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In Korean culture, it is no longer enough to cover your “flaws” — acne, pimples, hyperpigmentation, wrinkles — with makeup, your skin must simply not have any. I wish Koreans wore sunscreen just for safety (although the health benefits are amazing) but the truth is many do it to not look as “dark” as I did to my cousin. If you go to an outdoor swimming pool in Korea, seldom will you see many in swimsuits. Rather, most wear rash guards, full-length pants, and sun visors to cover their entire bodies, along with a thick coat of sunscreen, as documented in NPR Seoul founding Bureau Chief Elise Hu’s book Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital.
“So much of the ‘skin care first’ or just having a really beautiful canvas before you put on makeup; That idea and that concept originates from South Korea,” Hu says. In her book, Hu describes the Korean beauty standard as “milky white, smooth, glowing, with a narrow nose, anime-sized eyes, and a small, delicate jawline that meets at a V.”
One of the reasons why Americans have been wearing sunscreen more might be the growing popularity of South Korean sunscreen. This is a good thing because, American Academy of Dermatology estimates that one in five Americans will get skin cancer in their lifetime. But sunscreen has also become a virtue signal for an altered version of self-care; you don’t care for a future self that is wrinkly. Jessica Defino, writer of The Unpublishable, touched upon this moral impertinence in the digital pop culture newsletter Dirt, writing, “The beauty industry’s stance on sunscreen is one of extremism. Get absolutely no sun. If you don’t wear SPF, don’t bother taking care of your skin at all.”
However, it’s not like the West is just willy-nilly accepting Korean beauty standards. After Single’s Inferno’s Moon Sehoon called a castmate he liked “so white and pure,” and fellow contestant Choi Sihun said, “I like people who have light skin,” there was swift online backlash.
I remember when I came face to face with a cohort of flight attendants at the Incheon airport when I came to Korea for the first time. The women were effervescent and elegant despite just coming off their flights with skin so milky they looked like they were under perpetual moonlight. They were beautiful and that beauty helped them secure a job, one of the most coveted positions in Korea. Their whiteness enveloped me, and it was hard not to crumple.
In the humidity, we left the airport and took the bus. I felt a pang of sadness as I tried to relate to the landscape that zoomed past me. My dad must have felt the same. With a finger, he pointed out the window and talked about how this used to be that, and so forth. Nothing was the same as when he was a little boy, not even our faces.
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