Korean stars put a big impact on the consumer culture, including fashion, make up trends food and language. Many people infatuate with Korean culture, they are eager to learn Korean language and travel to Korea. Up until, 2000, Korea was not well known to the Hong Kong people and people were not interested in Korean language. Since 2001, because of Hallyu, Korean things have become famous in Hong Kong. Korean popular culture started to gain attention and popularity among the younger generation as well as elders in Hong Kong.
These attitudes tend to last, (Dalton, Tickle, Sargent, Beach, Ahrens, & Heatherton, 2002) and are reinforced through mass media (Couldry, 2001; Couldry & McCarthy, 2004a, 2004b). The biggest influencer of both older and younger generations is television. South Korean dramas have greatly influenced consumer perception of South Korea and its culture in various constituencies all across the globe. There have been many studies as to why so many young and old consumers relate so much to a country that has a completely different culture and language; the answers are varied as they relate primarily to personal taste. A recent study showed that residents in Hong Kong, who had previously very little ties with Korea and had a negative view on South Koreans primarily due to the Korean Civil War and the growing tensions with North Korea, found that some of the reasons why one would be affiliated and attracted to Korean culture were; ‘It is suitable for my taste’ (28.9%), ‘It is in vogue’ (23.7%), ‘The level of access to the culture is easy because it is in Asia’ (19.1%), ‘There is something to learn from Korean culture’ (16.4%), and ‘It has less heterogeneity than Western culture’ (Samuel.
Beauty had become a primary goal for these women and felt that they had to conform to the typical standard of beauty in society. This beauty standard becomes informed through racial ideologies that push the ideas of negative characteristics based on a specific group’s physical features. The women featured in the study often associated their facial characteristics with negative traits and in turn sought out cosmetic surgery in order to be associated with more ‘positive’ traits. Negative traits surrounding facial characteristics stems from stereotypes created in Western cultures. Western culture dominates much of the hegemonic influence in the world and thus influences the beauty standards in society.
Society 's Beauty Standards Hawkins (2017) stated that the definition of beauty has been shaped by society 's standards instead of what people actually look like. It signifies that the society sets up expectations of how we define beauty by manipulating beliefs of people to recognize that body shape, skin color, race, ethnicity, or anglicized features are what makes a person distinguish their beauty instead of what people actually look like in reality. This makes people believe that the beauty that they see, especially in films, is something that they need to attain in order to be considered as attractive. Unrealistic beauty standards affects physical and mental health Vitelli (2013) stated that content analysis of female characters
Due to the prominence of mass media, one society’s standards, especially those within countries that produce most of the widespread varieties of media, are spreading and being integrated into one general beauty standard that applies to the majority. The Western media plays a huge role in influencing other societies’ standards of beauty. The common features of Westerners are big eyes with double-lids, defined and sharp jaws, fair skin, and sharp noses; these are the things that Asian women desire for themselves as well as most women in Asia has flatter and less defined features. Therefore even young girls in Asian countries, such as Korea, often seek plastic surgery for their eyes, jaws, and noses, or buy many cosmetic products like whitening creams in order to have the features that Western girls possess. (Frazier, n.d.) (Le, 2014) The next argument against can be found in evolutionary
In recent years, the contour business has tripled in size from an $8.5 million industry to a $29 million industry in just 8 months. Another very popular product right now is foundation, which is a nude cream or powder used to cover unevenness in skin tone. In the last 16 months, the facial cosmetics industry has grown 13% which goes to show how equal the popularity of the product is in both time periods(npd.com). Three centuries ago, women used a form of foundation just as frequently as people nowadays do after the sudden boom of the industry. Back then, people used a white powder made out of mainly lead to lighten skin and cover up acne or redness.
It found that portrayals of female beauty in popular culture, were shaping an idea of beauty that was perfect and simply unattainable. This phenomena did and continues to impact women’s self-esteem. Dove based its study on quantitative data collected from 3200 women aged 18-64 globally between February 27-March 26, 2004. The study focused on finding out to what extent women perceived themselves as beautiful and why. It tried to explore how comfortable women were in describing their beauty, how satisfied they were with their own beauty, how important it is to them and how it impacted their sense of well-being.
While many, including plastic surgeons themselves, have made it a point to state that many Asians who undergo cosmetic surgery choose to do so not because they wish to emulate the looks of a ‘Caucasian’, but rather to appear more ‘universally’ beautiful, the truth is that beauty is merely a social construct and has very little to no correlation to natural biology (Hua 83). The opinion stated by people with the most influence will always be the truth when it comes to a subjective matter such as ‘beauty’ (McKay 29). When taken into consideration how influential the west is compared to East regarding mass media and economic trade, a Western appearance will no doubt be closer to what the majority thinks of as ‘universal beauty,’ as Asians are exposed to countless people in power who have these looks every day. Even when Asians who seek plastic surgery seek out Asian celebrities to emulate, it is likely that these Asian celebrities possess a Western appearance themselves, which, in actuality, is still promoting Western beauty rather than traditional Asian ones. Such example can be seen with the famous Chinese actress, Fan Bing Bing, ranked second in Mode’s ‘World’s A Hundred Most Beautiful Women’ possesses a prominent double eyelid as well as thin and long nose bridge (Ferrari).
The fashion industry consists of few plus size models who are vaguely featured in the spotlight (Schwiegershausen). Various sizes do not fit into the plus size nor “normal” size modeling categories, such as women who wear a size ten or eleven known as the “in betweenies” (Schwiegershausen). The modeling industry is made for diversity and should not be limited by
This can be attributed to the fact that China and Koreans culture are both heavily influenced by Confucianism. From this, Koreans popularity skyrocketed and continued to rise from then on to their neighbouring countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. The economy of Korea also increased because the Korean products are also becoming popular, increasing the income of the business. The audiences would be appraising Koreans fair and smooth skin from the dramas that they would watch. This helped the aspiring artists to get recognized in their neighbouring countries and was able to ‘debut’.