Reference no: EM133395875
Hair Curlers in Public? That's Just How They Roll.
Jin Yu Young
Young Korean women wearing hair curlers can be seen nearly everywhere around Seoul - in cafes and restaurants, on public transportation, on the street.
And while they may seem like a vestige of a previous era, the young women who wear them say they are not only functional but also a sign of shifting ideas about gender and beauty and a reflection of the country's generational divide.
Jung Yoon-won, a 23-year-old college student wore them outside her home to maintain the perfect curl in her bangs before going to an event or meeting. She said her mother had asked her to stop, fearing others would find it inappropriate. But for her, appearance matters more at the destination than on the way there.
Older women who felt it was necessary to get ready in private are both intrigued and mystified by the phenomenon.
Lee Jeong-jin, 51, said it's not unusual for young people to have a "so what" attitude.
Yet Kim Ji-in, 54, sees the hair curlers as part of a broader shift among young women who feel they should be allowed to behave as they choose in public, without having to follow expectations about beauty and gender.
Resistance to South Korea's often-rigid beauty standards and restrictive views about gender is not new. After #MeToo allegations swept the country a few years ago, some women responded with "Escape the Corset," a movement in which they abandoned makeup and wore bowl cuts to protest oppressive beliefs about physical attractiveness.
Still, the country has one of the world's leading beauty industries, accounting for almost 3 percent of the global beauty market in 2019, according to the International Trade Administration, a U.S. government agency.
Kim Dong-wan, a 25-year-old researcher in Seoul, said he was confused when he first saw women wearing hair curlers in public about six years ago. Now he says that he's "indifferent," and that women nowadays are less likely to be pressured to hide such things and are also demanding more respect. "Times have changed so much," he said.