Terrible Truths About Korean Beauty Culture
Divya's latest Fashion Swamp column takes on 'Flawless' by Elise Hu
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The piece you’re reading now is by Divya Venkataraman. Divya is a writer, editor and presenter based in London. She writes across fashion, culture, travel and sustainability for publications like The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar and more. Previously, she was an editor at Vogue Australia, GQ and Vogue Living, and also contributed regularly to Vogue Australia’s print editions. She has also been a regular contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald. Her work has appeared in publications such as British Vogue, The Australian and Meanjin. Divya also just launched her own Substack,
, with .Divya writes for News & Reviews Magazine each month. These are some of her pieces from previous editions:
There was a book in the Young Adult section of my local library which I skipped over every time as a tween. It was called Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. The blurb told me it was a sci-fi dystopia about the government forcing plastic surgery onto everyone when they turned 16. Anyone who rebelled was considered an outcast and deemed an ‘Ugly’. Even when I had done the rounds of that little country library, even when my other option was re-reading Melina Marchetta again, I couldn’t go near that book. There was something so profoundly ick-provoking about the concept.
Eerily, though, that teen novel might have been onto something. The idea of governments being involved in the ‘beauty’ of their citizens—to the extent of encouraging, if not mandating, physical enhancements—is part of the very real Korean society that Elise Hu explores in her book Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital.
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