Congrats on being published Kitty @fatcat007! :D

@fatcat007 congrats 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

this show....my feelings for it are complex.

i think your take on soo-ah is 100% correct which is both a failing of the writing and a good thing. soo-ah made sense and the minute you see her you know what type of character she will be. i found her irritating but i wasn't upset that she was this way, because it made sense. like obviously she was poor and insanely insecure.

she needed mental help (tbh they all did my god) and hopefully she got it. i think chopping off all her hair is a huge symbol as well.

my issue with the flipside of the ugly duckling story is how prettiness is portrayed. already sk has very strict and absurd beauty standards (that manifest in different ways around the world but yes it is way harsher in terms of like social capital and with bodies. like the 42kg rule and being very open about disordered eating. it is a mess) and it's sooo built in to the structure that it will permeate through everything.

there are very few dramas that do this adeptly tbh if at all. i don't know if i can think of many at the top of my head...soo-ah was suffering greatly but her main motivation only made a modicum of sense. yea being pretty or whatever the culture deems as so is difficult in a world rife with misogyny and other things that affect women but she would have absolutely no idea how the MC felt or the "fat" (??! idek) character.

she was a weakling, truth be told. i always think writers fail to put the nuance of privilege in looks, whether you benefit or you dont, and realize that the biggest impact is still on those outside of the standard. it's a very complex discussion to be had because on one hand "cry me a river, soo-ah" but on the other yes there are caveats. i liken it to thin privilege or even to some extent i guess colorism.

because your looks, your weight, your skin color can literally hinder you from so much. opportunities because you struggle internally and also structural failures. literally if someone doesn't like your face they can treat you like garbage and say, not want to help you with an assignment or something.

the show was trying hard to do something and i think the main male character was the most absurd and useless. also like you would think soo-ah would go through something more but she didn't until she had a literal breakdown. which is fine but really she was useless. and using men as tools against these girls fascinated me as if that was the biggest issue but it put a huge emphasis on beauty and men wrt women and how they feel about themselves.

i still don't know how i feel about this show. it tried to do something and i guess if surface scratching is what propels better told, better written (and acted), and deeper stories then so be it. i can see teens gaining solace from it but i can also see the many pitfalls...

Soo Ah, just like Mirae and Kyungsuk’s mom, was a victim of society that heavily judges on physical appearance. All three ladies had to do what they needed to do to survive this unforgiving society: Mirae - did plastic surgery on her face, Kyungsuk’s mom - leave her children to recuperate, Soo Ah - drown herself in vanity. Whether it was the right thing to do or not, it was their only way to cope up with the harsh reality they were living in.

She had my sympathy until she started attacking Mirae for her personal gain. She knew what it felt like to be bullied, but she did the very same thing to people she thinks are beneath her and that included Mirae. And for that, I stopped trying to understand from her POV and justifying her.

Thanks for the nice write up! My ID is Gangnam Beauty remains one of my favourites.

Well, I remember I was pretty hard on criticizing the show. I didn't watch it completely but I fast forwarded whatever I was not interested, that was actually many of the time the young ones were gossiping about someone, because I felt it was stupid.
I couldn't believe people, even young people would be so silly as to be talking about the looks all the time...

But hey, Soo ah was definitive an interesting antiheroine and I liked particularly that she was not even rich, although she acted like she were...

You see, typically you have the baddy to be rich and powerful, so that she/he can really harm others; from time to time they are rich, powerful and beautiful physically, so that he/she feels reasons to believe he/she is better than anyone. If you have one pretending to have money but actually being poor, then that one ends up being not so bad, for he/she has inferiority complex and you get to sympathize with her/him.

But not this case.
Soo ah was poor, ashamed of grandparents and yet she was pretending to live in a better neighborhood and said grandmother was dead. I liked that her character shows poor people can also be mean and hurt their family and hurt themselves and be the anti heroe.

She had lots to lose if purple found the truth about her, but even having weaknesses, she still did what she did drawing attention to herself instead of keeping a low profile.
She was definitively a very complex character, like a real person and I enjoyed that.

Whenever I analyze her now, I find her more fascinating than mi rae 😂😂😂😂😂

Thank you for this thoughtful essay, @fatcat007.
I too hope that this character found some peace in the post production Gangnam Beauty world...
Manipulation is so insidious. I somehow doubt that she will ever be truly cured. So sad.

@fatcat007, that Beanie is me, isn't it? 😂

This is very interesting! thanks for the write up!
I remember on my first watch I didn't like the show that much. I didn't associate with it much and like some other people, I fast forwarded a lot of it. I recently watched it again, this time properly and liked it a lot better.

