Facial beauty automatically captured individuals’ attention (Mo, Xia, Qin, & Mo, 2016). People will be attracted by beautiful things, so it’s significant to identify what kind of women are beautiful. However, the definition of female beauty is different in different countries. Besides, according to Korea Times（2005）, “the pace of the culture’s impact on neighbouring countries as the winds of the Korean pop culture swept across China beginning in 1996”, Chinese people have become more interested in South Korean culture & and the country itself. Therefore, it’s interesting to know Korean views on women’s beauty. How do Koreans define female beauty? The standard of beauty in Korea is being fair, big eyes and having slim figure.
In Korean opinions, they believe that beautiful women should have snowy white skin. Having fair skin is considered an important element in constructing female beauty in Asian cultures (Li, Min, & Belk, 2008). That means that women’s skin and white will be favored in Korea.
In addition to having white skin, they agree that beautiful women must have big eyes. The female singer in the picture has the same characteristics: fair skin, thin body, big eyes, bright makeup. These characteristics are considered modern Korean cosmetic standards. These characteristics are considered modern Korean cosmetic standards (“Plastic Surgery – A Cultural Reflection in South Korea,” 2015). Korean beauty has the perfect facial features, that are big eyes, white skin and high nose (Wang, 2015). We could find that Koreans especially like the facial features of big eyes.
Aside from white skin and big eyes, slim figure can also win the favor of Koreans. The culture of Korea encourages people to consider slimness as part of feminine beauty and as a characteristic of social distinction (Lee, 2017). Other materials can also prove that Koreans have preferences for slender bodies. In contemporary Korean society, women’s thinness is equated with physical attractiveness and held up as an ideal of feminine beauty (Joh, Oh, Lee, & Kawachi, 2013). In Korea, interest for appearance has been increasing, and the extremely slim body shape has been excessively favored since the 1970s (Ro & Hyun, 2012). So why do Korean women want to have slim figures?
This is due to the influence of social culture. Female models in fashion magazines are all slim and wear tight clothes. So a slim figure has become a trend (Wertheim et al, 1997). Not only modern media, foreign culture also makes a difference. With the development of economy, the idea of advocating slim women in western culture was introduced into Korea and became popular gradually (Kim, Kim, Cho, & Cho, 2008). With the popularity of the media and Western culture, people are becoming more and more fond of slender figure. In a word, Koreans prefer slender women.
However, while acknowledging the importance of appearance beauty, Koreans also affirmed the beauty of mind. A woman can only be truly beautiful if she believes in herself (Besman, Septrina & Rahman, 2018).
Anyway, the standard of Korean beauty is white skin, big eyes and slim figure. Besides, the aesthetics of different countries and countries are different. We should treat beauty reasonably. But is it only physical beauty that is truly beautiful? Spiritual beauty can be more crucial. Good qualities, such as honesty, integrity, and kindness, deserve people’s appreciation.