If I Had Your Face

“Nondescript signs hang above darkened stairways, leading to underground worlds where men pay to act like bloated kings.”

Kyuri depicts the room salons, describing the way that they are hidden in plain sight. The depiction feels fantastical, emphasizing the ways that men are able to live out their fantasies in the salon rooms.

“Sometimes I just can’t stop thinking about how ugly she is. I mean, why doesn’t she get surgery? Why? I really don’t understand ugly people […] Are they stupid? […] Are they perverted?”

Kyuri describes the madam of her room salon, stating that she doesn’t understand why she doesn’t get cosmetic surgery to alter her appearance. As a character, Kyuri is obsessed with people’s physical appearances, and she can’t help but judge them for it. Kyuri’s obsession, as well as Sujin and Ara’s, with their physical appearance shows how deeply ingrained the gendered Beauty Standards are within South Korean society.

“Her cousin still couldn’t feel her chin and had a hard time chewing, she said, but she had gotten a job in sales at a top-tier conglomerate.”

Sujin, like Kyuri and her friend’s cousin, has undergone a very severe cosmetic surgery in which the upper and lower jaw are shaved to create a more ideal facial shape. The surgery is dangerous and very painful. South Korean women, to fit the Beauty Standards that elevate them within the social hierarchy, choose to undergo these procedures and the pain they cause to reach a higher status.