For me it was still hard to associate with MiRae's character. I understood her nervousness though.

I guess I thought a lot of the things SooA and some of the others did were super petty which is probably why I fast forwarded it the first time.
I took time to understand more of the complexities the second time.
I remember thinking the first time, 'why can't they be more mature' and then realizing they are all pretty much fresh out of high school and I am 9 years past that now. So of course there will be that divide in thinking (but in no way does it mean the bad things can be excused).
Sorry if this sounds odd. For whatever reason I have usually associated with most other college based (or even school based) shows pretty well! Just couldn't get into this one in the beginning.

But coming back to main villain SooA, great acting! (also loved the cats she fed haha)
She arc was interesting. Going from queen bee to squashed bee to resurrected bee was also interesting to watch.

I thought this was one of the more interesting dramas I've watched - and found it ironic, because of all the plastic surgery that the SK actors and Kpop idols have obviously had, causing many of them to look like cookie-cutter images of each other.

I never liked Soo-ah, because the writer/PD waited too long to show any redeeming qualities for her character. Feeding stray cats didn't do it for me - in fact, given how she was portrayed, and being a huge cat lover, I remember being afraid she was going to end up poisoning the kitties! She was apparently truly someone who liked cats, which was a relief, but I never liked her character, even when she showed up at the end with the short haircut, apparently to symbolize cutting off the past. I think she'll always be a mean girl.

I found the ML, Cha Eun-woo almost unbelievably gorgeous, and he was certainly well cast for the role. His popularity was instant, because he was always assessed by his beautiful appearance. Being a cold, aloof, unsociable asshat not only didn't matter, but due to his looks, others made assumptions about his personality and motivations (like how all the boys in his middle school walked in the rain w/out an umbrella, because they attributed his doing so to be an intentional, cool act, when the reality was he had just forgotten his umbrella). It made sense that he didn't like "pretty girls," and was able to value Kang Mi-rae for herself, rather than for her looks.

The FL actress really looks as if she's had extensive plastic surgery (and she probably has). She (and the directors) did a good job showing her character's continued awkwardness and insecurity, despite being pretty, as if she still saw herself as being ugly, like people with eating disorders see themselves as fat even though they are cadaverously thin. I liked it that they never showed how she looked before.

I loved this drama too, and I honestly didn't understand why some people really hated it. I think it handled the subject matter thoughtfully and made a number of worthwhile points/observations about beauty and what intense self-hatred can do to a person.

I personally never really hated Soo Ah. Okay, there was maybe a week where I really just wanted her to disappear, but the rest of the time I just felt sorry for her. She had no idea how to have meaningful relationships with other people and because of it, she ended up being an extremely destructive person, to herself and to others.

What I really love about this show is that it didn't attempt to create a sugary sweet 'just love yourself' message, because what does that mean really? Instead, it focused on what the ramifications of living a life of such intense hatred will have on you and those around you. Yes, Soo Ah was technically the villain of the drama, and she was a really good villain, but she was never actually portrayed as the 'bad guy.' She was just human. And even though Mi-rae is technically the heroine of the drama and was such a sweet and thoughtful person who would never intentionally hurt someone, she was still pretty judgmental in her own head. Rating people's looks, constantly aware of the hierarchy of attractiveness, she wasn't always a nice person. She just kept the not so nice parts of herself to herself.

I do feel that the drama made some missteps at the end and kind of lost sight of some of it's messages in pursuit of the 'perfect romantic ending,' but I loved so much of what this drama was trying to say and how eloquently it went about saying it.

Thanks @fatcat007 for this write up! Brings back so many memories of us squeeing on the fan wall and hating Soo-Ah's character. She was the character we loved to hate. I don't think I have been this invested by a negative character.
It was a very well written character and the actor did a terrific job.
Unfortunately, I have met such people during my uni days. Who are so nice to your face but absolutely don't care for your welfare (or might even want to see your downfall). It sounds silly but its that age where you are fresh out of school and are put in a mixed demographic called 'college'. This is one of my all time favorite dramas and happy to see someone write about it ; )

I've never watched the drama, mostly because of the hot and cold reactions I was being cautious.
But you've written a lovely article, and now it seems like if I am to watch this it'd be because of the anti-heroine not the heroine lol.
Good job, @fatcat !😘 Congrats on being published!🎊✨🎉

Soo-ah was a memorable character in a great show.

your take on Soo-ah is on point...i skipped most of this show.