I’m sixteen, which in Korea means I’m almost a finished product.
That’s how it feels, anyway. By your third year of high school, people start talking about your “specs”—test scores, clubs, volunteer hours—and your face like they’re items on the same checklist. At cram school, the girls trade math tips and moisturizer samples. On the group chat, we swap past exams and plastic-surgery clinic screenshots. When adults ask what I plan to do after graduation, they mean both college and whether I’ll “fix” anything. It’s said kindly, like asking if I’ve bought a new backpack.
Most mornings begin with a mirror, then a filter. The bathroom mirror is the honest one: monolid that makes my eyes look “sleepy,” jaw that isn’t quite a V, skin that breaks out if I study too late and eat tteokbokki. The front-facing camera is the aspirational one. I know exactly which app widens the eyes by two points without looking alien and which softens a jawline while keeping your ears the same size. I tell myself I’m just “previewing” makeup. It feels more like checking a mold to see if I fit.
School uniforms are supposed to make everyone equal, but they don’t. You can see the girls who’ve had “natural” tweaks—the double eyelid crease that reads as brighter, the higher nose bridge that photographs better in the class photos we have to attach to job and internship applications. We pass the camera down the row and pretend not to compare, except we all compare. On the walk to lunch, boys make throwaway comments—“You look tired,” “Your eyes are small today”—and you pretend they don’t land, even when they do. The teacher says, “Don’t worry about looks; focus on studies,” then awards the festival MC role to the prettiest girl without an audition. It’s not hypocrisy; it’s air. You breathe it without thinking.
At church, Auntie Park calls me pretty and then advises, “A little line on the eyelid would open your face.” In my mother’s childhood, elders pinched cheeks to gauge health. In mine, they measure your future on your face. No malice—just a shared belief that aesthetics and opportunity are attached like double eyelids to an eyelid. My dad once said if two resumes are equal, the prettier girl will get the job. He didn’t say it to hurt me; he said it like weather. Bring an umbrella.
We study for the Suneung like our lives depend on it, and in a way they do. So does our body image. In the cafeteria, body talk is a second language: “I’m on banana milk and sweet potato this week,” “I’m cutting salt for jawline definition.” The sports track is full of girls power-walking with waist trainers. My best friend Jiyun swears by chewing ice to “trick” hunger. We all know someone who fainted during morning assembly. No one wants to be the cautionary tale, but no one wants to be the “before” photo either.
The first time I visited a clinic it was “just a consultation,” like all first times. The lobby looked like a minimalist café—white walls, soft music, English words like “Natural Harmony” printed on glass. The counselor in a pencil skirt spoke gently, the way stylists do when they’ve already pictured your haircut. She held up a tablet: my face now, my face with a crease and slenderer nose. She said “balanced” a lot. She used a stylus to draw the eyelid line, and for a moment I was transfixed. I saw a me who fit the frame I didn’t design.
They mentioned a graduation discount. They mentioned painless techniques. They didn’t mention ghost surgeries, but I’d read about them in a news thread—how a famous doctor starts the cut and a junior finishes. My stomach flipped. I nodded like I didn’t know, like I trusted that cameras in operating rooms erase all risk. I signed nothing, but the before-and-after images stayed with me for weeks, tucked under my eyelids like a whisper I couldn’t un-hear.
In our group chat, the surgery talk is half practical, half prayer. Who has a good package for eyelids + rhinoplasty? Which clinic gives post-op cold laser for swelling? Can you swim two weeks after? Should you avoid the place where that influencer went because her nose bridge looks “too tall for Korean” in sunlight? We trade recovery photos the way we swap exam scores: screenshots labeled Day 1, Day 3, Day 7. I learned that bruises turn the color of old plums before they fade. I learned you must tape your mirror selfies to the calendar to prove, even to yourself, that the pain had a purpose.
What no one warns you about is how much of your brain cosmetic thinking rents out, even if you never book a procedure. You become your own project manager. Skin care becomes an algorithm in your Notes app. You scan faces the way musicians hear pitch—instinctively, constantly. You notice which idol’s jawlines defined a month after tour, which actress’s eyes look “refreshed” before awards season, which classmate’s chin seems sharper after summer vacation. The world becomes a before-and-after slideshow, and your place in it feels provisional, always “during.”
And if you’re religious, the conflict is not just aesthetic but moral. My youth group talks about idols—the golden kind in the Bible and the K-pop kind on screens—and then someone suggests that appearance can become an idol too. I nod, cheeks burning. I don’t feel vain; I feel strategic. Is it idolatry to invest in what pays returns? If beauty is a currency on resumes and in relationships, am I wrong to want a better exchange rate? “God made you perfect,” someone says. But my culture made a rubric, and the rubric feels like God because it controls outcomes.
My cousin got double eyelids at sixteen as a congratulation-for-surviving-finals gift. She says she did it for herself, and I believe her; she stands straighter now. But “for myself” in Korea always has shadows—teachers, job market, cameras, aunties. It’s a chorus that sings through you until your “I” harmonizes. When people say plastic surgery is a personal choice, I picture all those voices behind the mirror.
There’s also fear. Not just fear of pain; fear of the loop. The buzzwords are “subtle,” “refined,” “natural,” but the mirror is greedy. Fix one thing and you see the next. Influencers call it “polishing.” Our moms call it “not knowing when to stop.” In Gangnam, there are girls whose faces have the gloss of a new phone case. There’s a word for them—Gangnam miin—and everyone says it with the same mix of awe and warning, as if they’re a scenic road with a sharp cliff.
On bad days, I think of effect sizes from a paper we read in health class—how peer stress pulls your self-esteem down, how satisfaction with your body pushes it up, how deeply we’ve internalized a sociocultural attitude toward appearance without even knowing the phrase. On good days, I feel powerful: I can control my grades; maybe I can control my face. My mother calls that “self-improvement,” the same principle as studying English or learning Python. My father calls it “investment.” Both of them say, “Don’t rush.”
Here’s what I wish I could tell the younger girls who watch us like we’re the weather they’re walking into:
You are not a project, even if the world treats you like one. You will be told that your face is a résumé. Sometimes that will be true, and recognizing it doesn’t make you shallow; it makes you awake. But every system has loopholes. Confidence is one. Competence is another. A friend group that values your laugh more than your jawline is a third. None of these free you from the pressure entirely; they just give you a place to stand while the tide goes out and back again.
If you choose surgery, choose it with your eyes wide open—about risks, about the possibility of chasing “perfect” forever, about why you’re doing it and for whom. Demand cameras in the OR. Bring someone who will advocate for you when you’re groggy and scared. Budget for recovery time and loneliness, because both are real.
If you don’t choose surgery, don’t pretend you’re above the game. You’ll still feel its rules. Build armor that isn’t just sarcasm. Strengthen your body for what it can do, not just how it photographs. Curate your feed like your mood depends on it—because it does. Be tender with your reflection on exam weeks. Eat the tteokbokki sometimes and forgive the bloat.
Mostly, find places where your face doesn’t lead. A debate club where your points matter more than your pores. A coding contest with no cameras. A choir where eyes close on high notes. A friend who forgets to return your lip tint and remembers your birthday exam week. A corner of the internet that talks about books more than blush.
I’m sixteen, and sometimes I still scroll my “preview” face before bed, two points wider eyes, one point smaller jaw. Some nights I believe I can earn my way into a life by becoming its poster. Other nights I remember that posters tear, trends change, and faces settle into stories you can’t foresee at sixteen. On those nights, I close the app, look at the honest mirror, and practice a different kind of gaze—one that isn’t grading, one that might someday feel like home.