The Grand Narrative

Although a good 99.99% of sexual encounters are done for purposes other than reproduction these days, people do still tend to find the most fertile members of the opposite sex the most attractive, women, for instance, usually judging men by their faces much more than men do of women’s,  as “testosterone levels are reflected in the face, and who is seen as a one-night stand and who as a potential husband depends in part on this physical feature.” In contrast, men tend – and I stress “tend” – to be drawn to women with hourglass figures, or to be more precise those with large breasts and a low (0.7) waist-hip ratio, almost certainly because women who possess that combination are 30% more fertile than those with other body shapes. But given that the hows and whys of sexual attraction are one of if not the major preoccupation of the human race though, then you might have expected that that would have been known well before 2004!

Regardless, while I’m not for an instant saying that the majority of us who lack “reproductively maximal” body features can’t or shouldn’t be considered sexually attractive (at least to each other!), there are still some intrinsic human physiological features to the phenomenon that it would be specious of us to deny. But these are quite unlike the skinny body ideals for Korean women today, which exist to the extent that and/or despite the fact that Korean women are already among the least obese groups of women in the world, and this disparity deserves further investigation.

Which I’ve been doing since at least April last year, but this post is not a simple rehashing of points made earlier. Rather, because I used this detail of a woman with an hourglass figure from William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s The Birth of Venus (1879) to illustrate one point there, then naturally I was drawn to the above juxtaposition of Korean actress Yoon Eun-hye (윤은혜) and Albrecht Dürer’s Adam and Eve (1507) in an article on the front page of Yahoo! Korea on Tuesday: like it says, they bear an uncanny resemblance, although *cough* I hope you appreciate the time and effort that went into my crafting a much better version of the original image to demonstrate that then what was available there (sources: left, right). As per usual for mainstream Korean portal sites though, which tend to be much more tabloidish than their English counterparts, the “article” had my wife spluttering at its lack of actual news and sheer incomprehensibility at times, but at least in the translating of it it did ultimately prove to be the catalyst for some follow-up thoughts about recent developments in Korean women’s body ideals, as I’ll explain. First the translation itself though, which I’ve put together into paragraphs for the sake of easier reading in English (Koreans tend to write line by line), and which I want to stress that you shouldn’t shoot the messenger for(!):

스타매력 재발견, 고은아 ‘가슴’-윤은혜 ‘어깨’ 최고

The Rediscovery of Stars’ Beauty

Go Eun-ah’s Breasts and Yun Eun-hye’s Shoulders are the Best

각종 시상식장의 레드카펫은 여배우들에게 좀더 특별하다. 숨겨둔 자신만의 매력을 한껏 과시할 수 있는 기회가 되기 때문이다. 덕분에 팬들은 그녀들의 아름다움에 숨은 매력까지 엿볼 수 있다. 얼마 전 열린 제45회 백상예술대상 시상식에서 고정된 이미지를 깨고 새로운 매력을 보여준 여배우가 있었다. 바로 고은아와 윤은혜이다..두 배우 모두 귀엽고 상큼한 이미지로 그동안 팬들의 사랑을 받아왔다. 하지만 어린 나이임에도 성숙한 상체 라인을 가진 고은아는 지금껏 풋풋했던 이미지를 벗고 ‘제2의 김혜수’라는 찬사를 받았다. 또 윤은혜는 쉽게 찾아볼 수 없었던 둥근 어깨 라인을 드러내 여성스러운 면모를 부각시켰다.

As they are great opportunities to show off previously their previously hidden confidence and beauty, actresses look more and more glamorous on the red carpet at award ceremonies, and fans are eager to get a peek at their idols. A few days ago at the 45th Paeksang Arts Awards many actresses took the opportunity to throw off their old, established images and show off new sides to themselves, particularly Go Eun-ah (right, source) and Yoon Eun-hye. Both were previously well known and popular for their cute and sweet images, but despite her youth Go Eun-ah has become quite buxom, and has been described as the second Kim Hye-su. Also on this occasion, Yoon Eun-hye showed her new womanly side by revealing her round shoulders for the first time.

백상예술대상 레드카펫을 밟은 고은아는 가슴이 깊게 파인 옐로우 슬리브리스 드레스로 플래시 세레를 받았다. 산뜻한 컬러와 과감한 가슴 노출로 다소 쌀쌀한 날씨에도 불구하고 봄의 여신으로 매력을 뽐냈다. 무엇보다 기존 10대 이미지를 과감하게 벗어 던진 그녀는 이제 여성미와 섹시미를 겸비한 여배우로 신고식을 치른 셈이다.

