Korean women love Yuna Kim, the silver medalist in women’s figure skating at Sochi.
They love her for more than her athleticism and Olympic accomplishments.
According to the New Republic, they also love her because she’s never had plastic surgery.
In a country ranked high worldwide for the number of plastic surgeries per capita, that’s saying a lot.
“Most Korean girls want plastic surgery,” said Lee Tea Yang, a trader in Seoul. “Yuna Kim made a new era. There has never been a star like her.”
Most who go the plastic surgery route usually try to round out their eyelids to make them more westernized. Known as double eyelid surgery, the procedure has become more common in the United States.
Eugenia Kaw, an anthropologist from UC Berkeley, has interviewed plastic surgeons and Asian Americans who have had their eyes or noses altered.
“Asian American women’s decision to undergo cosmetic surgery is an attempt to escape persisting racial prejudice that correlates their stereotyped genetic features (‘small, slanty’ eyes and a ‘flat’ nose) with negative behavioral characteristics, such as passivity, dullness, and a lack of sociability,” said Kaw. “This research suggests that Asian American women who undergo these types of surgery have internalized… a racial ideology that associates their natural features with dullness, passivity and lack of emotion.”
You can read more about the prevalence of eyelid surgery in South Korea and Yuna’s impact in the New Republic.
