The effeminacy of male beauty in Korea

Whether on TV or on the cinema screen, on billboards or in a shop window in a South Korean downtown shopping district, over the past few years a new trend in the styling of Korean male models and mannequins has emerged: despite their often chiselled physiques, the men use foundation and lip gloss, pluck their eyebrows, wear longish, wavy hairstyles, combine white garments with brightly coloured accessories, and generally present themselves both verbally and non-verbally in a soft and gracious, arguably vain fashion that, until recently, would have been neither common nor socially accepted.

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