One of the most-viewed stories on Naver has to do with Koreans' average face size. It's quite important and considered a significant indicator of attractiveness, and perhaps the highest compliment your student can pay you is "teacher, small face." I was going to do a beefier write-up on it and provide some stats on some other nationalities, but three of the top ten Google results were about Korea, so I'm just gonna call it a local obsession and leave it at that. Actually, hold up, I'll do one more article. Here's something from 2004, about how Koreans' faces are becoming smaller as Koreans' bodies are becoming more western:
Professor Kim Hee-jin from the department of dentistry in Yonsei University explained, “The decrease in face length can be attributed to the diet of preferring soft food such as hamburgers.” and added, “If one gets in the habit of eating food that mainly uses the front teeth when one is young, the jaw muscles which we use for chewing food may become weak and it may cause the size of the jawbone to become smaller.”
As face size becomes smaller and height taller, the life-size index (height/length of head) for Korean people became similar to an eight, which is called the most beautiful proportion.
Holy fucking shit I can't believe I just quoted that. A couple of years ago some website or something compiled what was considered to be the composite attractive Korean face. Yep, certainly looks more "western" these days. *cough*
I wouldn't hit it. There's a .pdf file here with some more composites, and here's a god damn ridiculous commercial with you-know-who's small face.
1 comment:
This reminds me of when I learned about the small-face beauty standard.
My little kid cousin from Korea, who was visiting us in the States, took one look at me and said "she's not pretty because her face is too big."
I was like WTF.
"Good thing you're only 7 years old or I'd be asking you to step outside. And, no, I'm not taking you to get some ice cream."
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