There are a lot of aspects to White Girl worth talking about. They’re just things I observe, and are signs that my standards of female beauty have become somewhat Koreanized. Otherwise, why would I be so weirdly attracted to a woman who, in my previous life before Korea, I would have dismissed as pale and kinda unhealthy looking? It’s because in Korea, being pale and generally unhealthy looking is actually a certain aesthetic. It’s the combination of the fact that most Korean women have never regularly exercised (soccer, field hockey, swimming, basketball, softball, etc.), 
enabling the phenomenon known as “skinny fat”, also known by the more medical term “thin obesity”, in which a given very, very skinny woman is actually medically obese (was that 25% of their weight being body fat?). In Seoul, more than any place else I have been in the world, many skinny women walk down the street with the fat on their bones flib-flabbing from side to side. Eww, right? Add to that the extremely pale skin of some of these women (preserved by the constant use of parasols), and the idea that if they do any exercise at all, they’ll get huge Arnold Schwarzenegger legs and Sarah Connor arms – you get that delicate, pale, dependent look of doe-eyed femininity. And I hate to admit it, but – I kinda like it sometimes.
I know it sounds and can even look gross, but I can’t do anything other than admit it. I know many of you will not want to blow up the pic below, but this girl is sooo ghetto fabulous – pale, not-so-great skin, yellow soles, and brown spots on exposed joints – man, I just had to snap a picture or two as she strutted by with her Princess Diana attitude. These are the princesses who would never date a foriegner, and are best found with thug-ajussi dudes who hang in the Jongno or Yungdeungpo. These are the Korean round-the-way girls, and they are their own kind of lovely.
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new trend?
But yeah. Another “Oh, Korea” moment. ><
I’m late in replying to this (over a year) but still.
I don’t think it’s sexy. But I’m not a man
I find that unless the girl is just cross-eyed and has a face full of acne the bar is pretty low re attraction. However, that’s not the point here.
I remember noticing the “thin obesity” here only recently. Young Korean women aren’t active. I noticed it when I saw Jeong Ji-hyun in that AnyCall commerical where she was doing a provacative striptease and the color of her shirt would change when she stripped one off. It was a cute commerical but I noticed she wasn’t really tight and firm. I’m not saying she’s a “thin obese” woman but she’s the one who made me notice it because back home she would have had to firm up before doing that commerical.
That’s the aesthetic I’m used to because I’m from L.A. where most, not all, but most women if they’re slim try to also exercise. That means there is some muscle tone. I notice the flabby skinny girs here a lot now. I see the comedy shows where they bust out the girls in cheerleading outfits and some have tiny rolls of fat (not skin that folds, I know the difference). I’m talking serious jiggles.
Although, of course, they’re much less jiggly than a bit and obese woman, but they’re jiggly. That’s kind of gross to me to be so thin yet to have so much fat. Icky.
Whatever floats your boat, but thin and fat is gross.
I also disagree that this is ghetto-fabulous. That’s kind of an insult to my inner-city roots. She’s thin, pale, fat and that’s not ghetto. That’s Korea’s own form of weirdness.
Hmm, I’d have to agree with you.
In fact, I mostly agree with you in the post, but I guess I was pretty bad at explaining why some girls like this could start looking cute sometimes. In the end, it’s mostly a function of having been here a very, very long time. I guess like when you eats runny eggs and grits every day, and one day the eggs get accidentally “over”cooked to the point of being edible – then you think they are like what you remember eggs benedict used to taste like, only because your standards have dropped so far.
Know what I mean?
YO! FMS ~ you leave my runny eggs and grits alone! That’s fine southern cuisine you’re talking about there!
And ExpatJane is soooooooooo right about this failing to be ghetto-fab. This ain’t any form of fab except fabulously WRONG. First, I’m sure there’s a little old lady shivering and naked in the nursing home right now wondering who stole her favorite white dress. Her shoes are so obviously from the man-won bin at Lotte Mart, and match NOTHING else in her outfit. The necklace and earrings are fine but do nothing with this outfit. And is that yellow nail polish she is sporting?!? Let’s not even get into the pencil case she’s pretending is a clutch . . . ew, ew, ew from head to toe.
Waaaaaaaah…!
It was early in the blog…
*SNIFF*