200 Pounds Beauty

"200 Pounds Beauty" is a Korean movie which illustrates a story about the most popular female singer who had to receive plastic surgery in order to become a pop star. In the beginning of the movie, she is just an ugly girl who literally weighs 200 pounds. She can really sing and has a beautiful voice, but she is just a backstage singer who sings instead of a pop singer who has a perfect look but can’t sing. Desiring to sing on a real stage, she decides to get plastic surgery from the top to bottom. After a year, she reappears with a totally different look, gorgeous face and slim body, and the entertainment industry decides to cast her. She does become a famous pop star, but she always feels like she is missing something. She realizes that she has lost real herself after the surgery, and she lives under huge pressure of her fans finding out the original look of her. Her truth is eventually revealed, but she actually becomes happier as a lot of fans still advocate her courage and genuineness whiles some fans criticize her as an “artificial human.”

This movie is a good example of “beauty myth” how women are not fully liberated even though they achieved more economic power compared to the past. Females always have to struggle to have a better look even though they can never be satisfied with it. Beauty myth began after the Industrial Revolution, and it gets worse as plastic surgery develops, and more women choose to look better with the help from surgery. Yet, although women do not want to pursue what the society or men want from them, they cannot escape from it as the movie illustrates – if you don’t look attractive, you probably can’t do what you want to do. Inevitably, beauty myth continues, and the plastic surgery would become more popular.