Park, S. (2022, May 26). Digitalization of beauty and its ethnic implications. The 72nd Annual ICA(International Communication Association) Conference, Paris (virtual)
I organized a panel session titled “De/Reconstructing Asianness through Techno-beauty Assemblage” for the Ethnicity and Race in Communication division in ICA 2022. Below are the panel description, panel rationale, and abstract for my presentation. I talked about the digitalization of beauty and its ethnic implications in the case of South Korea.
Panel Description
Calling attention to the importance of beauty discourse in ethnic identities, this panel discusses the interplay between East Asian beauty norms and digital media. Each panelist examines how Asian identity is complicated by looking into the utilization of Korean American identity in a digital attention economy, the questions posed by tanning aesthetics, digitalization of beauty, and technocultural discourses of image editing practices. Critical cultural approaches are employed to illuminate the ethnic dynamics of Asian beauty practices.
Panel Rationale
In the time of ever heightened ethnic and racial marginalization in the context of COVID-19, ethnic and racial identity is continually questioned and parsed through different perspectives. This panel pays attention to beauty as a lens through which we can discuss what “being Asian” means. Under the long history of Orientalism that has stereotyped and fetishized Asia, East Asians have been reduced to a mere yellow (Said, 1978). However, Asians are gaining “postcolonial visibilities” (Chow, 2011) through digital media and technology. The new digital visualities presented by East Asians are far from the typical Asian beauty that has been imagined and consistently reproduced in Western media, but they rather complicate the notion of Asia as “One World.” In particular, K-beauty, or Korean beauty which is emerging as a global trend, provides new beauty standards for East Asians while bringing about various issues on identity politics including skin color, racialized visuality, ethnic self-perception, and so on.
Four panelists from Korea and the United States will discuss the social, economic, and technocultural aspects of East Asian beauty, with a cross-regional and de-westernized perspective. The first two panelists will address influencer culture to analyze the interplay between ethnicity and beauty in the context of the digital attention economy. Dasol Kim investigates how Korean American influencers utilize their identity in mediating K-beauty discourse to US consumers, discussing the blurred line between appreciation of ethnic heritage and fetishization of Korean culture. Seonah Kim examines the tanning aesthetics of Korean female vloggers in an intersectional perspective, critically analyzing how they commodify and monetize their skin color and body. The other two give more attention to the technocultural aspects of East Asian beauty. Sojeong Park seeks to conceptualize the ‘digitalized beauty’ and discuss its ethnic implications in a postcolonial perspective, canvassing a range of media practices that reveal the digitalization of beauty in East Asia. J. D. Swerzenski’s critical technocultural discourse analysis of the Facetune interface suggests a potential reframing of global beauty standards where Eurocentric beauty standards have predominated.
With the view that the encounter between beauty and technology is an excellent subject to reveal the dynamics of the ethnic and racial identity of East Asians, the panel brings East Asian beauty to the fore of discussions on de/reconstruction of Asian identity, embracing the issues of the digital attention economy, skin color, somatechnic practices, and global beauty standards.
Abstract
While attempts have been made to digitize beauty for market purposes, the sociocultural implications of the digitalization of beauty have not been sufficiently discussed. This study aims to explore digitalized beauty as one aspect of ‘ethno-mediascape’ based on South Korean cases. In Korea, digital imaging technology has developed rapidly over the past few decades, in a close relationship with beauty. As people photoshop images, take purikura, use camera filter applications, and render selfies into avatars in metaverse platforms, they have become increasingly accustomed to transforming their facial traits. As ethnic and racial identities are closely intertwined with one’s visuality, the beautified digital images bring about a discussion on the ethnic self-expression of Koreans. While the beauty norms embodied in these images are criticized for following Western standards of beauty, this study seeks a decolonial perspective on this cultural phenomenon by framing it as a somatechnic practice of one’s ethnic identity.
SOJEONG PARK 