Man Made Beautiful: The Social Role of Grooming and Body Work in Performing Middle-aged Corporate Masculinity in South Korea

Existing Research on Men’s Perceptions of Ideal Masculinity, Body and Grooming in Korea

While men’s grooming and the ideal body have typically been overshadowed by studies focusing on women, men’s beauty practices have a long and significant history in Korea. A number of existing studies have discussed in detail the history of men’s aesthetic practices in relation to fashion, hairstyle and grooming in pre-modern and modern Korea, highlighting continuities in how social status and class were signified through specific forms of self-presentation, such as clothing or hairstyle (Chŏn 1987; Sin 2002; Sŏ 2016). Fashion studies in Western contexts have established that the primary contemporary motivations to engage with fashion lie in acquiring self-confidence (Steele 1985, 46, 142) and as a “technique of acculturation” (Craik 1994, 10). Yet, the focus of existing research in Korea has virtually overlooked men’s embodied experiences of aesthetic labor. Instead, the focus has been on external conditions motivating Korean men to engage with certain technologies of the body, such as the logics underlying neoliberal capitalism and self as an object of investment, particularly for upward mobility. Such work addresses men primarily as subjects responding to external conditions, but who are simultaneously unable to find agentic ways to resist these structural forces. For example, existing survey studies addressing men’s decisions to purchase grooming, cosmetics, or beauty services find that maintaining an attractive appearance is considered “necessary,” and as such, a rational economic investment choice (e.g., Han, Brewis, and Sturzstreetharan 2018; Lee 2014; Kim, Han, Kim, and Paramita 2013; Yu and Im 2015). These studies link the motivation to invest in one’s appearance squarely with perceived economic benefits, and they reflect the neoliberal ethos of the individual’s assumed responsibility to ensure their own success as economic actors (Sŏ 2008).

Outside the notion that frames aesthetic labor as a form of investment in self, scholarly work on what constitutes ideal or “hegemonic” masculinity in Korea has pointed to the enduring role of Confucian (patriarchal) values in perpetuating “hard” ideal masculinity. While focusing on women’s aesthetic practices, Kim (2003) and Park (2007) have suggested that a Confucian-influenced culture of conformity is driving many women choices to undergo cosmetic surgery in Korea. Though this work largely overlooks men’s aesthetic practices in relation to Confucianism, Jung (2011) has pointed to the role of Confucian (patriarchal) values and the “traditional” Chosŏn dynasty scholar (sŏnbi) masculinity, which still wields influence in defining “hard” hegemonic masculinity in Korea. Furthermore, Jung also points to Japan’s bishōnen (beautiful boy) imaginary as key inspiration in the development of “soft” masculine aesthetics in Korean popular culture from late 1990s onwards. In other studies, Western cultural markers are seen to inform Korean consumer desire to “Westernize” bodies to resemble what some scholars see as Hollywood-inspired looks of K-pop celebrities (Jung and Lee 2009; Schwekendiek, Yeo, and Ulijaszek 2013). I consider such simplistic claims of Koreans’ beauty practices being driven primarily by racial or cultural envy reductionist. Indeed, framing men’s aesthetic practices only within broad lenses of Western cultural influence or Confucian conformity rooted in traditional values can also obscure the embeddedness of hetero-patriarchal values within Korean society.

In this article, I document how in contemporary Korean society, masculinity as a form of kinetic knowledge is learnt through ritualized practices of masculinity, and during the military service in particular. The influence of the military and how the notoriously demanding compulsory national service engenders militarized masculinity in Korean men is well documented (e.g., Han 1998; Moon 2005; Park 2016; Tikhonov 2007). Military service in Korea continues to serve “as a critical element of masculinity and something that is the national, civil, and sacred duty of all Korean males” (Han, Lee, and Park 2017, 64). Yet, this body of work has been less concerned with whether and how the aesthetic practices learnt in the military continue to shape men’s everyday lives, particularly in the workplace.

I have argued elsewhere that visual cultures have made Korean men’s bodies objects of the critical gaze, and that in popular culture in particular, there has been an increasing tendency to attach moral discourses to technologies of the body. This includes the neoliberal logic that posits individual bodies as object of continuous investment (Elfving-Hwang 2017). According to this logic, the body that is not beautiful is not only a failed body to oneself—as demonstrated in similar studies in Europe, the United States, and Australia (Davis 2003; Jones 2008; Pitts-Taylor 2007)—but also one that has caused offence to others and, therefore, a socially failed body, too. It is this latter aspect of social phenomenology that the existing literature on Korean men’s grooming practices and appearances has largely overlooked in its preoccupation with identifying structural drivers.

