Man Made Beautiful: The Social Role of Grooming and Body Work in Performing Middle-aged Corporate Masculinity in South Korea

Abstract

This article examines how middle-aged urban men in South Korea relate to age-relevant ideas of beauty in a society in which youthful muscular bodies are increasingly presented as the ideal or, arguably, even as a norm. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 13 male participants aged 36–56 years residing in the Seoul metropolitan area, it seeks to outline what role grooming and aesthetic labor play in their everyday social interactions. The findings suggest that men’s aesthetic practices in the workplace are strongly linked to considerations of in-group harmony, competency at work, and maintaining social hierarchies. Rather than being motivated by a desire to emulate hegemonic masculinity embodied by male celebrities of similar age, men in this age group engage with body work primarily for the homosocial gaze of other men in their workplace in order to embody their membership and belonging to it. These micro-contexts of men’s aesthetic labor help to illustrate how not all aesthetic labor can be explained in terms of considering the body simply as an object of investment. The participants’ reflections also illustrate how men’s bodies as neoliberal objects in the contemporary Korean workplace are not interpellated by societal or cultural influences in identical ways. For white collar workers, the role of aesthetic labor was clearly seen as more significant than for those in blue collar roles, suggesting a degree of social stratification of body work. Despite the relatively easy access to affordable technologies of the body in Korea, for workers in lower-middle class jobs where grooming and fitness are not considered an essential part of their job, partaking in aesthetic labor came with the anxiety that it might be encoded as “excessive” by others. This suggests that Korean beauty cultures continue to be highly class- and context-specific rather than relatively uniform as often (mis)understood in existing literature.

The massifying consumption of embodied goods in an advanced capitalist state: Capital, economic anxieties and social networks

“…The findings showed no difference by gender insofar as the desire for surgery was concerned, which resonates with Elfving‐Hwang's (2021) recent study that shows how Korean men (not merely women) are pressured to attain to contemporary beauty ideals. It may be, however, that men and women experience different kinds of coercive pressure or different uses of erotic capital, which deserves closer scrutiny by future research beyond the scope of this study.…”

“…Although this is traditionally seen as a gendered phenomenon affecting largely women, Elfving‐Hwang (2021) recently finds in her study of middle‐aged urban men in South Korea that men are also coerced into aesthetic labour, such as extensive grooming and striving for young muscular bodies, to favourably soothe power relations, especially in white‐collar work. The coercive pull towards the micro‐level cultural phenomena of cosmetic surgery and barter of advantages within sexual fields across genders thus hearkens to their structuration not only by cultural associations (Shilling, 2022a, 2022b), but by macro‐level economic anxieties.…”

“…Ji‐Yoo did not inquire further but recalls that despite the shock and discomfort caused by the stranger man's frequent comments about her beauty, the prospect of being included in a lucrative venture – and with a prominent business leader – was a powerful allurement impossible to reject outright. Although her particular case is evocative of gender dynamics (the targeting of a woman by a man), Ji‐Yoo did not reflect on her experience as a gendered phenomenon, so much as a machination of the rules of erotic appeal that totalised the entirety of society, men and women alike (Elfving‐Hwang, 2021).…”

Culture beyond categories: Examining intercultural variation in South Koreans' and Americans' attention to men's bodily features

“…Yet, other research has suggested that, while Koreans have highly negative views about fat bodies, they do not stigmatize fat people (Sun, as cited in Anderson‐Fye, 2018; Monocello, 2020). Fatness is a negative bodily trait that sufficient effort in other areas, like fashion choices and other forms of self‐maintenance (Elfving‐Hwang, 2021), can mitigate, ultimately positioning fatness as relatively less important despite it being unattractive.…”

“Guys with Big Muscles Have Misplaced Priorities”: Masculinities and Muscularities in Young South Korean Men’s Body Image

“…On the other hand, men with big muscles were often viewed as pathologic, undereducated, and having misplaced priorities, a feeling shared by older Korean men as well (Elfving-Hwang 2021 ). While their bodies were admired—mostly by other men—these same admirers had little interest in pursuing these bodies for themselves.…”