video (Korean Fetish)

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Fetishism in Korea: Wearing Braces

These days, when you search online communities, it is easy to find those people who are interested in wearing braces and having straight teeth. Even I have a sister who is wearing braces now for desire of having straight teeth, and there are lots of other friends who are now starting to wear braces.
It has not been long, since Koreans started to wear braces for reasons other than clinical issues. With Yuna Kim, Kang Hye Jung, and Su Ae, and other celebrities’ changes in overall impression after wearing braces, the public began to get interested in having straight teeth. When I searched online and saw my friends and sister wearing braces, they go through some pain. There are individual differences, but most people have hard time adjusting to the braces, have to spend so much time visiting hospitals, once in two weeks, to see how their teeth are changing. They go through all these process and pain to get straight teeth.
Then, why do I call this fetish? It is because I see people who do not actually have clinical problems wearing braces, just to get straight teeth. They have to wear braces and get ulcers all over their mouths, have some kind of metals inside their mouth to get prettier. How is this different from African women wearing necklaces? Moreover, I see this phenomenon of fervent trend of wearing braces in line with plastic surgery. Most people think by wearing braces, they get their impressions changed without plastic surgery. In class, we discussed how far Koreans would go with experimenting with their faces if plastic surgery gets so much easier. One of the celebrities, Kang Hye Jung once on a TV show said she regrets wearing braces. She herself said her face changed so much, that she couldn’t get used to her new face. Even without painful plastic surgery, people can change their faces with braces. I see this wearing of braces as a beginning step of people starting to experiment with their faces. Experts say that more people will want braces in the future. I personally think that with the technological development came the specification of requirements for a beauty. With improved technology regarding this wearing of braces, now qualification for a beauty has been added: the straight teeth.