Once Go Eun-ah stepped onto the red carpet she was seen to be wearing a very low-cut sleeveless dress, and was instantly bathed in the flashlights of hundreds of cameras. The bright dress and her boldness in wearing something so revealing, despite the slightly chilly weather, made her seem almost goddess-like. Moreover, she has completely lost her image of a teenager, and has made a big splash as a beautiful and sexy female actress.

고은아의 가장 큰 매력은 레드카펫의 여왕이라 불리며 늘 섹시하고 파격적인 의상으로 화제를 불러 일으킨 대한민국 대표 섹시스타 김혜수를 연상케 하는 상체 라인이다. C 컵 이상의 풍만한 가슴과 글래머러스한 몸매, 그럼에도 선명하게 도드라지는 쇄골이 김혜수와 매우 닮았다. 이는 한국에서 쉽게 찾아볼 수 없었던 우월한 가슴라인으로 ‘제2의 김혜수’라는 극찬이 아깝지 않을 정도. 게다가 고은아는 키 171cm로 170cm의 김혜수에 뒤지지 않는 신체조건을 가졌다. 압구정 에비뉴 성형외과 이백권 원장은 “김혜수와 고은아의 공통점은 넓은 어깨와 C컵 이상의 풍만한 가슴선 등 건강하고 서구적인 체형이다”며 “속옷의 종류에 따라 차이가 있겠지만 두 사람 모두 상부가 불룩한 속칭 윗볼록이 있는 가슴을 가지고 있다”고 말했다.

Go Eun-ah’s most attractive point is her breasts, which remind people of Korean sex-symbol Kim Hye-su (left, source), who regularly wears very revealing clothes at awards ceremonies and is known as the “Queen of the Red Carpet.” Despite the large size of their busts, you can distinctly see both collarbones, and they’re even the same height too. Such a combination is not often found among Korean women, and so because this is so rare people are not embarrassed to regularly praise her as the second Kim Hye-soo. According to Apgujeong Avenue cosmetic surgeon Lee Baek-gwon, “Kim Hye-su and Go Eun-ah’s points in common are their high collarbones, their C-cup (or bigger) breasts, and their healthy Western body shape” and “although they may wear different brands of underwear, they will both be for women who are top-heavy.”

또 다른 화제의 인물 윤은혜는 그 동안 드라마 ‘커피프린스 1호점’과 ‘궁’ 등에서 보여준 중성적이고 발랄한 모습과 다르게 푸른 색 미니 튜브탑을 통해 어깨라인과 각선미를 드러내면서 보다 여성스러운 모습을 과시했다. 특히 윤은혜의 둥근 어깨라인은 16세기 유화 ‘아담과 이브’(알브레히트 뒤러)에 나오는 이브의 어깨라인과 닮아 고전적인 여성미를 보여주었다는 평이다. 이브 이외에 ‘비너스의 탄생’(산드로 보티첼리)에서 비너스의 어깨라인은 물론 15-16세기 명화 속에 등장하는 아름다운 여성들의 체형적 특징 중 하나인 어깨가 매우 흡사해 고전적인 여성의 아름다움을 느끼게 한다. 압구정 에비뉴 성형외과 이백권 원장은 “승모근이 발달한 윤은혜의 어깨는 약간 좁으면서 전체적으로 둥근 느낌을 주며 통통해 보여 여성스러운 느낌을 준다”며 “16세기 서구에서는 이런 곡선이 잘 살려진 몸매를 아름다운 여성의 표준으로 보았다”고 설명했다. 전체적으로 통통하면서 힙 등에 보기 좋게 살집이 있는 윤은혜의 몸매가 서양의 고전적인 아름다움에 가깝다는 것이다. 기존 드라마에서 보여주지 않았던 섹시하거나 우아한 여성스러운 몸매를 백상예술대상 레드카펫에서 공개한 고은아와 윤은혜의 다음 번 레드카펫이 사뭇 기대된다.

