Renowned NPR correspondent and author of the 2023 book “Flawless,” Elise Hu, visited SMU on Tuesday, March 4, to discuss the impact of the Korean beauty industry. A Dallas native, Hu is a journalist, podcaster and author based in Los Angeles. From 2015 to 2018, she made history as NPR’s first Seoul bureau chief, a role that not only provided her with firsthand insight into South Korean politics, but its beauty culture as well. Engaging with Korean beauty while in Seoul became the catalyst for “Flawless” which was named one of Vox’s Best Books of 2023.
“Flawless” explores the global rise of the K-beauty industry, examining how South Korea’s multi-billion-dollar beauty market shapes cultural standards, consumer behavior and personal identity.
Isabella Popo, a general assignment reporter for The Daily Campus, sat down with Hu for an in-depth conversation about her book and the broader implications that South Korean culture and K-beauty advertisements have on young adults.
Isabella Popo: At what point did you ask yourself, this culture is a unique experience and I want to write a book about it. What inspired you?
Elise Hu: It was unfinished business. I spent nearly four years in South Korea reporting on missile strikes, reporting on Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un and their summit in Singapore, etcetera. There was so much going on in terms of national security and politics, but there was also this whole interesting strain of what was going on with gender and women, and women trying to fight for their right to look and behave however they wanted to. It wasn’t until after I got home that I realized I hadn’t covered this. I decided, ‘Okay, this needs to have a more comprehensive look, and I can use my experiences plus my research to put it together.’
Popo: When you were in South Korea actively seeing women with silicone nose covers and medical tape, and you had beauty stores across from each other on every street, were you thinking about that proactively? Or, was this just something you were surrounded by?
Hu: I was taking it in, I was noticing it and thinking ‘Is this a little weird,’ or ‘Am I being too judgemental about this,’ but then I’d ask, ‘why does everybody kind of have the same appearance?’ I felt pressured by it, for sure. I would get home at the end of the day and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, my hair is too frizzy,’ ‘My skin is awful.’ At the time, these were just observations and not something that I paid journalistic attention to until maybe halfway through when I realized I could do some reporting on this.
Popo: In your book, you talk about how you worked as a commercial model at the ripe age of 16, which did have some negative emotional, mental and physical effects. Did this prepare you for the South Korean beauty standards and did it bring up any feelings for you?
Hu: It did. I think my experience having worked as a model in my teenage years, when I was still trying to figure out who I was and my place in the world, combined with the experience of living in South Korea, made me realize that this is a global issue in all modern societies. As an adolescent struggling with an eating disorder and an extreme regimentation of my body, I was more attuned to noticing the behavior around me when I got older. There is so much pressure, especially on women, to look a certain way and to try and reach these rather impossible standards. I remember as a young person how punishing it was in terms of taking away a lot of my life force: my time and my energy and my focus and my attention and all the other things I could have been doing to have a great time.
Popo: Once you were settled into your new home, did you feel the need to conform to the K-beauty lifestyle or was it something that actually interested you?
Hu: No, it didn’t interest me. It was a lot of little comments where I realized they were creating problems I didn’t know existed. There was a lot of talk about my freckles and how they could be removed. I didn’t realize my freckles were considered blemishes until it was emphasized to me by other people. And the same thing, after I had my second daughter and I was postpartum, people were like, ‘We can shrink wrap you. We can take care of your cellulite.’ It was a lot of finding problems that I didn’t think existed and then offering me solutions that I would have to pay for in order to fix those problems that I didn’t know existed. That’s the beauty industry in the nutshell, right?
Popo: 100 percent, and we see this throughout the entirety of your book. When you and your translator, SeEun, left the beauty store and he said ‘Oh my god, why would someone need that many steps’ and you said ‘Why would someone?’ What were you trying to emphasize?
Hu: There is a theme that came up throughout “Flawless,” which is choice, but not a choice. We are sold this idea, especially from industry and consumer culture, where you can choose whether to do this [skincare] and you can choose between all these products, but then there is a choice architect and these function by saying ‘You need to get something in the first place and then you choose.’
Popo: I see.
Hu: For example, you can choose a cell phone but the idea that you have to have a cell phone is not a choice, everybody has to have a smartphone in the first place. So, this idea of choice, and not a choice, really encapsulates a lot of our consumer culture today. We are sold on this notion that we have endless choices but you have to participate in order to be of value to society in the first place.
Popo: Were you afraid that your two-year-old daughter, Eva, was going to feel pressured by this lifestyle and the lifestyle young Korean women promote?
Hu: Yes! I noticed it because she was five or five and a half by the time we moved home, and we were in the elevator at one point and there was a Korean mom who asked me if Eva, my eldest, had eyelash extensions.
Popo: Wow. That’s crazy.
Hu: Yes, and while I do think it’s fun for kids to get the spa treatment once in a while, it tips over into makeup and competition to look better very early. I didn’t want my girls to grow up thinking there’s only one way to be a girl and that way is very feminine. It was persuasive across South Korea that girls need to be girly girls and there weren’t other ways. I try to teach them to focus on what our bodies can do and what our bodies can feel rather than what they look like. We are instruments, not ornaments.
Popo: Final question: what’s next?
Hu: I’m doing two things in the filmmaking industry. I just wrote the screenplay adaptation of “Flawless,” which is not non-fiction but fiction. It’s very similar to what actually happened but more heightened. On the other side, I’m co-directing a documentary film on teens after the L.A. fires. I wanted to focus on my own backyard for a little bit. Wherever I am, those places tend to be my muses.
