Learning to Be Ugly in South Korea
In a culture where beauty standards are clearly defined, how do you make peace with falling short?
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“Teacher, you’re ugly.”
The phrase slipped out of my nine-year-old student’s mouth as easy as an exhale. I had spent enough time in Seoul at that point to learn that some words were said there with less caution than they were back home in Canada. Things like: “Why do you look like that?” “I just want to die.” “Wow, you’ve become fat.” “You’re not pretty, but…”
Keeping this cultural bluntness in mind, I tried to laugh off the childish insult, but he didn’t let up. “Teacher, did you hear me? You’re ugly! You’re ugly!”
“That’s enough, Jasper,” I cut him off. “Class, turn to page 43. Please.”
It was the eerie silence that raised my gaze from the podium. A sea of questioning eyes stared back at me. Another student spoke. “Then do you think you’re pretty, teacher?”
The relentless whir of the ceiling fan amplified the pounding in my ears. I knew from the peculiar heat in my cheeks that my face had flushed tomato red. “I-I-I don’t think I’m ugly,” I stammered. My words quickened. “I mean, I don’t think I’m pretty either. I know I’m average.”
The student was usually a quiet one, contemplative and kind. He mulled over my answer with embarrassing thoughtfulness. “I think that’s quite right,” he concluded at last. “That’s probably correct.”
The class seemed satisfied with this resolution. But I stood mortified. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back of my self-esteem.
Standing court before a jury of tired nine-year-olds in the education-obsessed underbelly of Seoul was the least of my indignities. Middle-aged women often stopped me in the street for opinion polls, only to send me back once they realized I wasn’t eligible for their age bracket: 35 to 50. A short stint chaperoning a field trip culminated in the bus driver asking me whose mother I was. Shopkeepers averted their eyes when I came in to peruse their clothes. Mirrors were…