An actress also getting attention recently is Yoon Eun-hye, who has been in the dramas “The First Shop of Coffee Prince” and “Princess Hours” but who looked rather androgynous and/or tomboyish in both,  showed off her shoulders and legs in a blue mini tube top. Especially, Yoon Eun-hye’s round shoulders were very similar to Eve’s in a 16th Century oil painting “Adam and Eve” by Albrecht Dürer, a well-known symbol with which to evaluate female beauty. Apart from Eve, other symbols used as such have been Venus in “The Birth of Venus” by Sandro Botticelli (1482, above), and she has a remarkable resemblance to the former. Lee Baek-gwon says “On the whole, while the muscle development around Yoon Eun-hye’s shoulders is a little narrow, its roundness give her a very feminine and woman-like appearance” and also that “in the West in the 16th Century, this type of well-developed curve was considered the beauty standard”. And so while a little chubby, her hips and so on are very close to that standard. These two women didn’t previously show this sexy side to themselves in the dramas they appeared in, but people now have high expectations for their next appearance on the red carpet! (finish)

Again, this is but one tabloidish news article, so despite having written things like this in the past, even I am not going to make much of repeated references to, say, the supposed virtues of attaining Western body ideals. As the links in report #12 of this post demonstrate though, the absurd notion that someone like Yoon Eun-hye is even slightly chubby would by no means be confined to the author of this article, to which I would add reflect an obsession about judging women on their appearances that could not even be deflected by being the first Korean to go into space either (see here and here).

Hence the final form of Eun-hye’s advertisement for the Korean cosmetics company Amore Pacific above for instance (source), which you don’t need me to tell you has been heavily photoshopped, and to my mind to an extent that goes well beyond the “normal” – but still often objectionable – touching up of and resizing of women’s bodies in advertisements that is as old as the industry itself (see here, here, and here, and I also include a Levi’s Jeans advertisement of hers below {source} with which to compare actual photos of her with). But whereas you and I might see a grotesque, almost ant-like parody of a woman, and certainly an image worthy of inclusion in the website PhotoshopDisasters, in Korea it actually spawned a (mercifully) brief mania for “X-line” figures, in addition to those already for “S-lines” and “V-lines” and so on.

This got me thinking. One Korean word in the above article – 각선미 – came out in my very old and cheap electronic dictionary as – I kid you not – “the beauty of leg lines,” but which my wife pointed out to me is just plain wrong: “the beauty of the (whole) body” would be a more accurate, if still awkward, translation. Given that Korean portal site Naver’s dictionary still gives the first translation though, then it may actually be my wife that is mistaken, but then that’s not the point, which is that “the beauty of leg-lines” is essentially an arbitrary choice. Ultimately, probably only one person was responsible for it, and he or she choose that rather than, say, “curvaceous legs,” or “shapely legs”. Why?

One clue is that this is by no means an isolated case. For at the back of the very first Korean dictionary I owned, among a list of standard political terms I was surprised to see the term “fusion government” in place of the term “coalition government” that you and I would be more familiar with. Yes sure, that Korean term does indeed have a certain logic to it, but then unfortunately it’s not actually English; instead, because the word “fusion” was (and still is) very popular in Korea, apparently the makers of the dictionary felt that that popularity should be reflected in their translations too, regardless of the trifling fact that at the very least fluent English speakers would have to pause for a moment to figure out what was being talked about.

I could provide many more examples like that off the top of my head, but you get the drift: someone chose “the beauty of leg lines” because the term “lines” was (and clearly still is) in vogue as a means to describe women’s bodies. But again, why? What intrinsic advantage does the term “S-line,” say, have over the previous “jook-jook bbang-bbang” (쭉쭉빵빵) that was prevalent in the 1990s, “jook” meaning “long and straight” and “bbang” meaning bread, hence a tall woman with a loaf of bread at her front symbolizing her breasts and another behind her symbolizing her buttocks? Was it because that term was too, well…corny?

Regardless, I should point out that I’m not so uptight as to argue that the use of the term S-line (or any others) is sexist or wrong in itself, or even more so than, say, the English “T&A,” and even though personally I don’t often use terms like that even with my male friends, that doesn’t mean I don’t still talk about those body parts with them any more or less than every other heterosexual male, nor that we don’t all assess the attractiveness of literally every woman that passes by us based on those.

Which provided it’s not overdone, is all perfectly healthy and good.  But this Korean propensity to the alphabetization of women is something else entirely, almost sinister in it’s proliferation and the genuine impacts it has on the way people think and behave. I think that the blogger JavaBeans puts this best, in a comment that I’ve already quoted before and undoubtedly will quote again:

The “W” originates from the stupid Korean fixation with naming body parts after letters in the English alphabet. It’s a great pet peeve of mine, and I have half a mind to go off on an extended rant about how the stupid Korean media fetish with physical beauty, coupled with their belief in Anglicization-as-legitimization, is responsible for an inane, ridiculous practice.

