Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital
(Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

Elise Hu. (2023). Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital. Penguin Publishing Group.

Elise Hu. 2023. Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture From the K-Beauty Capital. Penguin Publishing Group.

Elise Hu, Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture From the K-Beauty Capital. Penguin Publishing Group, 2023.

Elise Hu. Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture From the K-Beauty Capital. Penguin Publishing Group, 2023.

OverDrive Product Record

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/1523-1/{2C55FE07-8491-41A9-B52C-8566BAF5AD96}IMG100.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/1523-1/{2C55FE07-8491-41A9-B52C-8566BAF5AD96}IMG200.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/1523-1/{2C55FE07-8491-41A9-B52C-8566BAF5AD96}IMG150.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/1523-1/{2C55FE07-8491-41A9-B52C-8566BAF5AD96}IMG400.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg

formats

1. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780593184202
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
2. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780593184202
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • id: ebook-overdrive

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9780593184189

mediaType

eBook

primaryCreator

• role: Author
• name: Elise Hu

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

Flawless

dateAdded

2023-05-19T16:16:00Z

contentDetails

1. • href: https://link.overdrive.com?websiteID=141&titleID=9202146
   • type: text/html
   • account:
     • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
     • id: 1151

sortTitle

Flawless Lessons in Looks and Culture from the KBeauty Capital

crossRefId

9202146

subtitle

Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital

id

2C55FE07-8491-41A9-B52C-8566BAF5AD96

starRating

0

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain

False

formats

1. • fileName: Flawless_9202146
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B0BBPCLV9W
   • name: Kindle Book
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-kindle
   • onSaleDate: 5/23/2023
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=2c55fe07-8491-41a9-b52c-8566baf5ad96&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
2. • fileName: Flawless_9780593184202_9202146
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780593184202
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-overdrive
   • onSaleDate: 5/23/2023
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=2c55fe07-8491-41a9-b52c-8566baf5ad96&.epub-sample.overdrive.com

keywords

1. • value: Makeup
2. • value: Asia
3. • value: Aesthetics
4. • value: Influence
5. • value: Business
6. • value: Plastic Surgery
7. • value: South Korea
8. • value: culture
9. • value: money
10. • value: fashion
11. • value: Economy
12. • value: Korea
13. • value: feminist
14. • value: health and fitness
15. • value: psychology
16. • value: feminism
17. • value: consumer behavior
18. • value: Korean
19. • value: wellness
20. • value: gender
21. • value: beauty
22. • value: Flawless
23. • value: k-pop
24. • value: Health and Wellness
25. • value: business books
26. • value: south korean
27. • value: k-beauty
28. • value: gifts for women
29. • value: psychology books
30. • value: economics books
31. • value: kpop
32. • value: gifts for her
33. • value: non fiction best sellers
34. • value: self development books
35. • value: kbeauty
36. • value: k beauty
37. • value: self improvement books for men
38. • value: Korean beauty
39. • value: k-beauty products
40. • value: flawless book

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Hu, Elise
   • name: Elise Hu

imprint

Dutton

publishDate

2023-05-23T00:00:00Z

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

Flawless

fullDescription

One of Porchlight's Business Books of the Year | One of Vox's Best Books of 2023 | An NPR Book of the Day | Required Reading from New York Post | One of Nylon's 13 May Books to Add to Your Reading List | One of PureWow's 14 Books to Read for AAPI Heritage Month | One of W Magazine's 14 Books to Dive Into This Summer | One of Betches' Best Summer Reads of 2023
An audacious journalistic exploration of the present and future of beauty through the lens of South Korea's booming "K-beauty" industry and the culture it promotes, by Elise Hu, NPR host-at-large and the host of TED Talks Daily
K-beauty has captured imaginations worldwide by promising a kind of mesmerizing perfection. Its skincare and makeup products—creams packaged to look like milkshakes or pandas, and snail mucus face masks, to name a few—work together to fascinate us, champion consumerism, and invite us to indulge. In the four years Elise spent in Seoul as NPR’s bureau chief, the global K-beauty industry quadrupled. Today it's worth $10 billion and is only getting bigger as it rides the Hallyu wave around the globe.
And fun as self-care consumerism may be, Elise turns her veteran eye to the darker questions lurking beneath the surface of this story. When technology makes it easy to quantify and optimize ourselves—from banishing blemishes, to whittling our waistlines, even to shaving down our jaws—where do we draw the line? What are the dangers for a society where a flawless face and body are promoted and possible? What are the real financial, physical, and emotional costs of beauty work in a culture that valorizes endless self-improvement and codes it as empowerment?
 
With rich historical context and deep reporting, including hours of interviews with South Korean women, this is a complex, provocative look at the ways hustle culture has reached into the sinews of our bodies. It raises complicated questions about gender disparity, consumerism, the beauty imperative of an appearance obsessed society, and the undeniable political, economic, and social capital of good looks worldwide. And it points the way toward an alternative vision, one that's more affirming and inclusive than a beauty culture led by industry.

reviews

1. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     February 13, 2023
     NPR correspondent Hu debuts with a thorough examination of South Korea’s booming “K-beauty” industry and the national obsession with physical appearance fueling it. Noting that South Korea is the world’s third largest cosmetics exporter, Hu describes Seoul as a skin care mecca, where dermatology and cosmetic surgery clinics are as common as hair salons. A Korean term, oemo jisang juui (“looks are supreme”) encapsulates the “stubborn social prejudice against those who fail to meet certain appearance standards,” which are set by impossibly thin K-pop girl groups, social media influencers using Facetune and other filter apps, and beauty industry conglomerates like Amorepacific. Hu forthrightly reflects on her own “vacillating enthusiasm and unease” for Korean beauty products and interweaves startling statistics (according to a 2020 survey, one in three women between 19 and 39 has had cosmetic surgery) with profiles of plastic surgeons, former K-pop idols, and activists who signal their rejection of beauty norms by cutting their hair short and appearing in public without makeup. Throughout, Hu persuasively links oemo jisang juui to Korea’s “punishing gender imbalance” (among developed nations, Korea ranks worst in the gender wage gap, women’s labor participation rates, and other metrics) and warns that “narrow, industrialized beauty norms” driven by mass marketing and digital technologies are spreading around the world. Nuanced, wide-ranging, and fluidly written, this peels back the layers of a powerful cultural trend. Agent: Howard Yoon, Ross Yoon Agency.

