Our obsession with unreal beauty

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By Scott Shepherd

Somewhere to the right of this text there is a picture of me. It's publicly visible, but on the rare occasions that I go outside, I can stroll the streets, dodging the motorbikes and busses safe in the confidence that any beloved Korea Times reader who happens to pass me will almost certainly fail to recognize me.

It's a professional photo, you see. I sometimes wonder why I got it done. I guess it's because I recognize that we ― me included ― are all pretty lazy when we look at each other. It's so much easier to judge people based on what we can see at a glance: clothes, hair, skin and so on. Assessing character takes so much more time and effort.

And since I want people to judge me favorably, I went to a professional studio. It had an assortment of mystical equipment: lights and lenses and things that look like umbrellas ― unfathomable objects all. The photographer gave off an unmistakably artistic aura, like something out of a cartoon; he had flowing hair, skinny purple jeans, square glasses.

For most people, taking photos in a studio is utterly unnatural, inherently awkward. I'm no exception. As the man wielded his camera in my direction, I desperately tried my best to follow his instructions. Smile! Keep your eyes wide open. No, don't wrinkle your forehead. Open your eyes! Can you try smiling more naturally? I was so busy trying to understand and perform these facial gymnastics that I couldn't focus properly on fully savoring the discomfort of the moment.

Finally my wife, who was in the area, came in. She started laughing at me encouragingly, and then so too did the hipster photographer in his skinny jeans. So of course I joined in. There we stood, a triangle of adults in this uncanny room laughing madly as the cool man clicked away on his inordinately large camera.

Eventually, he told me that it would convey both gravitas and professorial approachability if I were to cross my arms and raise one hand to my chin. I accordingly did so, and amidst the manic laughter echoing through the little room, the photograph was finally taken.

Yet even with all the expensive cameras and heavenly lighting, what is now displayed next to this text is not, of course, the raw photo. It has been edited to make me far less ugly than I am in reality. The software's wizardry eliminates as many of my defects and flaws as is digitally possible. It perfects my imperfect complexion, thickens my thinning hair, whitens my yellowing teeth, even raises my slightly drooping left arm.

So there it is, the professional photo. It grossly misrepresents my physical appearance and ― I'd like to think ― my personality, if such a thing can ever really be judged by pictures. I'm not as smug or sparkly-eyed as that picture suggests, I promise. But when I look at the photo in its unedited state, I really can't find it within me to send it to the editor. It's just so much worse.

I did actually have another picture done before that, when I first started writing for The Korea Times. I did everything the studio people told me to, but somehow the photo came out even more awkward and unnatural than I am in real life, and then they further edited it to make me seem even less human. So that episode of unhinged laughter was my second trip, an effort to present myself with a human face. I have no plans to go back for a third try.

If only this whole shebang were unnecessary ― that we would not uplift those who are physically more attractive. There's no point repeating all the old tropes about how it's what is inside that really matters. All of that is true, but what good does repeating it do? We know the sad truth: Beauty grants to its possessors a level of favor and impunity that the rest of us, the aesthetically challenged, could only ever dream of.

As I say, I just really wish it were not the case, especially considering the damage done to the self-esteem of young people every time they turn on a screen or open a magazine or do whatever it is that the cool ones do these days. And it's not just Photoshop or even makeup; you can't walk five minutes in parts of Seoul without passing recipients of cosmetic surgery ambling along with their inhuman bodies and faces. I'm certainly not judging those who decide to undergo the knife; the social pressure to be beautiful here can seem intolerable at times. At the mere swipe of a finger, crowds of impossibly beautiful people gaze out from a screen at us with their perfect smiles and flawless skin and chiseled jaws and flowing locks.

But that's the point. It's impossible. Every time we see the unbearably beautiful specimens of humanity on our screens, we must remember that it's not real. Even the picture of an obscure assistant professor from a small university has been edited ― and my profession is hardly known for its preoccupation with beauty.

The birth of a person who naturally conforms with society's ideals of physical beauty (whatever that even is) is just as rare now as it always was. The only difference is that the technology for enhancing and proliferating images is so much better now. And of course, all the physical beauty that we see ― real and manufactured ― fades. This is an unchanging truth that we all know but that we all forget so easily. The freshest cheek loses its luster, the brightest eye dims.

An obsession with physical beauty is, almost by definition, vanity. It is fleeting, meaningless, a chasing after the wind. We shouldn't waste our lives or money on a pointless, unachievable pursuit for the sake of pleasing others, who themselves are stuck in that same unending quest. The cultural desire for an impossible perfection is absurd; we ― the homely, the plain, the downright ugly ― must rise up. Disheveled and dirty, let us crawl out from our dens and proudly rear our misshapen heads. We are, after all, in the majority.

Dr. Scott Shepherd is a British-American academic. He has taught in universities in the U.K. and Korea, and is currently assistant professor of English at Chongshin University in Seoul. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.

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