In this Episode I speak with Elise Hu, author of "Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital." When Elise moved to Seoul in 2015 as the first-ever Korea and Japan bureau chief for the American broadcaster NPR, it dawned on her that she was in fact coming "face-to-face with the future of how we might live, look, and relate to one another." South Korea is one of the world's largest exporters of cosmetic goods and is at the epicenter of beauty innovation-- creating cutting edge technologies of self-enhancement and self-modification. This, combined with powerful AI tools and social media, allows the consumer beauty industry to propose solutions for problems we never knew we had. As the window of who is deemed Beautiful becomes more and more narrow, and when appearance labor becomes conflated with self-improvement, Hu asks "what does consumer beauty culture lead to, if left unconsidered and unchecked?"
To learn about Elise Hu please visit her website: https://elisehu.com/
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