'Gangnam beauty' drama: the representation of lookism in South Korea

Abstract

Lookism is a new concept related to the discrimination. It is often described as a physical attractiveness discrimination, where as individual that is up to the beauty standard and considered as attractive are being treated differently than those who is considered ‘unattractive’. The purpose of this study is to analyze the lookism in the daily life in ‘Gangnam Beauty’ drama and how the beauty standard reflected in the daily life can be toxic to certain points using the representation theory of Stuart Hall and the critical discourse analysis to analyze the data through scenes, dialogues and characters. The result of this study shows how the drama ‘Gangnam Beauty’ represented the lookism in daily life and how lookism manages to put pressure on people regarding their appearances. The message of how badly lookism can affect an individual and how it has been overlooked by people due to the beauty standard in the society are well represented through the dialogues and the scenes in the drama.