Performing whiteness: skin beauty as somatechnics in South Korean stardom and celebrity

ABSTRACT

Most South Korean stars and celebrities show glowing flawless skin with a bright tone, which is termed mibaek and constitutes the core imagery of ‘K-beauty.’ Korean media plays a big part in validating this skin beauty norm by producing and mediating an idealised ‘televisual skin.’ While skin whitening has been interpreted in a colonial or westernised sense, this article defines mibaek as a somatechnics of constructing stardom and explicates it in a Korean media context. Based on observations on star and celebrity image in television dramas, reality TV and K-pop, and in-depth interviews with media and beauty practitioners, this article explains how Korean stars and celebrities employ skin beauty as somatechnics in five ways to: deliver romantic narratives; express a fantasy-like persona; attain extraordinariness; embody trans-Asian sensitivity; and negotiate femininity. This study reveals that mibaek allows stars and celebrities to present their bodies in particular ways, including via fan labour, to be desired by audiences. The study concludes by suggesting more areas for further inquiry on the construction of skin beauty in the Korean star industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Stardom
• skin beauty
• somatechnics
• mibaek
• South Korea

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the BK21 FOUR Program of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-4120200613754).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See Table 1.

Table 1. Information on interviewees

2. Ulzzang(얼짱) is a Korean term meaning ‘best face’. The term appeared in the early 2000s when young people started to take selfies using camera phones and upload photos on the online communities, desiring to gain popularity. And those who gained popularity were called ulzzang. Now the term is used more broadly to indicate good-looking people, and K-beauty makeup is often called ulzzang makeup by foreigners.

3. The persistent differentiation between men and women in terms of facial brightness has been discussed by many studies. For example, Dyer (1997) shows that the face of actress tends to be lighter and whiter in scenes of a heterosexual couple.

4. In the interview with Korean females in their 20s to 40s for another research unpublished, most of interviewees mentioned these three stars – Hyo-lee Lee, Jessi, and Hyorin– to indicate tanned female stars. It proves that dark skin is rare among Korean female stars.

5. Dark skin can be somatechnically adopted outside a Korean context. Se-Hwi Jo, who was crowned Miss Korea in 2014 and entered Miss Universe in 2017, represents an interesting case of embodying different beauty standards. When she applied to enter the Miss Korea Beauty Pageant in 2014, she presented light skin and starred as a model in a skin-whitening cream advertisement. However, when she competed in Miss Universe in 2017, she tanned her skin on purpose. It is unusual for Korean women to tan that much, but getting tanned in beauty salons is routine for Korean women competing in world beauty pageants. Tanning is a practice that Korean women undertake to be globally recognisable.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sojeong Park

Sojeong Park is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Communication at Seoul National University. She received her PhD in Communication from the same department with her dissertation titled ‘Decolonizing Skin Color: Mibaek Assemblage in Postcolonial Era.’ Her research interests include diverse media culture and visual culture with a focus on representation, gender, race, identity formation, and intimacy. She has published several articles in refereed journals, including The Journal of Popular Culture and Korea Journal.

Seok-Kyeong Hong

Seok-Kyeong Hong is a Professor in the Department of Communication at Seoul National University. Her research interest is the digital cultural forms and practices and transnational cultural flows in this era. She published Hallyu in the Globalization and the Digital Era (2013) in the Cultural Studies tradition and continues to research on K-pop with a focus on BTS’s success. Her recent interest includes the intersectionality of gender and race in Hallyu Studies and the use of data analysis as an auxiliary method for studies on digital cultural practices.