"K-beauty has captured imaginations worldwide by promising a mesmerizing perfection. Its advanced makeup and skincare products - creams packaged to look like pandas, snail mucus face masks and injectable fillers of salmon DNA - work together to fascinate us, champion consumerism and invite us to indulge. In the four years journalist Elise Hu spent in Seoul as NPR's bureau chief, the global K-beauty industry quadrupled. Today it's worth ten billion and is only getting bigger as it rides the Hallyu wave around the globe. As fun as self-care consumerism may be, Elise turns her reporter's eye to the tensions lurking beneath the surface. When technology makes it easy to quantify and optimize ourselves - from banishing blemishes to whittling our waistlines, even to shaving down our jaws - where do we draw the line? What are the dangers for a society where a flawless face and body are promoted and possible? What are the real financial, physical and emotional costs of beauty work in a culture that valorizes endless self-improvement and codes it as empowerment? With rich historical context and deep reporting, including hundreds of hours of interviews with South Korean women, this is a complex, provocative look at the ways hustle culture has reached into the sinews of our bodies. It raises complicated questions about gender disparity, consumerism, the costs of an appearance-obsessed society and the undeniable political, economic and social capital of good looks worldwide. Ultimately, it points the way toward an alternative vision, one that's more affirming and inclusive than a beauty culture led by industry." -- back cover.