It’s one thing to be aware of the popularity of calf-reduction surgery in Korea on an abstract level, but quite another to see the results in the flesh for the first time.
Or rather, the reduction thereof. And while I’m aghast at the notion of voluntarily having one’s nerves cut and muscle removed for any cosmetic surgery procedure, in this particular case the mind simply boggles at how anybody can consider the “after” picture as an improvement.
Unfortunately though, it is neither a mistake nor a satire, but is instead from a genuine advertisement in this month’s Busan edition of Cocofun (코코펀), a free local entertainment guide available in major cities. Here is the full version:
For the record, I’m not labeling skinny calves as unattractive by definition, particularly if a woman – and it’s overwhelmingly women who undergo calf-reduction surgery – has such legs naturally; as it happens, the difficulty of finding food I wasn’t allergic to when I was young meant that my own calves probably weren’t much bigger until my mid-teens, even though I’m a man. Buffing-up in my early-20s to compensate for my own body image then, naturally I also prefer healthy and active women over sedentary thin ones today, but regardless I struggle to see how the muscle development naturally ensuing from such a lifestyle could ever be considered unattractive.
This isn’t the case in Korea and the rest of Northeast Asia however. For a good introduction as to why, I recommend this post at FeetManSeoul for starters, while some other sources, such as the following English guide to the procedure from this cosmetic surgery clinic in Seoul for instance, also mention the fact that “Asian women have shorter legs and thicker calves than Caucasian women.” But lest one is tempted to read too much into that curious comparison though, by no means do all commentators on the subject indirectly refer to some alleged Caucasian ideal, and actually even this more direct description of the procedure from the same site fails to mention it.
( Source )
However, there may also a generational difference to take into account. Take 38 year-old singer and actor Uhm Jung-hwa (엄정화) below for instance, appearing in a press conference with 29 year-old actor Han Chae-young (한채영) for their movie Are you living with the person you love? (지금 사랑하는 사람과 살고 있습니까?) in July 2007. Ironically, both are well-known for having received extensive cosmetic surgery, but as you can see, only Uhm Jung-hwa has retained her muscular legs. I find her much the more attractive for that reason, and seriously wonder how much physical exertion Han Chae-young is capable of; did I mention that calf-reduction patients have to learn how to walk again?
But while its voluntary nature may may mean that it’s too extreme of me to compare calf-reduction surgery akin to foot-binding at this point (although both do involve the physical disablement of women for the sake of a wholly artificial beauty ideal), I will go so far as to invoke Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792) here. For not only did she note that women being considered “too susceptible to sensibility and too fragile to be able to think clearly” was partially the consequence of not receiving the physical education that boys did (see here also), tellingly she also wrote that women are “taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison”, implying that if young women weren’t so encouraged to focus their attention on beauty and outward accomplishments, they could achieve much more.
Points to ponder in a country where health-food is promoted to elementary school girls on the basis of allegedly improving their face-shape and making their undeveloped breasts and buttocks bigger. And yet still people wonder why I’m so negative sometimes…!
(For all posts in the Korean Sociological Images series, see here)
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