Brace yourselves: this week I’m going
to write about something I probably have no business writing about.
(Again.)
Jezebel, one of my favorite blogs,
recently posted a reaction piece inspired by a segment from the radio show This American Life. The episode was about self
improvement, and it was anchored by a brief interview with a woman
who had moved to South Korea to teach English at an all-girls high
school. Like any true American, she was stunned to realize that
people in other parts of the world don’t necessarily think the way
we do: There were full-length mirrors and scales on every floor of
the school she taught at. Her students used both regularly, and
dreamed of the day they would be rewarded with plastic surgery for
having passed their college entrance exams.
As an American who’s spent the past
year using television to be a peeping tom into Korean culture, this interview and article made me uncomfortable on a few levels. First of all, both are predicated on the assumption that America is somehow different from Korea, a place where physical appearance doesn’t matter. Anyone
who truly believes that—as the interviewee obviously does—is both naive and uninformed.
