A visual essay by Yafei Zhang

Introduction

In my paper, I will explore the plastic surgery among Korean women by analyzing the film “200 Pounds Beauty” which concerns a story of a girl achieving success through plastic surgery.

Since the main character in the film has been represented as a successful woman after undergoing body modification, the term success if women will be placed in the center of my discussion. Firstly, I am going to explore the question what does success of a woman mean in Korean society by analyzing the features of the main character in the film. And what kind of cultural and social implications dose success of woman have in today’s Korea will be another research question in my paper.

Introduction of the film “200 Pounds Beauty”

“200 Pounds Beauty” is a 2006 South Korean comedy musical film written and directed by Kim Yong-hwa. It is based on the Japanese manga “Kanna’s Big Success!” by Yumiko Suzuki. The protagonist Hanna Kang in this film is an over-weight girl and works as sex phone part-timer and ghost singer for Ammy, a famous singer who just lip syncs. Despite her incredible vocal talent, she can only hide backstage for being obese and not good-looking. She falls in love with Sangjun, the music director of Ammy, but he just wants to cash in on utilizing her talent in singing. During one party Hanna overhears the dialogue between Sangjun and Ammy. She came to understand that Sangjun is just utilizing her for her voice and never treat her sincerely. Feeling desperate about the reality, Hanna decides to undergo a head-to-toe plastic surgery operation and it takes one year for her to recover from the operation. Finally, she becomes super pretty and slender. With help of her friend Jungmin, she appears again in front of Sangjun with a new identity, a Korean American called Jenny, and wins her own recording contract. By virtue of the appearance and voice, Jenny finally becomes a singer and gains huge popularity. Meanwhile, Sangjun also gets a crush on her until he occasionally realizes that Jenny is actually Hanna. And Ammy, the one who lost help of Hanna and can’t continue her new album desperately searches for Hanna and finally know the secret that Jenny is Hanna. She exposes Jenny’s real identity to the company and Jenny has no option but admits that her real identity on the stage during her concert. Sangjun also accept her real identity and fall in love with her later. Although Jenny becomes a flop afterwards, Hanna is able to be herself and becomes a famous singer with her original name in the end.

In the movie, Hanna has experienced a year of tough time before becoming pretty and slender. Considering what Hanna has achieved in the end, the huge sacrifice made by Hanna seems to be quite worthy. She realized her dream of becoming a real singer instead of being ghost singer for someone else, and the man with whom she falls in love also has a crush on her. Hanna can therefore be seen as successful in career and life by means of undergoing plastic surgery.

However, we can’t just attribute her success to the transformation of outward appearance. We assume that Hanna has no vocal talent at all, she can never get the chance standing on the stage and acquiring acclaim from the mass. Besides, she also got very kind character and is so helpful to others in the film that makes her more popular. Hence, Hanna reveals not only physical but also spiritual beauty in the film which compromises the main features of the image of a successful woman in modern Korea.

This film represents the struggle of a not good-looking woman pursuing happiness and an image of successful woman expected by the mass. By studying the representation of women in media, I will explore the meanings of success of a woman in today’s Korea and what kind of features does a successful woman entail. Besides, its social and cultural implications will also be taken into consideration.

Here is the link of the full movie with English sub:

Characteristics of Hanna’s Success

First of all, since the story of the film unfolds with body modification of woman through plastic surgery, physical beauty compromises an essential element of Hanna’s success. Fig. 1 is a poster of “200 Pounds of Beauty” which displays the contrast of Hanna before and after plastic surgery. The physical transformation is definitely the most eye-catching point of this film and plays crucial role while realizing Hanna’s dream of becoming singer.

