The Bane of the Korean Woman

      While South Korea is great in oh so many aspects it has it's fair share of downfalls as well.  Especially for women.  I'd like to think that in the States women are treated as fairly as men (though I'm not naive enough to believe that this is always true).   Couple that with coming from the South and being raised properly by my parents, I just can't foresee a situation where I wouldn't treat a woman better than I'd treat myself (At least now-a-days.  I was young and stupid once and apologize to any of my ex-girlfriends reading this.).  Here in Korea, the culture just doesn't seem to work that way.   Women are subservient to men and are required to know and perform certain duties.

      As an example, I can't think of a time when any decent, chivalrous man wouldn't hold a door open or offer up his seat to a woman in need.   Not so in Korea.  Doors do not get held open; once walked through, no one even turns around to see who is possibly behind them.   And as for any available seat, that definitely goes to the man.   Young and old men alike get to enjoy sitting down on crowded subway trains for hours at a time while their significant others stand, tightly gripping the hand holds as the train swerves through the underground tunnels.   Women must also care for the entire household.  The duties of cooking, cleaning, and raising children fall primarily on her shoulders.

      If those external sources of cultural pressures weren't enough, there are a whole set of societal pressures that women face, even from a shockingly young age.   This youthful generation of Korean women are discovering the West and have an insatiable appetite for any and all things American.   The music, fashion, glitz, glamour  and celebrity have all gained unstoppable momentum with the most emphasis being on physical appearance.   Hair style and color, eye color, clothing, and body type and shape are all things that young Koreans change to emulate their Western counterparts.   Some of these factors are quite easy and painless to change.  Buying new clothes and hair dye is a simple solution for most young women.  Contact lenses which change the color of one's eyes to something much lighter is another popular alteration.  Some changes are more extreme however.  Most women spend endless amounts of time in gyms in hopes of making their already petite frame even smaller.   Plastic surgery such as rhinoplasty, breast implants, and jaw shaving are more severe still.

      The most popular, and most puzzling to me, is a procedure known as Asian blepharoplasty, or the double eyelid surgery.  With this surgery, the skin of the upper eyelid is reshaped to form a crease - a single line – along the eyelid with the hope of having a more "Western" shape to their eyes.  As a foreigner, if this weren't pointed out to me, I'd have never known or recognized its existence.  This seems like quite the risky procedure to go through but the shocking fact is that this is by far the most sought in Korea.   It's so widely desired that it is often the reward for young women who achieve good grades in school.

Ridiculous.