In this article, I address this gap in the existing literature, and shift the focus to men’s grooming and the presentation of self in corporate contexts as embodied social practice in everyday life. As I show, Korean men’s aesthetic labor emerges as a form of embodied knowledge that cannot be encapsulated within the frame of neoliberal body-as-an-investment model alone. This knowledge is informed by both culturally broader and locally specific somatic ethics of appearance for men that maintain social harmony in the workplace, and that is performed primarily for the homosocial gaze of other men.

Everyday Aesthetic Labour as a Field

The concept of hegemonic masculinity and its link to normative ways of performing masculine dominance particularly in workplace contexts has been well established in “the West” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Scholars such as Gregory (2016), Masi de Casanova (2015), and Atkinson (2014) have furthered this work on men, bodies, and appearance in the workplace as sites of constructing locally specific masculinities that inform power relations with other men as well as women. The social significance of men’s appearances and how power is enacted in workplace contexts is therefore more than an issue of consumer choice or individual vanity, and is part of “practices of masculinity […] attached to construction of work” (Gregory 2016, 80). While this research is also located in this intersection of the sociology of work and masculinity studies, the focus here is less on how gender is performed as a sign of sexual difference (i.e., Butler 2006, 189). Instead, I examine how men’s everyday aesthetic labor constitutes a field (Bourdieu 1977) within which men engage with embodied notions of competency, masculinity, and success. Here Bourdieu’s ideas of the field and habitus are particularly useful for analyzing embodied social practices in the workplace where men tend to have similar habitus. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus defines the internalization of social structures (i.e., Jarvie and Maguire 1994, 190), and the conditions that produce a habitus for specific forms of disciplinary practices of the body (Bourdieu 1977).

These notions are of course connected to broader social systems of power and privilege embedded in hetero-patriarchal values that are cultivated and reproduced through institutions such as the compulsory national service in Korea. Indeed, Mills (1951) and Whyte and Nocera (2013) have similarly drawn the parallels between American military and corporate management cultures in creating norms of behavior and dress in the workplace. Moreover, Casanova (2015) found in her interviews with American men that business attire was likened to a uniform “to denote their professional dress and to demonstrate (strategic) commitment to conformity in their workplace self-presentation” (79). However, conformity does not necessarily signify a lack of agency, and I illustrate here how corporate workplaces, as a field, affect a series of sometimes conflicting embodied notions of masculinity and the existence of multiple and localized beauty cultures among Korean men.

Sample and Methodology

The findings of this research drew on in-depth interviews conducted in September and December 2017 with 13 men in living in the wider Seoul metropolitan area, aged 36–56 years. The participants were recruited through snowball sampling with the assistance of a local Korean-speaking research assistant to identify this “hard to get at” group of men who would represent typical examples of a wider group of urban middle-aged men (Minichiello, Aroni, and Hays 2008, 172–73). The reluctance to talk to people from an out-group is a common feature in social interactions of Korean society and relates to the desire to ensure there is no loss of “face” (chaemyŏn) through committing an unintended cultural or social faux pas with those outside the group (Yang 2002). This may also help to explain, at least in part, why most sociological studies in Korea tend to lean toward large-scale quantitative methodologies that allow participants to fill in forms anonymously without the fear of being placed in an awkward social situation by revealing potentially embarrassing information about personal likes or dislikes.

Because there is very little existing research on the social and symbolic meanings attached to body work and grooming in everyday contexts from the point of view of middle-aged Korean men, I adopted a qualitative in-depth interview method and a grounded theoretical approach to understand how everyday aesthetic labor or body work is experienced as constrained by the field in which they operate (the workplace) as well as how the participants creatively respond to such constraints (Wacquant 1992, 19). While the relatively small number of participants in this research means that the findings cannot be generalized, considering that more than half of the Korean population of men lives in the greater metropolitan area of Seoul, this study makes an important contribution to the existing studies on the sociology of the body in Korea.

