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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

Praise for Flawless
“The host of NPR’s “TED Talks Daily” shines a bright light into the shadowy world of manufactured beauty and endless “self-improvement”…Hu’s study of Korea’s beauty cult is fascinating and disturbing, woven with threads of dark humor and personal experience.”―Kirkus (starred review)

"A remarkable investigation."―Slate

"A must read, Flawless is much more than a book about culture’s obsession with youth and beauty. It provides an urgent metaphorical societal mirror and context for why we spend so much of our time in the quixotic pursuit of perfection. Flawless helps us ask hard questions and reclaim our agency in a world that wants to deny us our power. Hu’s journalism shines a light on what is broken and provides optimism for what can be instead.”―Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Play

“Like a trip to the beauty counter with your most discerning friend, Flawless deftly redirects us from the individual choices we are bombarded with (so many serums, so little time!) and focuses us instead on the transnational systems that sell consumption as the key to wholeness. Well-researched and funny, it is Hu’s own vulnerability and keen observations on the endless project of female self-improvement that make each page sparkle.”―Alicia Menendez, MSNBC Anchor and Author of The Likeability Trap

"[A] deep and deeply-felt investigation."―Jessica DeFino

"An incredibly readable mix of first-person narrative of life in Seoul, rich cultural history, analysis and introspection. I loved it, and if you share the same fascination and ambivalence around beauty culture and serum culture in particular―you will too."―Anne Helen Peterson, author of Out of Office

"My favorite non-fiction book I've read so far this year."―Virginia Sole-Smith, New York Times bestselling author of Fat Talk

"This book is full of interesting dives into fixations on legs, government-driven beauty and the technological gaze. I was regularly pausing to absorb what I had just read."―NPR's Brittany Luse

"If you think that only women are trapped by a society that demands physical perfection, think again. Korean men now consume roughly 13% of the world's skincare products--even camouflage lip-balm for men doing their mandatory military service. One can't help but wonder if K-beauty standards are causing the human soul to rot away. A fascinating look at the ugliness of Korea's cosmetic underworld, sometimes shocking and often darkly funny as Elise riffs on the more ridiculous aspects of the pursuit of "ideal" beauty. Let me tell you dudes, the book gets under your skin--in all the right ways."―Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan

“Superbly researched and deeply insightful, Flawless is a timely, provocative, and fascinating must-read. Elise Hu masterfully blends an engrossing memoir about her experience as a foreigner, woman, and mother of girls in Seoul with a journalistic exploration of the disturbing forces behind K-beauty’s global rise [and the increasingly algorithm-driven perceptions and unforgiving standards of “beauty.”] I loved it.”―Angie Kim, internationally bestselling author of Miracle Creek

"If you're looking for a deeply engaging book about the past, present and future of Korean beauty's global impact on culture, and the relationship between beauty culture and tech, this book is for you! I appreciate how Hu covers everything from political economic history to theories around media and beauty in a really accessible read."―Xiaowei Wang, author of Blockchain Chicken Farm

“In Flawless, Elise Hu explores not just why South Koreans are so obsessed with skincare, but also how the beauty standards of Korean culture have created a seemingly endless feedback loop of beauty “problems” to be solved by an ever-increasing number of products. A fascinating, meticulously reported deep dive into Korean beauty culture.”―Doree Shafrir, co-host of Forever35 and author of Thanks For Waiting: The Joy & Weirdness Of Being A Late Bloomer

“Richly researched…Given Hu’s uncompromising critique of Korean beauty culture, we might expect her to conclude by rejecting “appearance work” completely. But she does no such thing. Instead, she takes a fresher and more interesting tack, reminding us that self-stylization has often served as a form of revolt.”―The Washington Post

“A fascinating and thoughtful deep-dive into the Korean culture of lookism… For readers who have had little to no exposure to Korean culture, it will feel like having your own knowledgeable tour guide leading you through a complex world.”―Asia Pacific Arts

"One of 14 new books to dive into this sumer!...[An] incisive investigation...a truly eye-opening summer read.”―W Magazine

