Body Modification in East Asia: An Introduction

Abstract

This short article introduces the special issue “Chasing Beauty: Cosmetic Surgery and Skin Lightening in East Asia”. It highlights the scale of and interest in the current boom in these procedures across Northeast and Southeast Asia, and outlines some questions of causality and interpretation arising from that boom. It then summarises the contents of the other five contributions to the collection, and identifies a number of common themes and conclusions arising from them. These are: (1) the ongoing eclipse of Western by Northeast Asian beauty ideals; (2) the continuing prevalence of uncritically inegalitarian assumptions about the relationship between physical appearance (especially skin colour) and social status; (3) the widespread framing of physical self-improvement as an ethically as well as economically desirable pursuit; (4) the weakness of cultural impediments to body modification in most countries of East Asia; and (5) the persistence, despite permissive attitudes to body modification as such, of a concern with authenticity and naturalness in ultimate appearance.