I conducted 13 one-on-one semi-structured interviews and one group interview with three participants (in Korean) until a point of saturation was reached where new interviews no longer yielded data from which new thematic categories could be developed (Minichiello et. al. 2008). I asked participants to describe their everyday grooming practices, and to explain what kinds of men’s aesthetics they found appealing or important at work and elsewhere. I also encouraged them talk about technologies of the body (for example cosmetic surgery, hair transplants, dieting, and fitness regimes) they had engaged with or had observed among other men. The participants were asked to reflect on why they (or other men around them) engaged in different forms of aesthetic labor; where they learned about these ways of presenting themselves; what changes they had observed in men’s beauty cultures; what this work meant to the participants in different social contexts; and whether the participants could describe a specific “ideal masculinity” shared by most Korean men. Most interviews lasted from 45 to 60 minutes, with the exception of the small group interview that lasted for 80 minutes. The interviews took place at locations of the participants’ choosing, including coffee shops, religious premises, or at a rented study-room, and the participants received a small token gift for their participation. The original plan was to conduct all of the interviews as one-on-one; however, three of the participants, who were known to each other, expressed a preference to be interviewed together. Subsequently, I interviewed one of the participants who took part in the group session separately again, as his views in the first interview had been somewhat overshadowed by the two more outgoing participants.

Although the initial intention was only to interview men in a corporate setting to gauge in particular how body work and grooming relate to considerations of competitive workplace cultures, it became clear that this focus had to shift simply because the demographics in the workplace had undergone such a significant change in the past 15 years. Since the labor force reforms instigated by the Kim Dae-jung’s government following the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 had effectively ended the practice of life-time employment (Shin 2013), the work 0ife trajectories of Korean men have changed. As one of the participants in this study explained, most men who enter the labor force with a view of finding a white-collar job do so fully expecting to leave the company by their late 30s in order to set up alternative self-employment opportunities with their severance pay-out. Accordingly, almost all of the participants of this study had previously worked in a corporate setting but were now either self-employed or had changed careers from white-collar to manual employment, for example, and one had recently been made redundant and was in the process of retraining as a real estate agent (see Table 1).

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Table 1.

Participant Demographic Data (n = 13).

Participant	Year of Birth	Place of Residence	Marital Status	Military Service	Current Place of Employment	Level of Education	Lived Overseas for More than Six Months?
1	1971	Seoul	Married	Yes	Religious minister	MA	Yes (Australia)
2	1966	Seoul	Married	Yes	Afterschool educational school owner	BA	No
3	1970	Greater Seoul Metropolitan	Married	Yes	SME blue collar	BA	No
4	1965	Seoul	Married	Yes	Design SME manager	BA	No
5	1963	Seoul	Married	Yes	Unemployed	BA	No
6	1973	Seoul	Married	Yes	Self-employed	MA	No
7	1973	Seoul	Married	Yes	Self-employed (education)	MA	No
8	1973	Seoul	Not married	Yes	Interior designer	BA	No
9	1976	Seoul	Married	Civil service	Car company mechanic	BA	No
10	1973	Seoul	Not married	Yes	Real estate agent	BA	No
11	1972	Greater Seoul Metropolitan	Single	Yes	IT manager	BA	No
12	1981	Seoul	Single	Yes	IT company	BA	Yes (Vietnam)
13	1982	Seoul	Married	Civil service	Marketing company	BA	No

My own position as a non-Korean, but fluent-Korean-speaking woman researcher also added a nuance to the interviews in a way that merits mentioning, as this may have influenced how the participants talked about these issues with me. In particular, many of the participants were keen to emphasize the fact that grooming and anxiety about appearance was a “common-sensical practice” for men and was related to work rather than what were seen as “feminine concerns” such as vanity, and this may have been partly influenced by my subject position and the participants’ perceived fear of appearing as un-masculine. Moreover, as only two of the participants who were unmarried mentioned that their interest in grooming and body work was also motivated by their desire to impress women, participants may have not comfortable discussing motivations like this, particularly among those married.

All the interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and manually coded to identify frequent concepts and themes (Saldana 2015). During the first coding, I used simple descriptive coding to capture primary codes and the themes that the participants considered significant enough to mention (Saldana 2015, 5). The coding included both keywords and concepts, which I then organized into themes and cross-referenced with fieldnotes and observations taken after each interview. The emerging themes included role of appearances in enhancing one’s competitive edge in the workplace; the importance of first impressions and positive countenance (insang); social meanings attached to desired outcomes of aesthetic labor; importance of social recognition and mastering “correct” appearances for different contexts; the influence of military cultures; importance of fitness, body weight, height, good skin, hair, and neat appearance to project competence and vitality; and gendered rules of aesthetic labor. The project was approved by the University of Western Australia’s Human Research Ethics Committee.

