The Dark Side of Beauty Culture: The Instagram Face is South Korea’s New Postfeminist Problem
“Isn’t she perfect?” In an eighth-grade classroom in Korea with K-Pop tunes blasting through the screens of teen girls, it is almost impossible to escape the surreal beauty of pop stars. Picture a face, its perfect symmetry, sharp nose, pale, glassy skin, V-shaped jaw, and wide eyes hovering on your screen. This is the beauty standard of South Korean girls. In 2019, Jia Tolentino coined the term “Instagram Face” (henceforth, the Face), referring to the ideal female face on Instagram feeds. In 2023, South Korea’s ubiquitous the Face haunts online spheres, representing the apex of K-Pop-infused, social media beauty culture, a culture rooted in centuries of beauty expectations that delineate female power. As The New York Times has described South Korea as the “world’s most beauty obsessed-nation” (Shin and Lee 2), the Face presents South Korean girls with a unique challenge: either autonomously participate in its beauty culture or disengage entirely. While our globalizing world is quick to point out that “girls today have it so much easier than girls of previous generations,” the Face makes lives for girls in 2023 more complicated than ever. The prevalence of social media makes it difficult for girls to realistically opt out of the self-surveillance aspects of Instagram use. As postfeminism refers to the idea that feminism has already achieved most or all of its goals, the postfeminist belief that “girls have so much more power now” takes power away from girls who are still struggling to remove themselves from beauty culture. The Face is more than South Korea’s problem—it represents a global injustice where the issues girls face today are diminished simply because they are not as bad as they used to be. South Korea—and the rest of the world—cannot create an ideal sphere for girls by viewing itself as simply better than it used to be.
The conflict introduced by postfeminism versus the Face asks girls to link their beauty to their social value. According to McGinty, in postfeminism, self-objectification is progressive (7). The postfeminist perception of beauty suggests that self-objectification is a choice, indicating that girls have numerous alternatives in the decision-making process regarding their appearance, and self-objectification is one possibility. Under the umbrella term “self-objectification,” “aesthetic capital” refers to the way beauty acts as a form of social commerce—one that is “unevenly divided” (Slutsky 7) amongst a large group of people. As aesthetic capital is disproportionate, not every girl has, or can, attain the Face, and can thereby reap the same amount of social capital as other girls. If beauty confers power, we also see the equation: a lack of beauty equals a lack of power. Many South Korean girls, then, are presented with an unfair choice: choose beauty or lose power; it seems they have fewer alternatives than we would like to think. The complicated nature of this so-called choice is what makes the Face so relevant to social media culture in 2023.
While postfeminism advocates opting in to beauty culture, the nature of social media in 2023 leaves fewer options for those who don’t want to opt out entirely, but would rather remain neutral. Beauty neutrality, then, refers to those who do not entirely conform to beauty standards but do not completely reject the culture either. In Bae’s study, she quotes Jooyoung, a South Korean girl living in the U.S., who believes every girl’s beauty is her responsibility, adding, “I do not wear or put makeup on for a boyfriend, but rather for myself” (37). Jooyong represents a specific group of girls who may not want to wear makeup to gain outward approval but still find personal value in beauty practices. For those who may not want to attain the Face but still care about their appearance and self-care, there is no clear alternative route—many girls still, of course, wear makeup. According to McGinty, postfeminism implies that choosing which beauty standards girls want to follow is empowering not oppressive; but if girls are choosing how they present themselves, how come we still see one specific form of female beauty—the Face—everywhere? The pressure to conform to the Face might result in girls constantly selecting, evaluating, and modifying content to present a desired image of themselves online. Where female beauty culture is traditionally embedded in validation from the outward, male gaze, an “internalized surveilled gaze” (Slutsky 9) is just as prevalent in a social media culture that rewards aesthetic capital with likes and followers. By minimizing the self-presentation problems associated with the Face through postfeminism, there is little room for female power that is completely separate from beauty.
