a global phenomenon.

While the impact of K-pop does carry a lot of good, such as the melodious and often touching music, the life-saving cosmetic products, the widely publicized charitable donations and the endless entertainment, like all things in the world, it also carries a bit of bad, namely, the impact on body image of the lay man.

One thing that is given high priority when it comes to K-pop and their artists are their visuals or looks. The visual aesthetic of a K-pop artist, more commonly referred to as “idols”, carries a lot of weight into their success, which is why we see all of these singers with perfect hair, perfect skin and perfect bodies. It’s not easy work to look so flawless; these artists have to go through many procedures, possibly even surgical, to look the way they do. So what happens to the mind of the average person who switches on their telly only to see these utterly beautiful versions of human beings constantly on screen? Is there a pressure on the youth to replicate this perfection by themselves and strive to look like them? It is very much possible.

The Need to Look “Beautiful”

Every country in the world has a certain standard as to what is perceived as beauty, and so does the Republic of Korea. For women, it is the need to have extremely pale and clear skin, round eyes, a high nose bridge, a small face, skinny legs, and a 9:1 body length to face length ratio. For men, it is the need to have clear skin, a slim yet toned body, tall height, lack of facial hair and facial features that are not overtly masculine.

While obviously every country in the world sets a certain beauty standard and the citizens put in quite the effort to try and achieve it, this goes to the extreme in South Korea. There is a homogenous view of what a “pretty” person looks like and if not achieved, a person can be ostracized, even bullied, in society. This one-dimensional focus on beauty is reinforced by the popularity of K-pop which shows idols with very specific features that remain common in all of them as per the beauty standard.

This immense pressure has given rise to the phenomena known as ‘Lookism’ which is prevalent throughout South Korea. It is the practice of discrimination on the basis of visual appearance. In a study that investigated 3117 Korean adolescents, 24% claimed to suffer appearance discrimination. Lookism, undoubtedly present and prevalent in K-pop, has been fueled by the media that presents a specific look that people must follow, and if they do not, they are ‘unworthy’ of attention.’

Plastic Surgery Hotspot

Idol Fandom culture is not an uncommon sight in Korea - in fact it is abnormal to not have a certain depth of knowledge about idols. This results in the widespread belief that K-pop artists are the standard and people go through extreme lengths to replicate their looks. Plastic surgeon clinics will use photos of K-pop idols as a form of advertisement, which basically screams “If you want to look like this, you must undergo cosmetic surgery.” Often, young females will take viral before-and-after pictures of idols and their plastic surgery to these clinics and use them as a replication of the procedures they would like to undergo.

This has resulted in South Korea becoming a hub for plastic surgery. It has the highest per capita ratio of aesthetic procedures in the world. Young adults are gifted procedures like double eye-lid surgeries as gifts for birthdays or graduations. New America Media interviewed ordinary 17-year old high school girl Soojin Shin and when asked about the positivity associated with plastic surgery she replied, “K-pop has persuaded teens to think and believe that there is only one type of beauty, which they must strive to achieve… [and] to reach that ‘one beauty,’ they opt for surgery.”

What makes matters worse, the term ‘natural beauty’ is commonly thrown around in the K-pop industry. Apart from the rare exceptions such as singer Kwanghee from the boy band ZE:A and girl group Brown Eyed Girls, K-pop artists conceal the fact that they have undergone multiple surgical procedures to achieve the level of perfection they have, and simply attribute their slim bodies and defined faces to superior genetic pools. It creates a false sense of beauty amongst their viewership and that such perfection is unattainable unless you were born with it. This drives even more pressure onto their young audience, that if they do not look that way naturally, they are ugly and must be ‘fixed’ through plastic surgery. According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, “one in five South Korean women has had some form of cosmetic surgery, compared to around one in 20 in the U.S.”

Normalisation of Diet Culture

With the immense prevalence of setting K-pop to be the beauty standard, the perfect size-zero bodies that idols flaunt have become the desirable size. Such body types can be unattainable for a lot of people and possibly unhealthy. A lot of K-pop idols are underweight in order to show a more appealing body to their audience. Famous star Kim Jaejoong, standing at 180 cm, weighed 57 kilograms throughout his career. Girl group Girls’ Generation (Sonyeo Sidae) was coined “leg-beauty” idol group, replicating the dream of young girls to have skinny legs with a thigh gap. Kpop follows the strict principle of “the skinnier, the better”.

K-pop idols go on dangerous diets in order to achieve these extremely slim bodies. These celebrity diets then go viral and influence common people to imitate these diets. One of the most famous diets that took South Korea by storm was the IU diet, which consisted of one apple for breakfast, two sweet potatoes for lunch, and a protein shake for dinner. Countless people tried the diet as well in a desperate attempt to attain her ‘perfect’ physique. Another very popular diet was the 13-day Wheesung diet that was popularized after Red Velvet’s Wendy showed a major weight loss transformation that consists of a meager half cup of rice for breakfast and half an apple for dinner, which accounts for only 150 calories per day. The recommended daily calorie intake for a woman is 2,000 calories. This dangerous diet puts you in a calorie deficit of 1,850 calories. Such an extreme deficit could cause metabolism reduction, fatigue and nutrient deficiencies, reduction in fertility, weakening of the bones, and weakening of the immune system.

Such dieting culture has resulted in a spike in people suffering from eating disorders in South Korea. The Ministry of Health and Welfare released a report that showed that 23% of teenagers who attempted weight loss in 2017 took to diarrhea or vomiting after consumption of meals. Another report from the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service showed that the number of teenagers with eating disorders increased from 547 in 2016 to 693 in 2018.

K-pop idols are often treated as “thinspo” - short for thin inspiration. Their photographs are put on blogs and YouTube videos as inspiration for weight loss. The entire point is that the common man could look at these ‘body goals’ and be motivated to continue on their weight loss journey. ‘Thinspo’ has come to be closely associated with the ‘pro-ana’ and ‘promia’ community - a community that justifies anorexia and bulimia as a lifestyle choice rather than an eating disorder. This makes the distribution of ‘thinspo’ content to be extremely problematic.

The promotion of the bodies of K-pop idols as the beauty standard has exerted extreme amounts of pressure onto the general public, specifically the youth of South Korea. The difference between body image and BMI is known as body image discordance (BID) which has negative impacts towards mental health. The 2014 Korean Community Health Survey revealed that 43.1% of participants were shown to suffer from BID.

It is no doubt that the popularity of K-pop worldwide has resulted in a negative image of the body that could severely impact its listeners, even the idols themselves.

Conclusion

While K-pop has achieved massive success throughout the world and for good reason, it has shown to have a dark side when it comes to body image. The pressure that comes from the traditional Korean beauty standard is reinforced by the genre and the media it produces. In no way does this article try to blame the artists for perpetuating such unhealthy behaviour. Rather, the artists themselves often suffer due to these high standards that are set for them in order to reach the success they desperately work hard towards. K-pop idols often partake in surgery as well as unhealthy eating habits to reach the physique the public desires to see them possess. As the impressionable youth observe their idols’ unhealthy behavior, they tend to replicate their surgeries and diets in the hopes that they can look just like the celebrity they look up to.

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