Flawless – Elise Hu

Introduction

I’ve seen the future, and it’s poreless. In 2015, I moved from
Washington, D.C., to a city I’d never previously stepped foot in—
Seoul, South Korea—to be an international correspondent and the
first-ever Korea and Japan bureau chief for the American broadcaster NPR.
Almost immediately, I realized that by making the move, I had time
traveled forward and was face-to-face with the future of how we might live,
look, and relate to one another.

South Korea’s capital is an endless assault of images blasting in your
direction on every street corner, at every hour. Many of them are faces.
They tower above you on digital signage glowing from the sides of
skyscrapers, flash by in subway stations deep underground, or whip past on
cars topped with oversized screens. What I found after I moved there (with
my journalist husband, toddler daughter, geriatric beagle, and two cats) was
a city that felt like a living monument to conspicuous consumption, with
upscale malls, blinding lights, and blinding wealth—everything hitting you
with its height and size and newness. Looking at all the floor-to-ceiling ads
featuring faces, I started to notice they had a uniformity to them, as if they
were variations on a prototype.

In the bustling Myeongdong shopping district and along the supercool
streets of Gangnam, there were so many skincare and makeup stores that I
could stand on a corner and see a Face Shop across from a Face Shop across
from a Face Shop. It was common to spot women walking around with
silicone nose covers and medical tape, following cosmetic procedures. I
sometimes spied even more dramatically bandaged bodies of tourists, with
full-on Freddy Krueger–style post-op masks, moving about the crowded
spaces of Seoul.

The obsession with appearance runs deep—you’re expected to include a
photo, height, and weight on résumés for jobs across various industries—
and the country’s wide and early embrace of digital technologies has turned
its society into an overlap of selfie culture and “self-care” consumerism.
South Korea is leading the way on bringing these trends to global
consumers—South Korean cosmetics exports quadrupled from $1.6 billion
to $6.3 billion between 2014, the year I got assigned to Korea, and 2018,
the year I moved back to the United States.

Having gained a cultlike
following around the world, the K-beauty industry is projected to be worth
$13.9 billion by 2027.

Korea’s advancements include an enthusiastic embrace of consumer
beauty, for everyone, and a look that’s free of surprises—no blemishes,
bulges, or hairs out of place. Equally embraced is support for the idea that
digital filters can be less imperative if you perfect your look not with
temporary cover-ups but with a more permanent alteration of the canvas—
the body itself. That’s possible thanks to developments in science and
technology—skincare products, injections, and plastic surgery.

But the sought-after result of all the beautification work is for it to appear like there
was no work done at all. The future I glimpsed brought technological
innovation to the surface of our faces and bodies, while promising
consumers “choice” and self-expression for the whole process.