If I showed up transformed like Cinderella, I thought everyone's judgmental stares would change. But nothing changed. In fact, everything was terrible.
Partway through this second volume of Lee Yeon's The Makeup Remover, protagonist Yeseul convinces Cheon Yuseong to do makeup for a new friend before her high school reunion. The friend, Eunseul, wants to make a good impression and prove that all the cruel comments she was saddled with as a teenager were wrong. And to a point, she does that – people do comment on her glow-up. But it's not enough – now they target her weight, her demeanor, everything else about her other than her face. Makeup for Eunseul isn't a panacea; it's just a band-aid that allows everything else to come into focus. It doesn't matter that a renowned makeup artist painted her face. All people see are the ways she still doesn't fit society's narrow definition of female beauty.
Although it happens to Eunseul and not Yeseul, it's a moment that feels like the point of the book. After all, the reality show Yeseul is participating in is called Face-Off Cinderella, and its goal is selling a specific brand of makeup by showing how it can transform contestants' faces into something “better.” But when Eunseul tried out her own Cinderella transformation, she may as well have been covered in ashes, because, as she tries to tell Yeseul, the beauty industry is all about selling the same impossible standard in a variety of different frames. Create your own style, but be sure you still use the same colors and have the same body type as everyone else. That, they say, is the only way to be truly pretty.
If this sounds a bit heavy-handed, that's because describing the moment and reading it on the page are two fairly different experiences. There's a cattiness to most interactions between women in this volume that, on paper, sounds like your average mean girl shenanigans but in practice is a distillation of how society can pit women against each other. What's interesting about this volume is that, for the most part, Yeseul is on the outside of these interactions. In large part, that's because she hides inside a bunny mascot for most of her time at the TV studio in a bid to maintain her privacy (and because her social battery doesn't hold a charge very long), but it's also because most of the “pretty girls” don't see her as a threat. They're not nice to her when she's in her Toseul costume, but when she interacts with Ju Heewon at school, it's clear that Heewon doesn't see her as a threat – and perhaps even feels drawn to her because she so clearly doesn't care about her everyday look.
That's interesting when you compare how men treat Yeseul when she presents as her normal self. Another guy sees her with her friend Seungwoo and immediately begins denigrating her appearance – “What kind of girl gets a haircut like that? I wasn't even sure she was a girl at first,” he snipes. “[Girls should get] flowy, neat, [and] cute [cuts],” Seungwoo tells him that he shouldn't make comments like that, but the other man doesn't see the problem – he feels that Yeseul, and presumably other women, are available for his commentary simply by appearing in public. It's vile, but also not an uncommon experience for those who present as female – or as insufficiently female by someone's standards. Its pernicious influence is something we can see in Lisa, Heewon's self-proclaimed rival in the makeup contest and on social media. Because Heewon has more social media followers, Lisa tries to make herself look as much like Heewon as possible, copying everything from her hair to her makeup. Although she never says it, the idea is that she feels the only way for her to get ahead is to be a better Heewon than Heewon, with imagery accompanying her dialogue being a striking picture of women in doll boxes. If you're not Barbie-perfect, you've lost.
Lee Yeon fortunately balances out these heavier themes with moments of comedy (she says she can't help herself in her afterword), as well as some genuinely interesting photography tidbits – Yeseul (who, remember, is a photography student) uses principles of panchromatic and orthochromatic makeup. She also fangirls at a famous photographer she gets to work with in a moment that I daresay plenty of us can relate to.
The Makeup Remover continues to be essentially a deconstruction of beauty culture and a story about finding what makes you feel worthwhile. It might be wearing no makeup and comfy clothes. It might be being Instagram-glamourous at all times. But at the end of the day, it's personal, and that's a lesson all the characters are working towards learning.