2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     April 15, 2023
     In her engaging debut, journalist and podcaster Elise Hu examines the globally influential K-beauty industry. "I've seen the future," she writes, "and it is poreless." Moving to Seoul in 2015, Hu is overwhelmed by the time and money South Koreans spend in pursuit of beauty. Government investment in K-beauty and medical tourism created a hugely profitable and innovative industry that is seamlessly integrated into other Korean cultural exports, like K-pop and K-dramas, all of which have a profound impact on Korean ideals. Hu dives into the complex historical and cultural factors underpinning the industry, revealing a society that equates beauty with goodness and pressures women and girls into conforming to a perpetually young and thin "prototype" with perfect, blemish-free skin. She also explores the #EscapeTheCorset movement, which rejects South Korea's pervasive patriarchal culture. Hu skillfully walks the line between understanding Korean women's investment in their looks as "the fear of being a social outcast" and "a genuine desire for empowerment." A well-researched, accessible, and fascinating look at Korean culture and the beauty industry.

     COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

3. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from March 1, 2023
     The host of "TED Talks Daily" and host at large for NPR shines a bright light into the shadowy world of manufactured beauty and endless "self-improvement." There is a Korean phrase, bbali bbali, which means fast, fast. Hu, a winner of the Edward R. Murrow Award, among others, believes it sums up South Korea's rush into hypermodernity. When she arrived in Seoul in 2015 to establish a bureau for NPR, she was stunned by the cult of beauty that grips Korean women. The aim of Western cosmetics is often to accentuate natural features, but in South Korea, the goal is skin that seems so perfect it needs nothing else. The beauty industry in Korea relies on intensive research and marketing by the skin care firms, which provide a continuing procession of products. The author also looks at the massive business of cosmetic surgery, which can amend any part of the body. This is less about self-expression and more about an aspiration toward perfection: blemish-free skin, long, shining hair, a narrow nose, anime-size eyes, a delicate jawline, and legs shaped to meet a mathematical formula. It ultimately leads to a sameness of look, but Korean women see it as a necessary investment for social success, and the few who buck the trend face ostracism. Looking at this endless commodification of the female body, Hu asks: "Where do we draw the line on appearance work when the work gets less and less invasive and previously impossible changes become possible?" She also notes that some women, accustomed to the filtered images on Snapchat and Instagram, want to be "improved" to look like their digital images. These trends, exacerbated by social media and Korea's export marketing machine, are having a global impact, including in the U.S. Hu is unsure about how these issues will play out, but she hopes that there will be a turn away from relentless superficiality. She is a capable guide to the current fraught landscape. Hu's study of Korea's beauty cult is fascinating and disturbing, woven with threads of dark humor and personal experience.

     COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

popularity

1337

links

• self:
  • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/2c55fe07-8491-41a9-b52c-8566baf5ad96/metadata
  • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
• shareInLibby:
  • href: https://link.overdrive.com/share?q=4mmMAMShdiw
  • type: text/HTML

id

2c55fe07-8491-41a9-b52c-8566baf5ad96

starRating

3.5

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/1523-1/{2C55FE07-8491-41A9-B52C-8566BAF5AD96}IMG100.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/1523-1/{2C55FE07-8491-41A9-B52C-8566BAF5AD96}IMG200.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/1523-1/{2C55FE07-8491-41A9-B52C-8566BAF5AD96}IMG150.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/1523-1/{2C55FE07-8491-41A9-B52C-8566BAF5AD96}IMG400.JPG
  • type: image/jpeg

isPublicPerformanceAllowed

False

languages

1. • code: en
   • name: English

subjects

1. • value: Health & Fitness
2. • value: Multi-Cultural
3. • value: Sociology
4. • value: Nonfiction

publishDateText

05/23/2023

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9780593184189

mediaType

eBook

shortDescription

One of Porchlight's Business Books of the Year | One of Vox's Best Books of 2023 | An NPR Book of the Day | Required Reading from New York Post | One of Nylon's 13 May Books to Add to Your Reading List | One of PureWow's 14 Books to Read for AAPI Heritage Month | One of W Magazine's 14 Books to Dive Into This Summer | One of Betches' Best Summer Reads of 2023
An audacious journalistic exploration of the present and future of beauty through the lens of South Korea's booming "K-beauty" industry and the culture it promotes, by Elise Hu, NPR host-at-large and the host of TED Talks Daily
K-beauty has captured imaginations worldwide by promising a kind of mesmerizing perfection. Its skincare and makeup products—creams packaged to look like milkshakes or pandas, and snail mucus face masks, to name a few—work together to fascinate us, champion consumerism, and invite us to indulge. In the four years Elise...

sortTitle

Flawless Lessons in Looks and Culture from the KBeauty Capital

crossRefId

9202146

subtitle

Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital

publisher

Penguin Publishing Group

bisacCodes

1. • code: BUS016000
   • description: Business & Economics / Consumer Behavior
2. • code: HEA003000
   • description: Health & Fitness / Beauty & Grooming
3. • code: SOC008020
   • description: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Cultural & Ethnic Studies / Asian Studies