Fig. 1: 200 Pounds Beauty

The following video represents the scene of how Hanna walks on the street confidently just after being recovered from the surgery and becoming physically attractive. People watch this part while hearing the song “I’m a beautiful girl” being played. Its lyric is

Through this video, we can see that the confidence Hanna acquired from her physical transformation and the gaze with envy or admiration from the people around her. For Hanna, it is like a rebirth of her life. Her life has totally changed accompanied with the surgery. However, in order to realize the dream of becoming beautiful, Hanna has suffered huge pain from the surgery and spent one year in hospital to get recovered. Despite of the pains she has experienced, the result makes us believe that all these are worthy.

Furthermore, we can get the impression from the movie ending that Hanna achieves huge success in her career becoming a famous singer and finally gains the affection of Sangjun as well. This link leads to the movie ending which is about Hanna’s confession of her real identity. And after that, she gains confidence to accept who she really is and also wins understandings of her fans and friend.

As Korea has one of the world’s highest number of plastic surgeons per capita, reflecting an image-conscious culture that pushes numerable people to seek body modification[1]. I wonder if there are any specific social and cultural implications of plastic surgery in Korea.

Stimulating Cultural Factors

Firstly, I want to discuss this question from cultural perspective and see if what meanings have been endowed to female body in Korean culture. In Korean history about how the Korean ancestor and the first Korean kingdom came into being, there is a myth story recorded about a bear-woman.

“In ancient times, Hwan-in (Heavenly King) had a young son whose name was Hwanung. The boy wished to descend from heaven and live in the human world. He chose Taebaeksan Mountain as a suitable place to bring happiness to human beings. In those days there lived a she-bear and a tigress in the same cave. They prayed to Hwanung to be blessed with incarnation as human beings. Hwanung gave them a bunch of mugwort and twenty pieces of garlic and told them to eat these holy food without seeing sunlight for one hundred years, then they would become human beings. Finally, only the she-bear has observed the instructions and became a woman. Then Hwanung married the bear-woman and she bore a son called Dangun Wanggeom who established the first Korean kingdom ‘Ancient Joseon’.[2]”

The story above about explains the origin of Korean people and suggests the importance of the bear-woman. The she-bear became a woman for having observed the instructions of Hwanung and overcome the tough time, while the tigress failed. Its acquisition of human body signifies its entry into a civilized world, because it was forbidden to contact the civilized world before that. In the same vein, today’s bear-woman must undergo the pain of dieting and plastic surgery in order to become beautiful women with bodies that are considered normal and socially accepted.

Furthermore, Korean people live in collective culture which shapes their idea of beauty in a different way compared with the individualistic culture in the Western. It reflects the fact that the discourse and gaze on women’s bodies in a collective culture are therefore stronger and more uniform than in other cultures.

In addition to cultural explanations for Korean mania for plastic surgery, it has notable social implications as well. Given the fact that Korean cities are mostly densely populated, women’s body are more likely to be placed in the center of comparison and competition. Hence, Korean women tend to invest more in the body aiming at distinguishing themselves from others. It reflects their desire to build their identities through consumption of the body[3]. For instance, in this film, Hanna builds a brand new identity by means of body modification with which she can stand on the stage and be admired by great number of people.

Consumer Culture and Capitalist Society

Women’s idea of beauty has been shaped by the consumer culture. Taeyon Kim addresses the gendered implications of the development of Korea’s national beauty industry in her article “Neo- Confucian Body Techniques: Women’s Bodies in Korea’s Consumer Society” Kim argues,

With the advent of a post-industrial, consumer capitalist society in the 1980s, women became more important as consumers than as factory workers, shifting the utility of their bodies from national labor production to national consumption, becoming, in effect, what Bryan S. Turner calls the capitalist body[4].

