A cutting-edge journalistic expose of self-care consumerism, using the extreme case South Korea to both celebrate the astounding growth of K-Beauty and South Korean pop culture as a global export and examine the dark implications for women in a looks-obsessed patriarchy, in a debut that asks the question- What is the future of beauty?
From 2014 to 2018, South Korean cosmetics exports quadrupled from $1.6 billion to $6.3 billion. With the help of YouTube and Instagram influencers, Korean beauty's multi-step skincare regimens, snail-slime facials, and selfie-ready face masks have catapulted into global consciousness and raked in billions. The K-wave captures imaginations worldwide by promising a kind of mesmerizing perfection, aspirational middle class lifestyles, and a sense of fun. These cultural exports, like face creams packaged to look like milkshakes or penguins or cacti, work together to fascinate us, champion consumerism and invite us to indulge.
And yet, there is a dark side to this story. In South Korea, not meeting the aesthetic norm will cost you. Women are frowned upon, at best, or openly harassed by strangers if they so much as duck downstairs to the convenience store without makeup on. South Korea is the plastic surgery capital of the world, because "your face is your fortune," and determines not just your odds for work but your odds for a suitable partner. Headshots, and often height and weight stats, are required on resumes for all kinds of employment - accounting, governmental, sales. And beyond that, women are making just 56 cents to the man's dollar, they are excluded from the work force, and the Korean Institute of Criminology's 2015 report shows that 71.7 percent of women in South Korea had experienced physical or psychological abuse from their male partners at one point in their lives.
With rich historical context and deep reporting including hours and hours of interviews with South Korean women, this is a critical but not condemnatory look at an industry that raises complicated questions about gender disparity, consumerism, the beauty imperative of an appearance-obsessed society, and the undeniable political, economic, and social capital of good looks worldwide.
About the Author
Elise Hu is a correspondent and host at-large for NPR, the American news network; and since April 2020, the inaugural host of TED Talks Daily, the daily podcast from TED that's downloaded a million times a day in all countries of the world. For three years, she was the NPR bureau chief responsible for coverage of North Korea, South Korea, and Japan. Her work has earned a DuPont Columbia Award, a Gannett Foundation Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism, a National Edward R. Murrow award, and beat-reporting awards from the Texas Associated Press. She lives in Los Angeles with her three daughters.
Industry Reviews
Praise for Flawless
A must read, Flawless is much more than a book about culture's obsession with youth and beauty. It provides an urgent metaphorical societal mirror and context for why we spend so much of our time in the quixotic pursuit of perfection. Flawless helps us ask hard questions and reclaim our agency in a world that wants to deny us our power. Hu's journalism shines a light on what is broken and provides optimism for what can be instead."
-Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Play
"Like a trip to the beauty counter with your most discerning friend, Flawless deftly redirects us from the individual choices we are bombarded with (so many serums, so little time!) and focuses us instead on the transnational systems that sell consumption as the key to wholeness. Well-researched and funny, it is Hu's own vulnerability and keen observations on the endless project of female self-improvement that make each page sparkle."
-Alicia Menendez, MSNBC Anchor and Author of The Likeability Trap
"Elise Hu, as the outsider that blends in, takes a deep dive into the world of shallow beauty in Korea, where success is really skin deep and the only unacceptable flaw is being ugly. Flawless is a frightening dystopian tome about Korea and a world in which women are expected to pay to look good or suffer real-world financial disadvantages. And if you think that only women are trapped by a society that demands physical perfection, think again. Korean men now consume roughly 13% of the world's skincare products--even camouflage lip-balm for men doing their mandatory military service. One can't help but wonder if K-beauty standards are causing the human soul to rot away. A fascinating look at the ugliness of Korea's cosmetic underworld, sometimes shocking and often darkly funny as Elise riffs on the more ridiculous aspects of the pursuit of "ideal" beauty. Let me tell you dudes, the book gets under your skin--in all the right ways."
-Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
"Superbly researched and deeply insightful, Flawless is a timely, provocative, and fascinating must-read. Elise Hu masterfully blends an engrossing memoir about her experience as a foreigner, woman, and mother of girls in Seoul with a journalistic exploration of the disturbing forces behind K-beauty's global rise [and the increasingly algorithm-driven perceptions and unforgiving standards of "beauty."] I loved it."
-Angie Kim, internationally bestselling author of Miracle Creek
"In Flawless, Elise Hu explores not just why South Koreans are so obsessed with skincare, but also how the beauty standards of Korean culture have created a seemingly endless feedback loop of beauty "problems" to be solved by an ever-increasing number of products. A fascinating, meticulously reported deep dive into Korean beauty culture."
-Doree Shafrir, co-host of Forever35 and author of Thanks For Waiting: The Joy & Weirdness Of Being A Late Bloomer