The Somatic Ethics of Appearance in the Workplace

What emerged early on in the interviews was that all of the participants were highly conscious of the need to conform to what they recognized as a shared set of “somatic ethics” in their local workplace. I have used the term “somatic ethics” in this context because of the way participants described self-presentation as a form of demonstrating an ethical disposition toward others. All participants emphasize this moral aspect of body work, arguing that this work was not principally about achieving an ideal appearance, but an appearance that displays respect toward others. Despite claiming not to be particularly interested in grooming, all of the participants did in fact speak at length about the importance of maintaining a neat (kkalkŭmhada) appearance when in public. One of the most prominent themes was the linking of body work and well-groomed appearance with competence. One of the participants termed this a “halo-effect”:

Even though I know that appearances are not really related to one’s ability or skill, when you’re competing against others in a company, people do these days think that it gives you a competitive edge. If a man is tall and good looking, for some reason they seem more competent. It’s like a halo effect. If there are similar workers in their 40 s or 50 s, the ones who appear younger than their years and look after themselves are so much more pleasant to look at. Of course ability is important too, but it is almost as if you were given extra points for appearance. (Informant 5, 55 years old)

When asked to identify cultural influences that informed ideas of ideal and competent masculinity in middle-age, only two made any reference to traditional Confucian mores. This was surprising as some previous studies have referenced ideal and desirable Korean masculinities to the Chinese wen (“learned” or “scholarly”) masculinity, and its focus on learning and refinement (Jung 2011). It is clear then that the behavioral or aesthetic choices of an average working man in contemporary Korea and those of Chinese wen masculinity of the past are now far removed from people’s actual lived realities. However, all of the participants noted that the compulsory national service significantly shaped how they present themselves at work:

You need to present a neat appearance to your superiors, and that way you get to keep your job, or get promoted…. [Company culture] is really just a military culture, and therefore you should make an effort to present a neat appearance to your superiors. (Informant 2, 52 years old)

Informant 2 owns an afterschool education provider (hagwŏn), but previously worked in a corporation. He noted that the aesthetic regime of each company was effectively decided by executives in a manner similar to military hierarchies in their demands for social conformity and belonging expressed through clothing and a well-groomed body: “You have to present a neat appearance to your superiors, and in that way you get to keep your job, or have a chance to get promoted.” The will to master the somatic ethics of body work, even when acquired in military and under coercive conditions, was in all cases so successful that it had become part of the participants’ commonsensical everyday social practice. While displaying ostentatious clothing, body piercings or hairstyle was not necessarily something that any of the participants personally disproved of, all agreed that highlighting individualizing fashions like this was potentially risky at work. Informant 6 remarked that Korean women are more free to experiment with their appearance at work than men, whose aesthetic choices were restricted by the fear of being offending to others: “Even if I wanted to [do something out of the ordinary with my body], I’ll just be wondering about what others might think.”

Although participants claimed the drive to master corporate aesthetic norms and culture was acquired in the military, their desire to conform was also driven by considerations of social harmony. While competencies were seen as the most important factor in ensuring long-term employability, long-term career success was also seen as determined by their ability to not stand out, explaining that aesthetic uniformity smooths social relationships at work. Unlike previous studies of Korean men’s grooming practices, however, this understanding was not always linked to a desire for upward social mobility or an assumption that good-looking people automatically had better career prospects. Rather, participants emphasized that the function of grooming was to present a pleasant, but not disruptive, appearance; in other words, an appearance that simply enhances “good feeling” (hogam) among co-workers. Informant 3, a 51-year-old blue collar worker in an SME, explained this aesthetic labor: “You want the kind of appearance that puts people at ease when they look at you, that’s the kind of appearance you want. Looking handsome is not important, but it’s good to have a look that is easy on the eye.” Similarly, Informant 4, a 57-year-old manager of a design company, emphasized this need to create a friendly impression as a tool to decrease social distance:

If you see someone and their first impressions make you feel uncomfortable to look at, or if they look rough or sharp, then whatever you do you just will uneasy speaking with them. But if the first impressions are good, then, how shall I put this, you don’t feel burdened by the other person (pudam ŏpta), which makes it easier to associate with them. If I look pleasant and have a nice look then the other person is more likely to want to do business with me. If I look rough, the other person might not trust me with their business. (Informant 4)

While there was a recognition that some other men (such as celebrities) are required to acquire exceptional looks as part of their job, the normative forms aesthetic labor of middle-aged men was also clearly linked not only to embodied ideas of social harmony but also to the material value and competitiveness that a “right kind” of look was seen to achieve. Informant 3, a 53-year-old blue collar worker, referred to this as the “commercial value” (sang’pumsŏng) of men in the workplace:

Men in white collar jobs in large companies in sales positions with high salaries, men of my generation, are very concerned with their appearances. They engage in a lot of sports, and look after their bodies to make sure their bellies don’t start bulging. White-collar workers are very concerned about their appearances, I think. [pauses to think] Blue collar workers like me are less concerned though. But for the white-collar workers, their faces are their weapon too (ŏlguldo mugiya) to survive in the cutthroat environment.