Since Korea has been transformed into a capitalist and post-industrial society, consumer culture has penetrated into women’s life and changed their thoughts about their outward appearance. According to “Harisu: South Korean Cosmetic Media and the Paradox of Transgendered Neoliberal Embodiment” by Patty Jeehyun Ahn, “beauty advertisements and journal articles circulating in the country throughout the 1980s and 1990s facilitated consumer culture’s shift away from one stereotypical conception of the Korean female body – “short” legs, a “round” face, “yellow” skin – toward a global, cosmopolitan notion of beauty”[5]. Given that the idea of beauty shifts gradually into a global and cosmopolitan notion, women are more likely encouraged to invest in body transformation including dieting and plastic surgery. Since women are tightly bound up with the concept consumerism, consuming woman becomes an object of great interest and research among marketing and advertising companies[6].

Physical appearance has also become a kind of physical capital, that is, a social property for women while seeking social success in a capitalist society.  Good-looking appearance can assure advantages in career and relationship with love partner. We can immediately figure out why Hanna needs to work as ghost singer for Ammy who is actually not good at singing at all by comparing their outward appearance. Ammy got slim body and pretty face which are something highly valued in Korean society. In consequence, success in career seems to be inseparably linked with attractive appearance for most women in Korea.

Patriarchal Social System

Confucianism is an integral part of Korean culture and affects Korean gender relationships very deeply since ancient times up till now. Since Confucianism advocates patriarchal social system, women who want to pursue career are encountered with challenges from a male-dominated society.[7]

The “200 Pounds Beauty” places the love story between Hanna and Sangjun in the center of the film, in order to represent Hanna’s success in relationship with man after becoming a beautiful girl. Fig. 2. is a poster of this film, the three figures from left to right are Ammy, Sangjun and Hanna. Interestingly, Hanna as the main character in film stand on the right side, while Sangjun is placed in the center of the poster standing between two women. And Hanna leans against Sangjun’s shoulder, while Ammy stand behind Sangjun starring at them with jealously. And the film also ends with a happy ending of the love story between Hanna and Sangjun.

Fig. 2: 200 Pounds Beauty

The film also demonstrates the idea that women’s beauty can help them to get privilege in a male-dominated world. This idea can be apparently manifested in the following part of film with full comedian effects.

It is not hard to notice that attaining so called true love from a man compromises an indispensable part of woman’s success represented in social media. And what is not easy to neglect is that women’s success is partially based on the acceptance of the society especially of males. It seems that women are mostly voluntarily to get body transformed, but this kind of voluntariness also implies women’s degradation into a status controlled and regulated by a patriarchal social system.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have explored the meaning of success for women in Korea through the lens of the film “200 Pounds Beauty”. Although a film solely can’t really give us the full picture of Korean women’s situation, it reveals the representation of modern women in Korean media to some extent. Through the experience of Hanna, we can get better understanding of Korean mania for plastic surgery and potential cultural and social stimulating factors behind it.

Firstly, we have answered the question what does successful women refer to in today’s Korea. According the film, women’s success can be characterized as physical beauty, successful career and affection of males.

After that I have discussed the cultural and social implications of successful women. In this part I have traced the cultural origins back to Korean ancient history about bear-woman who gave birth to the ancestor of Korean people: Dangun. The transformation into woman of the bear provide explanations for rise of plastic surgery with a new angle that has taken root in Korean culture and history. In addition, Korean collective culture pushes women’s desire for distinguishing themselves even more forward.

Besides, since Korean shifted into a consumerism and capitalist society, women’s status has undergone transformation meanwhile.  Women’s body is no longer just for factory production but became object of consumption and what Bryan S. Turner calls the capitalist body, as we discussed previously. It stimulates increasing number of women to invest in their bodies in order to be more competitive in the capitalist society.

Finally, I have discussed the effects of patriarchal social system on women’s understandings regarding their outward appearance and life pursuit. Based on Hanna’s story, we get the impression that her happy ending of the film is partially based on the acceptance of the society and affection of males.

In conclusion, the film get us closer to the living status of Korean women and thoughts regarding the definition of success. It also implies women’s degradation into a status controlled and regulated by a patriarchal social system and consumerism capitalist society.

Notes

Bibliography