“Nuanced, wide-ranging, and fluidly written, this peels back the layers of a powerful cultural trend.” ―Publishers Weekly

“Hu interrogates what it means to live in a world obsessed with beauty and youth, the injustices this obsession helps perpetrate, and what we can do about it. It’s a thoughtful, fascinating, and rigorously researched book.”―BookRiot

"Rais[es] surprisingly profound questions.”―People

"People can't get enough of K-beauty...Now, journalist Elise Hu has written the definitive exploration of K-beauty in her sweeping new book, which includes interviews with South Korean women as Hu asks the tough questions about our quests for perfection, as well as looks at the industry from a larger lens of gender disparities, consumerism, and beauty obsession."―Nylon

Chapter Page
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Beauty Is a Beast 11
Chapter 2 The Birth of K-Beauty 37
Chapter 3 Hallyu Has No Borders 51
Chapter 4 Skinfirst 73
Chapter 5 Lookism 93
Chapter 6 Selfie-Surveillance 115
Chapter 7 The Improvement Quarter 137
Chapter 8 The New Modern 165
Chapter 9 Free Size Isn't Free 193
Chapter 10 Escape the Corset 221
Chapter 11 Child's Play 245
Chapter 12 Of Marketing and Men 259
Chapter 13 The Wisdom of Ajummas 273
Conclusion 285
Acknowledgments 311
Interviews Cited 315
Bibliography 317
Notes 321
Index 365

Chapter 1

Beauty Is a Beast

Our new Seoul home spread across half the thirty-fifth floor of one of the tallest high-rises north of the Han River, which famously bisects the city. We never got a key to the place because every unit was fitted with an electronic keypad for entry. The door played a trill or a five-note ditty, depending on whether it was unlocking or locking. The first week, I padded around in my socks on gleaming white heated marble tiles that were warmed underneath by Korea's traditional ondol floor heating. My feet never once went cold in that apartment.

I learned you could un-press the elevator buttons to deselect destination floors, which saved me many times when my then two-year-old Eva would get trigger happy with all the buttons. I marveled at the central vacuum system, in which every room had a conduit to plug in our vacuum hose, so we'd never be bothered to push around a vacuum cleaner from room to room. Down in the underground parking garage, maintenance workers waxed and buffed the floors so often that when we eventually bought a used Hyundai to drive, the tires would squeak when we parked, as if we were backing up on the surface of glass.

In the comfortable confines of my tower, I lapped up my initiation to Seoul. From our apartment's floor-to-ceiling double-paned windows we could see everything, from the grassy patches of the U.S. army base next door to the Lotte World Tower-Seoul's tallest skyscraper, a 45-minute drive away-to the numerous green-clad mountains that surround the city. Compared to most American cities, Seoul is first-world plus. It has all the advancements and conveniences of the world's most developed places, but shinier, sleeker, and more efficient. Ours was just one of the many buildings pushing high into the cloud of pollution above the city. Like the rest of them, it was mixed use, so we had access to a coffee shop, nail salon, convenience store, and restaurant right in our apartment building. Underground, subway cars come with heated seats from which I could stream my favorite shows on my phone, the Wi-Fi never interrupted. If I ever missed a bus, the next one reliably showed up two minutes later. And absolutely everything-everything-could be delivered straight to your door. Furniture, food, convenience items. Agencies even send actors to your doorstep if you need extra party guests-or a fake spouse-in a pinch. The futuristic place and its on-demand, always connected consumer culture was the opposite of a hardship post. It felt like a vortex and a privilege.

I settled in by the summer of 2015 and spent the early weeks of June waddling around the apartment heavily pregnant with my second daughter, unpacking our clothes and housewares after they finally came off a container ship. At night I'd go live from Korea for NPR's Morning Edition in America, which was thirteen hours behind. Reclining on the slipper chair in my windowless home office, I used my belly as a handy shelf to rest my Comrex audio transmitting device on. The baby used my insides as a speed bag, doing nightly workouts on the lower part of my belly. Just enduring this was enough to wear me out.

