One of Porchlight's Business Books of the Year One of Vox's Best Books of 2023 An NPR Book of
the Day Required Reading from New York Post One of Nylon's 13 May Books to Add to Your Reading
List One of PureWow's 14 Books to Read for AAPI Heritage Month One of W Magazine's 14 Books to
Dive Into This Summer One of Betches' Best Summer Reads of 2023An audacious journalistic
exploration of the present and future of beauty through the lens of South Korea's booming
K-beauty industry and the culture it promotes by Elise Hu NPR host-at-large and the host of
TED Talks Daily K-beauty has captured imaginations worldwide by promising a kind of mesmerizing
perfection. Its skincare and makeup products—creams packaged to look like milkshakes or pandas
and snail mucus face masks to name a few—work together to fascinate us champion consumerism
and invite us to indulge. In the four years Elise spent in Seoul as NPR’s bureau chief the
global K-beauty industry quadrupled. Today it's worth $10 billion and is only getting bigger as
it rides the Hallyu wave around the globe. And fun as self-care consumerism may be Elise turns
her veteran eye to the darker questions lurking beneath the surface of this story. When
technology makes it easy to quantify and optimize ourselves—from banishing blemishes to
whittling our waistlines even to shaving down our jaws—where do we draw the line? What are the
dangers for a society where a flawless face and body are promoted and possible? What are the
real financial physical and emotional costs of beauty work in a culture that valorizes
endless self-improvement and codes it as empowerment? With rich historical context and deep
reporting including hours of interviews with South Korean women this is a complex
provocative look at the ways hustle culture has reached into the sinews of our bodies. It
raises complicated questions about gender disparity consumerism the beauty imperative of an
appearance obsessed society and the undeniable political economic and social capital of good
looks worldwide. And it points the way toward an alternative vision one that's more affirming
and inclusive than a beauty culture led by industry.
