“My ID Is Gangnam Beauty” (내 아이디는 강남미인)

By Jae-Ha Kim
jaehakim.com
March 2, 2019

Kang Mi-rae (played by Im Soo-hyang)
Do Kyung-seok (played by Cha Eun-woo)
Oh Hyun-jung (played by Min Do-hee)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

“My ID is Gangnam Beauty” specifically tackles South Korea’s obsession with physical looks, but the storyline carries over to many cultures, where the standards for beauty — especially for girls and women — are unrealistic.

With some taut editing and fewer episodes, this Korean series would’ve been more interesting. There was too much redundancy and padding to fill out the 16 episodes.

Still, it held my interest, thanks to likable leads and some things I hadn’t seen before in K-Dramas.

The term “Gangnam Beauty” refers to an attractive person who looks like they had cosmetic surgery. Here, Mi-rae (Im Soo-hyang) is that beauty. Once an ugly, overweight little girl who was bullied in school and derisively nicknamed, “The Hulk,” she managed to lose weight and become very thin. But her reputation as being ugly — and therefore unworthy — carried over to middle school and high school. Her one childhood friend, Hyun-jung (Min Do-hee), got into so many fights at school defending Mi-rae, that the latter told her friend not to hang out with her at school.

Shortly before she enters her freshman year of college, Mi-rae has her face re-done to the point where she is unrecognizable to her own father. But as beautiful as she has become, she doesn’t see herself as attractive.

And therein lies the real issue that I wish had been addressed more. What Mi-rae needed more than plastic surgery was sessions with a therapist. Yes, she may still have opted to get work done on her face. But without knowing her value as a human being — which has nothing to do with the shape of ones eye’s or having a small face – she is still a mess.

People like to point out how everyone in South Korea gets plastic surgery. While that’s obviously not true, it was enough of an issue that when some men and women met for blind dates, their potential partners demanded to see baby and childhood photos. They didn’t want to get “tricked” into marrying a supposedly naturally beautiful woman who would give birth to an “ugly” child.

When soccer star Ahn Jung-hwan — who was good looking enough to be a model — and his wife, former Miss Korea Lee Hye-won, had their first daughter, some netizens cruelly said that the little girl was “ugly,” because she hadn’t had her face fixed yet like her mother. (FWIW, I have no idea who has or hasn’t had plastic surgery and I don’t care.) To say that about a child is reprehensible. But while certain beauty standards seem to be universal, beauty is and should be subjective and in the eyes of the beholder.

It’s a fact that we all grow older and that even the most beautiful man and woman will lose their looks one day. Looks literally aren’t everything. It’s better to be content and alone, than to settle for being someone’s second best.

Mi-rae’s frenemy is a petite fellow freshman named Soo-A, who immediately latches onto her. Regarded as the most beautiful girl on campus, she pretends that she’s not pretty and enjoys the attention of all the boys who want to date her. But it’s also clear that she’s a Grade A manipulator who doesn’t want anyone’s life to be better than hers. And in her world, better means prettier and more popular. Is she really a nice, but misunderstood person? Or is she a sociopath?

A couple of the girls point out how unfair it is for the boys — most of whom are not very attractive — to judge women on their looks, rather than trying to improve their own selves. These boys feel entitled to say things about the girls’ faces and bodies — no matter how cruel and inappropriate — just because they are male.

My absolute favorite part of this series was when Mi-rae’s love interest, Kyung-seok (portrayed by Astro singer Cha Eun-woo), tries to become her knight in shining armor and escort her home. She’s drunk and he thinks he’s doing the right thing by yanking at her arm to drag her back to her apartment (aka the Korean Arm Grab, which I despise). Their Teacher’s Assistant (Kwak Dong-Yeon) stops him and tells him that while he may think what he’s doing is chivalrous, it is a form of violence.

YES!

But wait… It gets even better. Mi-rae tells Kyung-seok she never gave him permission to touch her.

Yes, girl! Yes!

I love my K-Dramas more than any other programming, but it makes me angry to see men disregarding women’s ownership of their own bodies and dragging them from place to place just because they are stronger and can do so. It made me very happy to see this addressed in “Gangnam Beauty.”

While this isn’t the best series I’ve seen, it was still fun to watch. As I always say, K-Dramas are like pizza. Even the bad ones are still good enough.

Airdate: Sixteen episodes — each about an hour long — aired on JTBC from July 27 to September 15, 2018.

Spoiler Alert: One thing I really dislike is when writers try to make an unsympathetic character likable by throwing in a difficult upbringing. Soo-A was abandoned by her mother and forced to raise herself. Filthy and unkempt, she was bullied in school for being smelly and ugly. Her mother shows up one day to give her a bath, wash her hair and buy her a new dress. That is the last time Soo-A sees her mother. But at school, everyone notices how she has become pretty and all of the sudden she has become the most popular girl in her class. Soo-A notes to herself that she has to be agreeable, pretty, cute and smart — but not too smart. In other words, she can’t be smarter than the boys. Yes, that’s a tough life for a little girl. But later, we see how she dismissively treats her grandmother, who comes to visit her carrying heavy containers of homemade food for her. Instead of being grateful — or even tolerating the old woman by at least helping her carry the food — she quickly walks ahead of her grandmother, afraid that someone from college will see her with the old woman, who doesn’t fit into her made-up narrative of being from a wealthy family.

Soo-A also has a stalker — a fellow classmate who was incensed that she dared to flirt with him, but then not date him. Did she treat him callously and dismissively? Absolutely. But she doesn’t owe him anything.

I already mentioned my favorite part of this series. My second was when a man tries to get back with his girlfriend, after dumping her, because he thought Soo-A was interested in him. (She wasn’t. She just didn’t want anyone else to be happily coupled up.) Tae-hee is a sweet, pretty girl. But because she weighs more than 90 pounds, the boys all made fun of her weight and told her how pretty she would be if she dieted and got emaciated. He had expected her to welcome him with open arms. I literally cheered when she told him to get lost.

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