While in other work contexts fitness has been identified as a method of control or coping with the precariousness of contemporary workplace (Casanova 2015; Connell and Wood 2005; Mears and Connell 2015; Munsch and Gruys 2018), these participants shared that this relationship with fitness was perceived as the domain of already-successful men. Most of the body work participants in this study discussed was described negatively, an anxiety-ridden task required of contemporary labor markets in Korea. As individual men see themselves as cogs in the national economic machinery, vulnerable to constant restructuring, they understand the responsibility for presenting a tidy appearance to project energy and competence as theirs alone. As Informant 9 noted, this appearance is perceived as a “marker of a detailed and hardworking person.” For most, however, a fit and muscular body was unrealistic, and operated simply as a reminder of their lack of resources to improve their social standing.

The Homosocial Gaze and Masculine Beauty Work

All of the participants engaged in some form of grooming practice and, notably, all followed a personal grooming regime that included the use of a skin toner and a moisturizer. They framed this work, however, as part of their basic hygiene practice rather than a grooming practice. When asked who they undertook this body work for, all of the participants downplayed that the work was driven by vanity or desire to impress women. As opposed to women’s beauty work, often assumed to be performed for men, these men claimed men’s body work was almost invariably imagined as for homosocial audiences of men at work (with the exception of one of the participants who was single seeking a partner).

The majority (n=9) of men expressed anxiety about their hair and body weight, comparing their bodies unfavorably against those of younger men. Two of the participants had received treatment for hair loss, one was actively using black scalp powder (hŭgjae) to cover bald patches, and one had his hair permed to create a friendlier and more approachable appearance. Some expressed ambivalence over shifting ideas about what constitutes desirable Korean masculinity that appeared increasingly “soft” and what they considered “effeminate” (yŏsŏngdaun). Notably, none described this as “metrosexual” as in Korea, the concept is generally understood as a Western construct and potentially connected to what Bridges (2014) describes as “gay aesthetics.” Conversely, the Korean kkonminam (“beautifully handsome man”) aesthetic is less linked to gay aesthetics and more to specific jobs (such as being a celebrity or working in the public eye) or developmentally as a phase that young men grow out of.

The participants identified the use of men’s makeup, eyebrow shaping, and cosmetic surgery to “soften” the shape of one’s jaw line as not in line with what they saw as “ideal masculinity” for middle-aged Korean men. Informant 1 (47 years old) spoke at length about how for middle-aged men, grooming is linked to cultivating a masculine (namsŏngsŭrŏun) appearance learned in national service, focusing on uniformity (hoek’ilhwa), group mentality (tanch’ae munhwa), and linking difference to weakness and femininity: “[In the army] if someone looked a bit different, or wore something strange, the others would immediately say that they looked like a woman.” This anchoring of masculinity to a hetero-patriarchal logic of self-investment and social duty allows men to make investments in the body without becoming all body, and thus guards against anxieties about appearing effeminate.

Moreover, because of the effort to look average yet smartly dressed, participants felt that as middle-aged men, masculine beauty ideals promoted by celebrities were by and large irrelevant to them. When asked about which particular celebrities the participants felt would describe a “style icon”, some could not of think anyone in particular, while others noted a preference for “manly” and muscular middle-aged celebrities such as Jang Dong-gun, Hyun Bin, and Jung Woo-sung. They simultaneously confessed, however, that wider fashions were less relevant to their everyday aesthetic choices because each company was seen to have its own preferred way of dressing and presenting—whether it be more expensive suits for large global corporations or fashionably “dressing down” for IT companies. It was seen as the duty of those working in such companies or professions to adapt to that style.