U-line (lower back), V-line (face/chin), S-line (tits-n-ass), M-line (“male” line, aka the male physique), and now W-line (boobs). (Yeah, what about my Q-line, huh? Or the oft-ignored K-line, whatever that may be? Suck it, failed wordsmiths.) And how while this practice is seemingly frivolous on the surface, it actually belies much more pernicious trends in society at large, when you have celebrities vocally espousing their alphabet-lines and therefore actually objectifying themselves as a conglomeration of “perfect” body parts rather than as whole, genuine people. You wanna know why plastic surgery is such a big deal in Korea, why actresses don’t eat, why there’s an obsession with thin? It’s because we’re all just Latin letters waiting to be objectified as a beauty ideal rather than living, breathing people with flesh on our bones and brains in our heads.

Through having written this *cough* light post, now I really do want to trace the first occurrences of all the terms above someday, as it’ll be interesting learning how they developed from their (presumably) humble origins, into rapidly spreading memes, and then, hell, into Koreans’ worldviews? No, that last is probably reading too much into it. Regardless of how to describe their effect on the Korean psyche today though, accounting for that development before doing the research may be nigh impossible, but if pushed to speculate, my first question would be if there is somehow some intrinsic feature to the Korean language itself that predisposes Koreans to think of women’s bodies in terms of lines? Can anyone with better Korean skills than myself can confirm or deny this? Alternatively, perhaps it’s somehow related to philosophical, Neo-Confucian notions of the female body, and perhaps even to geomancy also, historically very popular in Korea, and so much so that the Japanese deliberately placed important symbols of colonial power over sacred Korean geomantric “lines.” Or perhaps  something else entirely? I’m open to suggestions!

Update, March 28

Firstly, I’ve found an unaltered picture of the Amore Pacific shoot (and here’s one more):

More importantly though, I really do want to stress that this Korean propensity to use (and abuse) English letters as symbols for body parts and body types really is much more than a mere language difference, and which has ultimately evolved into something far less benign. Take the following potting history of the ways in which S-lines have been used in advertisements for instance, starting with that for “Fiber-S-Beer” (source):

The logic being that the fiber will help you with your S-line, or rather to maintain it more easily than if you drink other beers. Yes, not a particularly well-thought out logic, but a logic nevertheless. As can be also said for this S-line body-lotion below too, but which I confess I’m not sure how is supposed to work exactly (source):

Both lame certainly, but with the clear message that if you use these you’ll get an S-line (and an “L-line”?). But don’t get me wrong: I’m not claiming that either are particularly evil, or the sentiments in them somehow unique to Korean advertisements.This next commercial however, makes a definite jump to the surreal (click on HQ for higher quality):

In case you’re confused, that was minor celebrity Hyeon Yeong (현영) advertising a gas boiler in 2007, and yes, I too am at a loss for the relationship between the internal workings of any boiler and any women’s body parts. For that reason, for a long time I thought that the commercial was a deliberate parody of the whole notion of S-lines, and to a certain extent it probably still is. But then writing this post prompted me take another, closer look, and suddenly I noticed many related advertisements for it like this (source):

The uppermost Korean writing says “가스비 다이트,” or “gas bill diet.” Ahhh. Like you have to diet to get an S-line (supposedly: as I explain here, Koreans overwhelmingly favor passive methods of weight loss instead of exercise), then so is this boiler always on a diet so to speak, thereby reducing your gas bills. Which this next advertisement (source) reiterates:

And herein lies the whole point of this follow up, for while the Korean media is saturated with the S-line phrase, in most cases it simply means…well…tits and ass, although technically speaking the English “a good figure” would probably be the closest in nuance (it’s not at all crass in Korean). In this boiler ad though, while the S-line being discussed clearly derives from that bodily meaning, it’s actually referring to something else really: the internal workings of the boiler. And while this might seem trivial, it signifies that the term S-line has become so well-known, such a common cultural meme, that it can now be used for things entirely unrelated to women’s bodies and still be understood.