That summer was sticky and smelly, as hot as Seoul's winter is cold. The humidity hung so thick that the barbecue smoke, diesel fumes, and steam from the sidewalk grates packed a pungent punch. Women scurried down the street hovering battery-powered pastel fans in front of their faces, and my husband Matt would come in from his commutes joking that he lost six pounds from sweat alone.

I eventually dropped eight pounds-and four ounces-when Baby Isabel Rock made her entrance in early July, officially kicking off my maternity leave. We gave her the middle name Rock partly as a play on the Republic of Korea (ROK) acronym that U.S. soldiers throw around. My parental leave allowed for eight weeks of nursing, sleeping in three-hour stretches to match the newborn's schedule, and altogether sweating a lot in my postpartum husk. I stayed at home as if I were quarantining, which made sense because that summer MERS, a mysterious respiratory virus, came in from an airline traveler and spread rapidly through the city.

In my reflection I saw all the nights of interrupted sleep and the heaviness from carrying a baby for nearly ten months. Dark circles parked under my eyes, and frown lines carved themselves between my brows. The hair on my head and body had grown thick from the hormones of pregnancy. A little patch of fur even sprang up somewhere it never existed, on the front of my neck. Pregnancy and postpartum are the only periods of my life I have ever had boobs, so I enjoyed that at least, though less perhaps because they constantly leaked milk.

Up until that point, my skincare routine consisted of a drugstore cleanser (thank you, Clean & Clear), followed by a moisturizer before bed. Now that I had finally made myself at home in a skincare product mecca and suddenly had nowhere to go and a lot of time on my hands. I decided it was time to try all the goop I'd seen and read about.

When my unapologetically capitalist brother Roger came over to visit from Beijing, where he was also living as an expat, I knew he'd be game to go spend money in the name of self-improvement. He particularly wanted to shop for trendy clothing "where the hot Korean girls are, in Gah-roh-soo-geel," purposely drawing out the Korean. He was describing a tree-lined shopping street in the glitzy Gangnam district (made famous by the eponymous song) that's a Korean equivalent to Rodeo Drive. I learned the phrase one-minute bags to describe luxury handbags so trendy that on Garosugil you'd spot one on someone's arm every minute or less. When Louis Vuitton was the most popular brand in South Korea, its handbags would flash by at an even quicker rate, earning them the nickname "three-second bags" because of their ubiquitous appearances.

To wander these shopping streets, I brought along the two-week-old baby Isa. I strapped her onto me with one of those single pieces of stretchy cloth used to harness a sleeping baby onto your body, tangling myself and the baby together into an elaborate knot. (This required watching the manufacturer's YouTube instructional video several times.)

I had researched what to buy for this time of maternity-leave-slash-product experimentation before we set off for Garosugil (for my brother) and Myeongdong (for me and Isa). Myeongdong is the Korean mecca for skincare and makeup stores. Walking through a busy neighborhood in Tokyo-say, Shinjuku-can feel like walking through a video game. Walking through Myeongdong in 2015 assaulted your senses with the same amount of neon and noises, but with notes of spa-like smells of lavender or jasmine, because it's the cosmetics that reign there. An old cathedral, the seat of Seoul's archdiocese, sits out of place among glossy department stores, as shoppers rush past it to worship at the altar of consumer beauty. They pack themselves into promenades and narrow alleyways lined with one glittering shop after another, looking for the hottest products to improve their faces and bodies in a hundred different ways. If you missed one Nature Republic store, there was another one across the street, and another one a block down. Same for Aritaum, or Etude House, or Olive Young, the Korean drugstore equivalent of Sephora. (There is also one actual Sephora store in Myeongdong.)

Having at least enough knowledge to know I possess either dry or combination skin, I cribbed from lists compiled by Instagram influencers and fashion magazines that featured moisturizing products suited for my particular skin and circumstance. For good measure, I also jotted down whatever the go-to Korean beauty staples seemed to be at that time.

I came home with bags full of products and the generous samples they throw in with all Korean beauty purchases. The clerks knew which items the out-of-towners liked best, so they went straight to offering me creams t

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.