This investment in an embodied habitus that would afford them with the most social and symbolic capital in their specific field (as opposed to more general ideas of “ideal” masculinity in media contexts) was seen as being of paramount importance. Informant 5, a 55-year-old former white-collar worker currently “between jobs,” described this as follows: “Companies are the same. In company ‘A’ there is also ‘A’ kind of culture. You have to fit into it. Company ‘B’ has ‘B’ kind of culture into which you have to fit.” There was therefore no agreed upon idea of an “ideal” Korean masculinity, or even an idea of global corporate masculinity to which participants could point.

Additionally, most men considered their workplaces as homosocial even when they included significant numbers of women, mostly because their managers tended to be men. The conversation about local appearance cultures in companies is illustrated in the following exchange between three participants in this study:

Informant 6: I reckon you need to look good in a way that fits your age, our culture is like that. Wearing clothes appropriate to your age is good. That’s how social cultural norms work, isn’t it? Tacitly…[pauses] For example, depending on your job, you need to wear appropriate clothing for that role, there’s no way of getting away from that. It’s a bit much, isn’t it?

Interviewee 7: [Interjects] My doctor friend really made himself look pretty, which made his wife suspicious that he was having an affair. It was quite hard [for him] after that….

Interviewee 8: If we meet up with men of our age, in our 40s, in an open forum and someone turns up having dyed their hair red, everyone will just laugh at them. Even if they look really good, everyone will just stare. ‘Who does he think he is?’ that sort of thing. They’ll look at you differently. […] even if I want to [have piercings or whatever] I can’t. I’m concerned about how others see me.

Finally, the influence of the social field was clearly illustrated in how the participants described situations where they were required to interact with new people, outside their usual social context where they were known to others. Many described a strong awareness of how different kinds of aesthetic logic and practice were applied to the presentation of self in out-group contexts (for example when eating out in a restaurant), and particularly where maintaining ongoing harmonious relationships were low on the list of their priorities. Instead, symbolic signifiers of wealth signaled social distance between self and the customer service provider, and were seen as desirable in order to ensure desired levels of service. Informant 8 (45 years old) describes how the worst thing that can happen to a man is to be ignored:

People who drive a Benz will have people looking at them going “WOW that person is wealthy!” People are keen to give an impression like that. […] there are many people who are not that rich and struggle financially, but still drive a really nice car for that reason. [Interviewer: Why do you think people are so keen to make sure that others think they are wealthy?] It’s the only way not to be ignored or snubbed. If you go somewhere and wear nice clothes instead of old shabby ones, there’s no doubt that you get much better service.

Conclusion

While the Korean context bears some similarities to how corporate masculinities are embodied in the West, there are some noteworthy distinctions. The participants’ narratives of self-improvement to stay competitive in the precarious workplace reflect research in the United States and Australia (Casanova 2015; Connell and Wood 2005; Gregory 2016). The purpose of this aesthetic labor for Korean men, however, is primarily focused on fitting in rather than standing out. In these men’s narratives, men embrace corporate aesthetic uniformity as a way of embodying membership. Moreover, and echoing Mills’ (1951) and Whyte and Nocera’s (2013) observations on the influence of military cultures on American corporate cultures, the men in this study felt the military helped them to acquire certain dispositions considered vital to adapting to company-specific aesthetic cultures. However, the drivers that guide men’s choices to conform to an aesthetic regime are less connected with hierarchical aesthetic regimes of “hard masculinity” learned in the military, and are more about mastering the aesthetic regime in pursuing in-group belonging and social harmony (Gimlin 2007; Shilling 2013). In fact, social harmony was the most stressed goal of this aesthetic labor.

Moreover, while all participants expressed a desire for upward social mobility, aesthetic labor in this group was seen as a key factor not in obtaining better jobs, but rather in securing current jobs. The participants’ reflections also illustrate how men’s bodies as neoliberal objects in the contemporary Korean workplace are not interpellated by societal or cultural influences in identical ways. For white-collar workers, the role of aesthetic labor was clearly seen as being more significant than for those in blue-collar work, suggesting a degree of social stratification of body work. This suggests, then, that Korean beauty cultures continue to be highly class- and context-specific rather than relatively uniform as often (mis)understood in existing literature.

Finally, as men’s body work in the workplace was clearly guided by consideration of other men’s feelings, more work ought to examine the role of emotion work connected to mastering the correct way of projecting collegiality and competence as part of an expected form of everyday aesthetic labor in Korean workplaces. Future research focusing on these culturally and class-specific ways of performing aesthetic labor would help to build a more nuanced (and less Eurocentric) understanding of how social and economic changes may have altered—or reinforced—social reproduction of embodied subjects in Korea.