With Eyes Wide Open

As I navigate myself through Seoul's populated streets, I find myself continuously wrongly recognizing Koreans as someone I know, or worse, seeing someone I know and not recognizing them. I am sure this does not come as a surprise, as the 'they all look the same' effect is a well known joke made about people from different races. Thankfully, I don't have to fully blame myself for this blatant racism, but I can actually blame this mistake on my brain. What is called the Other Race Effect is a well documented effect that proves that our brains, which have extremely efficient biological skill in recognizing faces, actually does a much poorer job of recognizing faces of another race, or at least of a race that, through experience, we have not learned to distinguish as well.

The outcome of this effect on its own makes living in Seoul, with a population of over 11 million people, confusing. The features I rely on to distinguish one face from another is different then what I am used to, and I often find myself lost in a big giant sea of my own racism. But this confusion is burrowed deeper than just the basis of my experiences. Seoul has the highest population of facial reconstruction surgery in the world: where one in five woman has had surgery. Most commonly among women is the double eyelid surgery, a surgery to make woman's eyes larger and more circular. This surgery is so popular, that I assume most of the woman I meet here have had it done. It is often bought as a gift for high school graduates and some parents even force their children into it, knowing their chances of success will be higher if they are more beautiful.

Like Westerners, nose jobs are another popular surgery amongst Koreans, but, unlike the Western craze to have your nose made smaller, Koreans actually aspire to have a bigger, longer nose to make their features more distinctive. Lasly, Koreans aspire to have smaller, more V-shaped faces, and recently, an even more extreme surgery has been growing in popularity. Both men and woman have been going under the knife to get what is called a double jaw surgery: a surgery that chizzles away your jaw bone and leaves with a long and painful recovery, and ultimately, a beautifully small face.

Smartphones apps have even kept up with this plastic surgery craze. You can download apps where you enter a picture of yourself, see how much better you can look with just a few snips and cuts, find out how much it will cost, and book it. It's that easy, right?!