I Almost Got a Nose Job in South Korea
How malleable is your face? (Photo: Donna Trope/Trunk Archive)
“Do you see those two women sitting in the corner?” my Korean translator, a young woman in her 20s, asked me. We were sipping lattes at Paul Bassett in the Seoul neighborhood of Apgujeong, nicknamed the Beverly Hills of South Korea. “They definitely had work done. The woman on the right more than her friend on the left.” We stared at two tall, slim, and elegantly dressed women with translucently pale skin who were quietly sipping their own lattes. The woman on the right had a pointy V-shaped chin and a long, ruler-straight nose. “These are not natural Korean characteristics,” my translator added. While you can indeed find the occasional Korean with a naturally pointed jawline, angular nose, and double eyelids that widen the eyes, my translator tells me that most Koreans tend to have flatter, rounder faces (including noses) with smaller, single eyelids. Before we cleared our table, I checked my reflection on the silver table. Were my eyes too small?
Growing up as Chinese American, I felt like I was never considered beautiful for my Chinese side or my American side. When I visited China on summer vacations, department store beauty counter clerks would holler after me, begging me to try skin whitening creams. Back at home in California, I was teased for having a tanning bed membership like some of my friends. I didn’t have a sharp Farrah Fawcett nose but I also didn’t have a dainty nose like Zhang Ziyi. As a kid, the doctor said I wouldn’t last in gymnastics because he thought I was going to be too tall, but I ended up at 5’1” without an Olympic gold medal or a Vogue cover. I thought I was too much and not enough in all the wrong places on my body.
But enough of this brooding. I decided to go to South Korea over Thanksgiving break, where you don’t dwell on the looks you were born with because you just pay to change what you don’t like. My friend, currently living in Seoul, took me to a beauty clinic in Seoul — a medical clinic with real medical doctors who dedicate themselves to making you more beautiful, under no false pretenses of health and wellness. Unlike in the US, where everything is hush hush, they were very open and accepting of plastic surgery. In the glossy waiting room where I filled out my consultation forms, I was watched by the gods who came before me: namely, the K-pop idols, who kindly signed autographed headshots and album art for the doctors who treated them. “Pop idols come here wanting to look like other pop idols,” the general manager of the clinic told me. She had large anime-sized eyes, a dainty pointy nose, pink doll lips, and eerily translucent white skin — but more on that later.
Examples of plastic surgery advertisements in the public transportation system in Seoul. (Photo: Noël Duan)
In South Korea, getting plastic surgery is a rite-of-passage for young women. “You get into a good college, and then you get plastic surgery to be beautiful,” my translator tells me. According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in 2012, 1 in 5 women in South Korea get plastic surgery. Some estimates place South Korea as the highest rate of plastic surgery per capita in the world, but the numbers vary because the treatments are not regulated, as I discovered in the consultation room.
The general manager led me into the consultation room with Dr. T*, the founder of the beauty clinic who would touch my face and tell me exactly what I would need to change about it. “I can’t tell whether he’s the before- or after-shot of plastic,” my translator whispered to me. Now, normally I don’t believe in critiquing people’s looks, even as a beauty editor. But as Dr. T was about to critique mine with his professional opinion, I will briefly describe his. His face was lopsided, asymmetrical, like a half-melted snowman with the acorn smile still holding up the bottom half of sphere — his glasses perched on two cheekbones, one higher than the other. To be fair, Dr. T looked like all the other plastic surgeons — always men — who advertised with huge billboards in Seoul’s public transportation system, and Dr. T had a track record of molding some of the most famous faces in Korea. Medical tourists from all over Asia and America come to see him, in fact.
Dr. T prodded and poked my face a few times while I stared at the wall behind him with a deer-in-headlights look on my face. It wasn’t till then, in my seat, that I realized I was voluntarily asking a man to critique and mold my face, but it was too late to get out — I had, after all, traveled 6,863 miles from New York City. But part of me also I wanted the consultation because I have nothing against cosmetic surgery as a personal decision. “My dad was always convinced that his eyes were too small,” my friend told me earlier. “So he finally got them enlarged. I think they might be too big, but now he’s really happy with himself, so who cares what I think?”
I’ve always wanted a different nose. At least once a day, I squeeze my nose and wonder what it would be like if I had a dainty schnoz like those described in Victorian novels.
Dr. T cleared his throat. “You should get Botox around your jawline to shrink your wide jaw muscles,” he said. (A more extreme and permanent procedure in Seoul involves shaving your jaw bones.) He said that over the course of a month, my jaw muscles would slowly shrink until the bottom half of my face appeared thinner and pointier, and they would stay shrunken for up to six months. “You could also inject Botox into your nose to change the shape and make it straighter,” he told me. What else should I do? I begged him to tell me more, like a diner asking the waiter about the specials of the day. It was strangely satisfying to hear that modern advances in cosmetic surgery could change my face so easily — the dystopian novel in my head was writing itself.
“You actually have a great facial structure,” Dr. T told me, catching me off guard. “You don’t need anything else.” But I wanted to know about pale skin — I have never had translucent skin like the general manager of the clinic, even in my childhood when I would play Neopets 14 hours a day. “But how do I get pale skin?” I asked Dr. T, expecting to find an excuse to re-activate my Neopets account.
“With an injection!” he replied, pointing to the veins on my wrist. After further prodding, Dr T told me that the injection is an I.V. drip of the antioxidant glutathione, which, in large amounts, reduces melanin stimulation and pigmentation, giving you paler and brighter skin. “I do it once a week,” the general manager, resembling an anime Snow White, told me.
In her hit song “Hello Bitches” (the music video featured the Parris Goebel dancers from Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” video), Vogue darling and K-pop star CL raps about her not-pale, barely-tan skin, which is an anomaly for a Korean celebrity: “Skin tone 22 carats gold / I got in Dubai.” Korean American entrepreneurs and co-founders of Glow Recipe, Sarah Lee and Christine Chang, told me that the history of wanting translucently pale skin goes back to ancient texts. “I got a master’s [degree] in Korean literature,” Chang told me. “And you’d be surprised — so many aristocratic and palace texts were recipes for skin care.” Nowadays, Lee tells me, there are a few jet set Korean women who prefer tan skin over pale skin — but the reactions are still the same: Other people will still have an opinion on your skin color no matter how light or dark it is. “I have never heard of this injection,” Lee told me. “But I think my mom would like me to do it.”
The general manager of the clinic offered me a package discount for the jaw, nose, and I.V. drip for roughly $1,000, about one-third of the price that I would pay in the United States. I declined, not because I didn’t want a different nose, but because I decided that I didn’t want another human being telling me what to change about my face.
I left with the two Korean friends who had accompanied me to the clinic, neither of whom have gotten any cosmetic surgery despite living in Seoul. “What is it like not having plastic surgery in Korea?” I asked, still a bit disappointed that I was not going to look like my favorite Korean pop star. “In Korea, it is very easy to look like someone else, as long as you have some money,” my friend replied as we walked past two more giant plastic surgery advertisements. “They can tell you how to look, but they can’t tell you who you are.”
*Name has been changed.
Related:
100 Years of Korean Beauty, North and South
South Korea’s Best Beauty Spots
‘Avengers’ Star Claudia Kim Talks Korean Skincare, Confidence, and Staying Healthy
