Beauty standards are often kind of proxies for money and for class. Beauty really is a class performance, I get into how if you change your appearance or appear as if you look a different way than you can kind of transcend class. The issue isn't like affordability the issue is that it keeps this wanting right in Southeast Asia. It's a far larger pool of their income in order to try and get there right.
Humans have always been captivated by beauty, and for almost as long, we’ve been marketed products and new technologies to help us achieve certain beauty standards. Elise Hu is a journalist and the author of “Flawless: Lessons in looks and culture from the K-beauty industry.” In this episode, she shares the fascinating insights she’s learned from years of studying the $10 billion K-beauty industry and the cutting-edge skincare, niche makeup products, and technology that promise to optimize our appearance. Elise and Chris talk about the real stakes of placing a premium on our looks, why a more inclusive version of “beauty” is worth pursuing, and how we can both enjoy and push back against the very human desire to feel beautiful. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts