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hekate24 's review for:
If I Had Your Face
by Frances Cha
4.5 stars. Sometimes I love books about people living in quiet despair, but they have to come to me at the right time (see my adoration of [b:My Year of Rest and Relaxation|36203391|My Year of Rest and Relaxation|Ottessa Moshfegh|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1513259517l/36203391._SX50_.jpg|55508660].) If I Had Your Face is a book I'd been anticipating for months. It's quite different than what I expected, but I suspect I wouldn't have loved this quite as much pre-pandemic. It just suits my current mood perfectly.
This book is an interesting indictment of capitalism, particularly the realm of social capital. There's quite a lot of discussion about plastic surgery in here. This usually comes under criticism for setting impossible standards of beauty- particularly for women - and all the resultant self-esteem issues. This book doesn't really touch on it from that angle, though. Here, beauty is a form of capital. Social capital, but capital all the same. While this book touches heavily on South Korean beauty standards - which, from my delving into k-pop, are a bit different from American beauty standards - I don't think this book lets the reader rest easy like "oh, thank goodness it's not like that here." For example, America has somewhat different attitudes towards plastic surgery but I couldn't help but think about influencer culture and makeup standards here. Or perfectly curated images from parenting blogs where its like "oh no, my toddler spilled something on the floor!" but you're also supposed to look at the beautiful, expensive home and the otherwise perfectly clean and perfect kitchen.
So basically tl;dr there's a lot about this book that's specific to Seoul but also a lot that I think will invite you to think about social capital and how it expresses itself in your world.
I think I wish this book had been a bit longer. However in some ways
This book is an interesting indictment of capitalism, particularly the realm of social capital. There's quite a lot of discussion about plastic surgery in here. This usually comes under criticism for setting impossible standards of beauty- particularly for women - and all the resultant self-esteem issues. This book doesn't really touch on it from that angle, though. Here, beauty is a form of capital. Social capital, but capital all the same. While this book touches heavily on South Korean beauty standards - which, from my delving into k-pop, are a bit different from American beauty standards - I don't think this book lets the reader rest easy like "oh, thank goodness it's not like that here." For example, America has somewhat different attitudes towards plastic surgery but I couldn't help but think about influencer culture and makeup standards here. Or perfectly curated images from parenting blogs where its like "oh no, my toddler spilled something on the floor!" but you're also supposed to look at the beautiful, expensive home and the otherwise perfectly clean and perfect kitchen.
So basically tl;dr there's a lot about this book that's specific to Seoul but also a lot that I think will invite you to think about social capital and how it expresses itself in your world.
I think I wish this book had been a bit longer. However in some ways