If I Had Your Face

Every day I wake up, I thank God I was not born in South Korea. Joking of course, I am not religious. But I'm still thankful not to be a Korean. This book only affirms my views. The entire time I was reading this, I was filled with unease, sadness and anger. To live in the 21st century, in a country so incredibly obsessed with your status, your looks, your family, where you went to school, university and so on and for all of that to amount to zero because as a woman you are still nothing but trash. Just trash. What a shithole. It always boggles the mind - in a country where men cheat on their wives and girlfriends so much, where clearly being a degenerate unfaithful male is seen as somewhat of a standard and an expectation if you are rich, basically in a country where men are more openly animals, you still have to be careful not to offend their fragile little minds by shielding them from saying the word menstruation and instead having to say feminine products. They can't keep their dick in their pants for 10 minutes but they still feel shame from being reminded women have periods. It was such a short remark but points out this ridiculousness of it all, it made me so angry.

This book is about 5 women. Ara, Kyuri, Wonna, Miho and Sujin. All of them except for the last one get to have chapters told from their POV. They're a group of roomates, friends, acquintances, neighbours. The book heavily focuses on Koreas obsession with status, plastic surgery, superficiality, getting married and so on you get the gist. It's all told to you from their perspective, and you get to see how all of these circumstances influence the girls. The book was a quick read, once I actually started reading it for real I couldn't put it down. I cried a few times near the end because I know these types of situations are real. And Wonna's situation made me particularly sad although it was bitter sweet in the end. This book wasn't my first clash with korean culture, their society and the way people suffer in it. It made the book heavier to read. If you're interested in these kinds of things - beauty standards, high expectations, women's place in a highly misogynistic society etc. this book will be great. Besides that, it's a book about five women being friends despite all their differences, despite the internalized misogyny deeply wooven into their very being, they still care for each other and help each other climb up as much as they can. It's such a brutal world, honestly I feel like I'd crumble under the pressure.