When Neoliberalism and Patriarchy Conspire: Plastic Surgery in the South Korean Reality Television Show Let Me In

Portraying plastic surgery as a tool for life transformation, the South Korean reality television show Let Me In attests to the media’s perpetuation of the neoliberal ethos that treats the human body as capital. My presentation explores how the show's representation of plastic surgery operates within the symbiotic institutions of patriarchy and capitalism. In so doing, I pay particular attention to how Its treatment of a transgender contestant, seen through the performative practice of plastic surgery, is symptomatic of South Korea’s societal conflation of the definitions of queerness as nonnormativity and as gender identity.