Western Seoul November 2013 | Page 22

'The Western beauty standard has permeated across virtually all international beauty markets and with frighteningly effective apparatus of disseminating cultural imperialism through advertisements, pop stars and Hollywood it comes as no surprise that 'Western' means beautiful in more places than not' (Ahmed, 2013) Darkness Double Eyelid Tape $6.99 21 ISA KNOX Whitening Cream $201.00 EYE TALK Double Eyelid Glue $6.99 With Eastern music tastes, fashions and physical appearances becoming increasingly westernized particularly in South Korea as this article has depicted, I have begun to question how much further this cultural merging trend will go before we begin to lose the factors that make our world culturally diverse. Plastic surgery was originally used to repair human features disfigured by disease or accidents, now it is widely used for aesthetic reasons to transform unwanted features into those desired by the world all over. Will the future generations slowly nip and tuck themselves to the extent where we begin to become physical clones of each other as seen in Miss Korea 2013? This introduces the question, with ever advancing technologies particularly within South Korea, how long will it be before cloning itself is used in plastic surgery? There is already progress into using Therapeutic Cloning to reproduce single organs for transplant operations, so will we soon be able to clone individual features? DNA cloning is being developed which enables specific desired features to be selected for the controversial ‘designer babies’, could we soon be able to clone our youthful faces to be later implemented when everything starts ‘heading south’? 22