Oprah Winfrey has become the latest U.S. talk show host to piss off Korea. That’s right, Oprah. How you might ask? Like this:
During a recent episode of her talk show “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” Winfrey was discussing women’s image and fashion culture around the world when she disparaged Korean women, saying they have “an obsession with plastic surgery.”
The program dealt with content that suggested Korean women have a unique preference from plastic surgery and an inferiority complex in which they would like to have Western features. It also described Korea as a plastic surgery superpower.
OK, thanks to a commenter over at Yahoo! Korea, I found part of the actual program transcript from the program here. Now, I haven’t seen the program, and even though the Marmotess is a big Oprah fan, while she has been in Mongolia, the ranch has been blissfully Oprah-free. This means that I can only go by what I read in the Korean press and the small snippets on the program available at the Oprah site. Anyway, the objections to the program were primarily twofold — 1) Korea got singled out for negative coverage, while the other countries got positive accounts, and 2) while the other countries got nationals of their respective countries to speak about the lives of women in those places, Oprah had a (albeit, eye-pleasing) Chinese-American give a (not entirely accurate) account of Korean women. Frankly, at first, I thought this was rather silly — to say that plastic surgery is popular in Korea is like saying obesity is common in the United States. Heck, the local media has run a considerable number of pieces to this effect, as has the media in surrounding countries (not always with the best of intentions, granted).
On second thought, however, I could see how Oprah might have rubbed people the wrong way with this. Granted, some of the other accounts (again, based on what I read, which is not a lot) did mention some of the less pleasant challenges facing women in various countries (something not picked up on by the Chosun Ilbo’s account). But in Korea’s case, the program simply focused on one thing — plastic surgery. Now, if this were a program about, let’s say, plastic surgery, and they did a special section on South Korea, that would be understandable, given the ubiquitous nature of the practice here. This program, however, seemed to be geared toward describing life for women in their 30s around the world, so you’d like to believe they could have come up with something a little more encompassing than simply concentrating on plastic surgery. Kind of leaves you with a rather narrow impression, even if one grants they had only 10 minutes to discuss each country.
Lisa Ling’s selection as the one to talk about Korea is also a bit disconcerting. Granted, she is both a trained reporter and extremely gentle on the eyes, but given how they seemed to find local women in the other cases, one wonders why they couldn’t do the same with Korea? I mean, was this an “any Asian will do” sort of thing? Did the show even discuss this with Koreans, either of the Korean-Korean or Korean-American variety, before producing that section? How did Ms. Ling arrive at the conclusion that Korean women “go under the knife to shed traditional Korean looks for Westernized features?” Granted, I’ve heard similar things here, and given the dominance of the Western entertainment industry, one could understand how such a phenomenon might arise, either consciously or unconsciously, but still, it would have sounded better coming out of the mouth of someone with a little deeper knowledge of the society and culture, i.e., an actual real live Korean.
Having said all that, I repeat my caveat — I haven’t seen the program, so basically, I’m talking out my ass here, and my observations probably mean jack squat. If I have gotten things all wrong here, feel perfectly free to tell me so in my comments section.
21 Comments
I had to laugh at ‘blissfully Oprah-free’ at the start of your piece. The very odd time when Oprah has come up with a Korean, I’ve tried to explain her massive popularity by saying she’s the ‘Ajumma goddess of North America”.
Maybe I came to Korea looking for a blissfully Oprah-free-zone. And then this article…sigh
Better to home school your Korean kid in a countryside organic commune if you can’t take the heat. Globalization is going to come hard and fast and the best way to take it is to not take it at all.
Ohmigosh!!!
What will come next? Anger?
It’s happening!!1
Marmot’s “been here too long.”
It’s that point where you start to believe that maybe, just maybe, Korea does unfairly get a bad rap some of the time.
I am so sorry I joked about this. I will never joke about Oprah and connect it whimsically to my life in Korea again.
Sigh
seeing a new side of the old adage “beauty is only skin deep.” for many of the korean women i’ve met, beauty IS only skin deep — it doesn’t matter how fantastic or vile a woman’s personality is if she’s got the right image… i suppose this is true everywhere, just all the more so here in the ROK, it might seem. does this go for men, too?
one thing though– when i compare seoul to new york, here in korea i find fewer of those 40-something women whose real faces are creeping out behind their third facelift, those cher-faced women who so obviously go under the knife more often than i go to the hairdresser… am i just not hanging out in apgujeong enough?
from one of my fave novels, neuromancer:
“The bartender’s smile widened. His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it.”
-william gibson
i saw the program in question (don’t ask). my thoughts:
koreans were not singled out for negative coverage. i felt that most of the women protrayed on the show were smilarly fashion and body obsessed. a cuban woman was profiled in a manner which wasn’t necessarily critical of her but of the conditions of the country in which lives.
re: plastic surgery, some time (admittedly not as much as korean, but i’m just saying) was also spent discussing the strange brazilian trend of butt implants.
if oprah f”d up (which i would say she did), it was presenting this program in the context of what “average 30 year old women” are like in other countries - apparently, average 30 year old women around the world are fashion models, borderline fashion models, soap opera actresses who look like fashion models, wealthy oil heiresses who could be fashion models. or in the case of rwanda…a genocide survivor…who given the right opportunity could really be a fashion model. some of the larger social realities of the nations in question were woefulyl underexplored, strange, given that oprah is normally sympathetic to such issues.
In other words, Oprah portrayed reality for Korea, but fantasy of glamor for other countries.
Oprah under fire
Move over, Jay Leno, it’s Oprah’s turn. Oprah has incurred the wrath of Korea due to a show she did on women of various countries. When it came to Korea, she cited how popular plastic surgery is, which some didn’t
Lisa explains. “I’m Chinese. If you notice on my eye, I have this sort of flap of skin over my eyes. What’s happening in Asia is they’re lifting the skin and making it more deep set. And it’s happening so frequently in Korea that a lot of women do it before they even get married and they don’t tell their husbands. And they destroy all their pictures.”
That’s just not true. Every Korean can immediately tell you if another Korean has had their eyes or nose “fixed”. Why would a women throw out her pictures knowing that she can’t hide her “fixed” eyelids?
This is a Chinese woman misrepresenting Koreans. A Korean would have never made that illogical comment. I think Ling should apologize.
Do I detect some sarcasm there hardyandtiny?
Actually, Korean women (except for celeberities) don’t feel ashamed with “fixed eyelids” or any plastic surgery for that matter. On the contrary, at least among friends and relatives, they proudly display it. Unlike in the West, there isn’t as much stigma attached to it. For Ling to claim “they don?€™t tell their husbands and they destroy all their pictures?€? is kinda funny because she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
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i’m not so sure about that idea of korean women being so open about the fact they’ve had work done. of course, they are probably very open about it to other women or to foreigners, but my best friend who is engaged, has had work done and she told me her future husband would break off the wedding if he knew the truth. actually, i’ve heard this from other korean women before–not just her. while it is true that it doesn’t take a genius to see who has gone under the knife and who hasn’t, it seems to be that for korean men, “ignorance is bliss” and they’d just rather not know that their girlfriends or wives are artificially beautiful–at least they’d rather not hear it. it’s like they want to live in a fantasy world where it doesn’t exist if it’s not brought up. so much for loving one for who they are and not how they look…but as was mentioned, it’s no secret that it happens and that it’s common. i’ve had men simply assume i’ve had work done (which kind of bothered me as i haven’t…)
lol, that reminds me of a news article I read a couple months ago about a man in China divorcing his wife. They had a baby and he thought it looked really ugly, it turns out his wife had plastic surgery before they met. He even sued her for fraud.
“Do I detect some sarcasm there hardyandtiny?”
nope, no sarcasm.
This surgery thing is crazy. I told one Korean friend not to get fixed because there was nothing wrong with her eyes whatsoever! If people have no eye for beauty it is not her fault. Besides, if I ever did that botox treatment, I would probably end up looking too much like Christopher Walken . . .
Another example of Korea being way over sensitive. I wonder how the media is so tuned into Korea’s image around the world sometimes.
Hmmm…I never much liked Oprah before this. Telling it like it is and educating our women about the primitiveness of their thinking earns her points for honesty.
Hardyandtiny, you’re wrong, BTW and what Lisa reported is accurate. Women do try to hide surgery from their in-laws, who are demanding to see childhood photos. It’s not that eyelid surgery isn’t obvious enough - it’s just Korean denial at work again. Some of our women do have natural eyelid folds. Most don’t. I can tell the difference right away, but that doesn’t keep girls from denying it.
Hardyandtiny, you?€™re wrong, BTW and what Lisa reported is accurate.
Okay, I’m wrong.
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