CPOY 76 International Picture Story Bronze: Painful Beauty
In South Korea, women are let go of their jobs for not being beautiful enough. Sky-high beauty standards permeate society. No less than a third of all South Korean women between the ages of 19 and 29 undergo plastic surgery. At the same time, the suicide rate among the same age group has risen significantly. The youngsters are growing up in a society that is evolving at an extremely high speed, heavily influenced by the Korean media, the Korean music genre, k-pop, with the seemingly utterly perfect idols and an Instagram feed crammed with beauty influencers.
Many children watch k-beauty YouTubers all the time, even kindergarten children. And when they start in elementary school, they wear makeup and colour their hair. In particular, the k-pop industry, traditional media and social media set the standard for how South Koreans should look. Korean television or advertisements in the street of k-pop idols show a very narrow field of people who are thin and fit a very specific and demanding beauty ideal.
