Avert Your Eyes! This Is Reality!

It seems almost unfair that something eventful happens right after I write a hummer-ful of uneventful turds. But then again, so properly fitting. Today (notice the date of this post [I'm getting all crazy on you folks!]) was my school's festival. What festival? I don't know, we'll call it the Happy Student Trying Festival of Lights. Were there lights? No, but most things about this festival are misleading. Basically, all the parents come in and the students show them stuff. Each class has a showcase of their students' talents, as well as a music performance (each class has a song).


I have gathered that Koreans more or less don't care if something is fake. Give me a show. I don't care if it's real life or not. This can be exemplified by the art display. Students displayed their art all over the school. I wish I had brought my camera to show you some examples of the incredible art these "children" made. Some of this shit could be in a museum. Not like a classical Leonardo type museum, but like a van Gogh or Picasso type of museum. This stuff was insane. I couldn't make the art they made and I'm an adult with an understanding of perception and a basic grasp of mixing colors. No, no, one thing is clear to me. Thier moms helped them and it's totally accepted or this country is damn naive.


"Oh, Min-ji, look at this flawless reproduction of a springtime mountain vista you made. Your expert employment of chiaroscuro shading goes above and beyond even an art student's ability. You're a talented artist! A+!" Or do they see it as, "Oh, Min-ji, you had help on your project. You must have good parents who love you very much. Good job. A+!" In America, we call that cheating and frown upon it. There was the occasional student work that was obviously done solely by the student, and it stood out. To me, it stood out as genuine. It evoked much more emotion from me, however minimal, than something that was obviously concocted with help from others (or if not done entirely by others).


Each class's show was, however, really effing cute. I saw a magic show, a hapkido show, a group dance show, and many children singing. I especially liked the integration of "empty plastic water bottleist" into a traditional Korean drum ensemble. I always did appreciate the increasingly rare empty plastic water bottleist virtuoso. The Great Figaro Dasani was probably the last one I can think of to grace our shrinking and warming planet.


Let's get back to the bigger problem. Korea's acceptance of things that are fake. More importantly, me complaining about Korea's acceptance of the artificial. This acceptance goes above and beyond looking the other way when students get help on their art projects. Let's take a look at what a vast majority of men enjoy looking at: women. I have heard various statistics ranging from one quarter to the almost unbelievable number of three quarters of high school girls having had plastic surgery by the time they graduate. Whichever stat you take, that is an alarming number of girls with low self-esteem. Granted, what they get is not Face-Off type of surgery. Usually, they get the epicanthoplasty (double-eyelid surgery) to get a bigger eye and a more "Western" look.


Between the last paragraph and this one, I've done some more research and reports vary considerably. In the end, there is no way of assessing the truth due to the internet not being reliable for data collection and me being too lazy to ask any reliable source for any data. I am just going to do what virtually everyone else does: read one piece of questionable data and base all my opinions around it forevermore, even if I later see equally questionable data refuting it. So...there's no such thing as plastic surgery here and I find myself in the middle of a beautiful woman breeding factory. The end.