At which point it becomes hypperreal, a concept I confess I find fascinating to be honest, but which even I’ll admit can be a little esoteric. Confining myself here to just some *cough* brief copying and pasting from the Wikipedia entry on the subject for those of you that may also be further interested then:

In semiotics and postmodern philosophy, the term hyperreality characterizes the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially in technologically advanced postmodern cultures. Hyperreality is a means to characterise the way consciousness defines what is actually “real” in a world where a multitude of media can radically shape and filter the original event or experience being depicted. Some famous theorists of hyperreality include Jean Baudrillard, Albert Borgmann, Daniel Boorstin, and Umberto Eco.

Most aspects of hyperreality can be thought of as “reality by proxy.” For example, a viewer watching pornography begins to live in the non-existent world of the pornography, and even though pornography is not an accurate depiction of sex, for the viewer, the reality of “sex” becomes something non-existent. Some examples are simpler: the McDonald’s “M” arches create a world with the promise of endless amounts of identical food, when in “reality” the “M” represents nothing, and the food produced is neither identical nor infinite.^[1]

Baudrillard in particular suggests that the world we live in has been replaced by a copy world, where we seek simulated stimuli and nothing more. Baudrillard borrows, from Jorge Luis Borges (who already borrowed from Lewis Carroll), the example of a society whose cartographers create a map so detailed that it covers the very things it was designed to represent. When the empire declines, the map fades into the landscape and there is neither the representation nor the real remaining – just the hyperreal. Baudrillard’s idea of hyperreality was heavily influenced by phenomenology, semiotics, and Marshall McLuhan.

…

Hyperreality is significant as a paradigm to explain current cultural conditions. Consumerism, because of its reliance on sign exchange value (e.g. brand X shows that one is fashionable, car Y indicates one’s wealth), could be seen as a contributing factor in the creation of hyperreality or the hyperreal condition. Hyperreality tricks consciousness into detaching from any real emotional engagement, instead opting for artificial simulation, and endless reproductions of fundamentally empty appearance. Essentially, (although Baudrillard himself may balk at the use of this word) fulfillment or happiness is found through simulation and imitation of a transient simulacrum of reality, rather than any interaction with any “real” reality.

And now back to plain English.Yes, sure, that boiler advertisement is indeed just one example, but if you think I’m making too much of it then please also consider these ones of advertisements for clothing company Smart’s (스마트) school uniforms below (sources: right, first and second, third, fourth). I should first point out though, that yes, those are indeed boys in most of them, and also, in case you’re surprised to find that there are advertisements for school uniforms here (and hence companies that make them and compete against each other), then please see #7 here for more information on the politics of the huge school uniform industry in Korea. To which I’d add is so intense that school uniform makers were recently discovered to have been offering alcohol, cigarettes and money to juvenile delinquents to pressure their “friends” to make purchases.

Yes, the company name “Smart” is a natural fit with “S-line,” and yes, that is indeed a girl with her S-line proudly on display in that last advertisement…but then, if you were a teenage boy, would you wear a uniform with a label that read “Great Tits and Ass”? Okay…granted, not a great example, for I too probably wouldn’t have minded at all come to think of it. Koreans generally avoid such blatantly sexual humor though, at least in public and/or in front of the opposite sex, so the term isn’t being exploited in a masculine, roguish sense here. Buf it not, then in what sense is it being used exactly?

And which leads me back to the point I made in the introduction to this post update, that ultimately using the term S-line isn’t as harmless and benign as it may first appear. For not only is it difficult for most women to get that fabled perfect S-line figure in practice, but the more ubiquitous and multi-faceted the ways in which the term is used in Korean-life, then the more Korean women feel compelled to chase some abstract, hyperreal ideal that increasingly isn’t even related to actual women’s bodies whatsoever. And in a nutshell, how the fuck does one do that? Of course it’s impossible, but in a society heavily divided along gender lines, where women’s low political and economic empowerment means that their appearances matter much more to their success than in the West, and where critical thinking skills are not encouraged, then hell, no wonder they’re so obsessed with their appearances.

On a quick final note, advertisers are in fact running out of letters with which to describe women though(!), so much so that they’ve started using the same ones again, but for different body parts. A “V-line” usually refers to a perfectly angled face for instance (see here again if you need to refresh your memory), but now it’s also being used for women’s breasts too. With Han Ye-seul (한예슬) for lingerie company Venus (비너스):

I could also go on to discuss how a women’s breasts are also(!) known as a “W-line” in Korea, but then I do have a reputation for brevity and conciseness to uphold!