The shattering idea at the heart of Frances Cha's beautifully written novel is the imperative of cosmetic surgery for young women in contemporary South Korea. But why? Why would as many as a third of South Korean women in their twenties go under the knife, knowing that outcomes are often catastrophic, that the breaking of the jawbone entails a year of pain to heal (and might heal incorrectly), and that the expense will result in years of debt? If I Had Your Face hazards an answer: body modification has become a virtual prerequisite for upward mobility, especially for underprivileged women. The four young women we follow in this engrossing work are doubly burdened, hailing both from humble backgrounds and from the provinces. As one states, “Things are a little different outside of Seoul” (p. 11). To move up to the capital and elevate oneself there, certain things must be done. “Even as a girl,” a character reflects, “I knew the only chance I had was to change my face . . . even before a fortune-teller told me so” (p. 30).
The book's brilliant title, If I Had Your Face, speaks to the assumption that one's life could improve immeasurably with a modified face. The right face brings success, hypergamy, and security; the wrong face condemns one to professional stagnation, penury, and despair. Cha's characters personify the ways that economic competition drives body modification. Following mandible surgery, one character cannot feel her chin and chews with difficulty because her teeth are not aligned, but she achieved her goal of a “sales job at a top-tier conglomerate” (p. 15). Another character saves up for “jaw surgery” as the “biggest investment of my life,” while another values her transformed jaw as “the turning point of my life” (p. 10).
An archetype of successful, socially advancing transformation is the “electrically beautiful” Kyuri, a “room salon girl” (pp. 4–5). The “stitches on her double eyelids look naturally faint, while her nose is raised, her cheekbones tapered, and her entire jaw realigned and shaved into a slim v-line” (p. 4). Routine light therapy makes her skin glisten “cloudy white, like skim milk” (p. 4). For maintenance, she deploys lotus leaf masks, ceramide supplements, and drops made from stem cell extract. Kyuri's fortune-teller had insisted on the economic necessity of surgery, stating that because of the shape of her nose, “all the money that would flow into” her life “would flow right out again” (p. 260).
Opting out of plastic surgery is a moral affront. An outraged character is flabbergasted; how can she stand being so ugly?! “Why doesn't she just get surgery? Why? I really don't understand ugly people. Especially if they have money. Are they stupid? . . . Are they perverted?” (p. 13). Meanwhile, cosmetic surgery becomes normalized and accessorized. One undertakes eyelid surgery as one might tote a Fendi purple crocodile leather bag. On reality television, viewers select contestants for cosmetic procedures. Unless a person can elude the sleepless eye of judgment—with moral autonomy, money, or power—it is assumed that the upwardly aspiring will seek enhancement.
Aesthetic standards are set by TV and music idols who submit to the knife, often under pressure from the entertainment industry. The doctors who operate on them are also rock stars. Hopeful patients track the “Pretty Factory,” the “Cinderella Clinic,” or the “NVme” hospital, in magazines such as BeautyHacker (pp. 9, 257). Landing an appointment with a celebrity surgeon, inevitably Seoul National University trained, is on a par with gaining admission to an Ivy League school, with analogous implications for social mobility.
Cha's poignant novel can be read as part of the massive, complex phenomenon of body modification, not only in Korea but elsewhere. The pressure to transform one's appearance to move ahead is evident in other intensely competitive societies, particularly in Asia. In China, as in Korea, cosmetic surgery clinics target students graduating from university, promising an edge in the competitive job market. Though disproportionally undertaken by women, men also undergo body modification in the hope of improving their prospects. With an abundance of qualified candidates, employers can dictate arbitrary metrics, such as height. In response, people might undergo potentially dangerous leg-lengthening procedures. In “distraction osteogenesis,” the leg bone is sawed in two. As it heals, the bone is gradually forced apart, adding a centimeter or two in length. Complications can include infection, gait disturbances, and the inability to walk.
Body modification is a burgeoning, global trend, with the highest number of surgeries performed in the United States, Brazil, and India, although South Korea ranks high in per capita procedures. Data from groups such as the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the Korean Women's Development Institute show that whereas the great majority of American cosmetic surgery patients are over forty, aiming to preserve a youthful appearance, the vast majority in South Korea are in their twenties and thirties, like Cha's characters, aiming not to preserve but to transform themselves into an idealized look. South Korea's cosmetic surgery industry is also distinctly worthy of attention because of its influence on global aesthetics. The popularity of this idealized look, and the surgeons who craft it, arise from the astonishingly influential “Korean wave” (hallyu), one of the most successful examples of soft power in world history.
If I Had Your Face could only have been written by someone with access to hidden zones, up and down Korea's social hierarchy. The novel introduces us to brutal street gang members, damaged white-collar workers, and the heirs of Chaebol conglomerate fortunes. We see sex workers entombed in a system that demands successive rounds of expensive surgery and traps them in inescapable debt. The malignant web that connects medicine, credit-granting agencies, and indenturing prostitution merits further research, and criminal prosecution. Frances Cha's fluency in Korean combined with her investigations in Korea for CNN must have yielded some of this book's remarkable material. Though fiction, it is penetrating ethnography. I would assign it to university students studying anthropology, history, psychology, or bioethics.