Girls who participate in feminist movements that outwardly challenge beauty culture, promoting self-love and body positivity, often face extreme backlash or hostility. In South Korea, the Escape the Corset Movement (ETC-M) is one form of radically opting out of South Korea’s beauty culture, yet faces the same pushback second-wave feminism faced in the U.S. The term ETC-M symbolically refers to strict beauty regimens, such as the corset, which physically and ideologically restrict female movement (Shin and Lee 6). Yet just as the second-wave feminist protests of the late sixties in the U.S. were reduced to “bra-burning” from “neurotic, unattractive women” (Dow 129), those who want to participate in the ETC-M must simultaneously relinquish their aesthetic capital. In South Korea, if you are not a mi-in, or “a lovely and pretty person,” you are part of the miyŏng hawui kyegŭp, or an “underclass” of “cosmetically underprivileged” (Hamdon and Timur 70). Since the ideology of the Silla Dynasty, stating “young-yook-il-chi-sa-sang” or “within a beautiful body, rests a beautiful soul,” female beauty has been desirable for reasons other than aesthetics alone. Separating outward beauty from inward characteristics—such as power or personality—is more difficult than ever. For girls struggling to be beautiful-bad-and-feminists, or girls who care about how they look yet are autonomous and independent (Yang 362), the contradictions within femininity, acceptance, and self-worth are not so different than they were sixty years—or even centuries—ago. Rather than viewing sexism as a thing of the past, or praising how far women have come, perhaps girls need to (like the second-wave feminists) see the personal self-identification crises they encounter with the Face as a collective struggle.
To many South Korean girls, however, the reality of living in Korea before the government supported feminist causes minimizes the struggles girls face today. The challenges women encountered were more formidable prior to the 2000s, when women fought for equal employment, reducing violence against women, and creating more mainstream, gender-equality policies (Kim 78-79). While the legal rights of women have significantly changed in the past several decades, if we do not accept that social perceptions of girls continue to tie girls’ perceived value to their beauty, South Korean girls cannot advocate for their autonomy. Although in 2005, South Korea outlawed the Hoju System, a hierarchical structure that placed males as the head of the household, today, gender inequality in South Korea persists: female workers earn just under seventy percent of what men earn, while 1.45 million women experience interruptions in their careers due to marriage, pregnancy, or complications with child-raising (Lee). In 2022, South Korea decided to abolish its Gender Equality Ministry, as, according to Korean politician Lee Jun-seok, “Gender equality has entered a new phase. [South Korea needs] a new system that looks beyond feminism” (Mackenzie). Such a postfeminist perspective asks girls to be content with the system in place, rather than re-examining what is, and isn’t, working. For South Korea—and the rest of the world—praising the successes of the feminist past is the foundation of an unequal future.
Postfeminism is, in and of itself, a problem. According to Kavka, the “post” in postfeminism implies that feminism is “dead,” which is not true (31). If girls continue to face issues—like the Face—which make it challenging for them to simply be themselves or exist in virtual and physical spaces without being evaluated based on beauty standards, then the need for feminist movements persists. The postfeminist concept of a “Supergirl,” or a “born leader” who is not limited by her gender, also implies that when she encounters obstacles or failure, she is the only person to blame (Pomerantz et al. 191). Rather than scrutinizing the socio-political hierarchy that makes it challenging for women to take on professional leadership positions, postfeminism argues that girls—rather than centuries of gender discrimination—are at fault. Although the Supergirl persona lends confidence to female autonomy, it also asks girls to remain silent when they encounter injustices. If we are hoping to empower girls, diminishing what disempowers them is not helpful; is this a message that promotes reflection and growth? The biggest problem with postfeminism is that it is founded on a perception rather than a fact; in 2023, sexism in South Korea is not over, it has just taken on new forms.
While some argue that saying “sexism is over” allows girls to change the narrative, and move further from feeling like “victims” (Pomerantz et al. 203), there still is not a clear definition of what it means to be powerful without being beautiful, especially online. For girls not interested in self-objectification on social media, disengaging from the Face or social media culture as a whole can leave girls socially disconnected, creating unfair, negative consequences for those who simply want to be beauty neutral. Within the context of South Korea’s relatively recent feminist movements, creating a shift from the false beauty/power dichotomy may take decades of examining what power and beauty are, and why they do not always have to go together. Looking forward, Korea will need to make room for new “Instagram faces”—ones that are celebrated for their personality and accomplishments, rather than their symmetry.
In 2023, we see the global rise of “digitized dysmorphia,” or the discrepancy between social media’s ideal beauty and what women actually look like (Verrastro et al. 32). As postfeminism exists in an era of “digitized dysmorphia” (Verrastro et al. 32), the Face represents the remnants of beauty standards—from foot-binding to corsets—that encourage girls to participate in beauty culture and perpetuate societal inequalities. While postfeminism suggests that girls who self-objectify are empowering and liberating themselves, social media fails to provide alternatives for individuals who prefer not to fully engage or choose to disengage in the culture. For girls who join more radical feminist movements, like the ETC-M, the acceptance of diversity within beauty comes with the expectation of renouncing one’s aesthetic capital. Although the challenges girls face in South Korea are decreasing, we still see how female value is determined, or somehow related to beauty. If we want to progress past “digitized dysmorphia,” we need to stop seeing the Face as normal, and instead unpack what normal means to girls—and celebrate the different answers.
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