Tuesday 15 December 2009
Wanna feel beautiful in Korea? Be tall (not too tall), fair skinned (not so important for a guy), small faced, skinny and with big eyes. :) That's the most general rule to be called beautiful, pretty or in case of a guy handsome.
Being tall:
in Korea it is important, because girls want to have long legs (they emphasize this on talk shows etc.) and guys want to be taller than girls. You can see most of the girls walking in high heels all the time ( I wonder if they ever feel tired). Well talking about myself, I was kinda too tall there :D I am 1.72cm so I was taller than most of a girls and I wasn't able to wear high heels - I felt like a giraffe :DFair skin:
if you went to a shop and tried to find self tanning lotion you would probably fail. There are tons of products for whitening the skin and you can see the girls all around, trying to cover their skin as much as possible to not get tanned even if it's hot. White skin is considered to be beautiful, and it came from a centuries back, when fair skin was a sign of higher class in a society. Small face:
I have no idea why they concider it to be beautiful, but as I mentioned in my previous post, Koreans try to cover their face with palms or lean back a bit, so their face seemed to be smaller than yours in a picture. And you can hear Koreans talking about small face all the time. Just ask them (if you have a chance) if they consider small face to be beautiful and why. Maybe you could share the ideas and explain it to me, because right now it is unrevealed mystery for my small brain :)Being skinny:
well yeah all the world is going insane about skinnyness BUT in Korea it's even more visible. Once in a lecture our Korean profesor said - in Korea I am not considered to be skinny, while in Europe I would be considered to be one. It made my jaw drop down. If he was not skinny enough in Korea, so I guess I was an elephant :D And in shops most of clothes are size S, few M and veeeery few L (and it's more applicable for pants or shorts, t-shits are usually the same size, and yes it is size S). Trying to find something of a bigger size could be almost mission impossible. Big eyes:
you can see a lot of Koreans with pretty big round eyes and you might think, why would they want to have them bigger. Well to say you the truth, they might not want that anymore, because they had plastic surgery done already. There are a lot of people in Korea (both girls and guys) who underwent eyelid surgery, to open up their eyes and make it look rounder and bigger.It is most common plastic surgery among Koreans. I don't know why they go under the knife. I do not see much difference after it, besides I find slanting eyes atractive :)
Beauty and youth is so important in Korea, I would even say it is a must if you want to be successful in your life - find a better job, better wife/husband, better everything. So don't be surprised if U see a girl on a subway, putting her makeup on or a guy stopping by a reflection of himself and putting all his "messy" hair in a right order (I have no idea how much time they spend in a morning to make their hair to look as perfect as in a magazine). P.s. You migh have a different opinion about the beauty in Korea and you might say that the statements above are not true, well it's up to you. But I just got that perception after being in Korea for four months and looking from my own perspective, so I do not claim it is an undoubtable truth.
P.p.s. Discussion and (dis)agreement with an opinion of an author is highly welcomed, it shows that the grey mass in your head is still working ;)
That's all for now. As usually credits of a pictures goes to....
THEIR OWNERS!
My blog looks so much nicer thanks to all of you :*
C-ya next time :)
Saturday 12 December 2009
So what is aegyo? To keep it simple, it is a way of acting cute. It might be a different way of talking (trying to talk in high pitched voice) or making cute face expressions etc. Well it's kinda difficult to explain. Aegyo is also applicable for guys :) Well according to Koreans, aegyo is a way for a girls to get the things they want and for a guys to win a girls heart. Some examples of aegyo:
Aegyo is fun to watch in dramas or TV shows, when Korean idols are trying to show their "charms" with cute expressions or their failures doing that, but in real life it can be pretty annoying, especially girls speaking in high pitched voice... About guys... Hmm don't remember any of them acting cute (I guess I just have some memory loss because of loads of alcohol I had ...khem well I don't know the reason). The easiest way to notice aegyo is to look through the pictures you are taking with Koreans. You will notice girls puting their palms to face, or making \/ signs (the aegyo that I just mentioned is kinda lovely ^^) The other reason why Koreans put their palms next to a face and try to cover it a bit is to make it look smaller. You wonder why they want their face to look smaller? Well reality is like that: small face = beautiful face. I will talk more about the perception of beauty in Korea in my next post :)
That's all for now. And here's a little bit of aegyo for the end ;)
P.s. All credits of the pictures goes to their owners (I do not own them, I do not steal, I borrow! :D) I hope people won't get mad because of me borrowing those pictures. I took them just for educational purposes :)
^^
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