PHOTOGRAPHY
Step into a coin-op photo booth, and what the camera sees - like it or not - is pretty much what you get. Unless you're in South Korea, where the latest photo-strip machines offer mall rats beauty-enhancing options, from glamour lighting to virtual plastic surgery.
Teenage girls are the biggest market. One popular booth, Adlib of Wind, bathes them in ethereal light and caresses them with a hair-blowing breeze. But that's kid stuff compared with the digitized Beauty Plus booth. Customers can trim jawlines, puff up lips, eliminate blemishes, and give themselves Western-style eyelids (the most popular real plastic surgery procedure in Seoul). Choose a cartoon background, add stars or hearts, and - voil� - a whole sheet of photo stickers portraying the Stepford anime version of you.
For many, this is practice for real surgery. In South Korea, 13 percent of the population has work done, compared with 3 percent of Americans. Korean teens go under the knife the way that Americans get their ears pierced: with a shrug.
MUST READ
Flash Face-Lift
The Broadband Terror Effect
Fox TV's 24 : Believe It or Not
Beijing, We Have Liftoff
5 PERCENT
One Zap, and Your Computer Is Dead
A New Kind of Cool
The Edible Patent Boom
People
Jargon Watch
Extremists of the World, Unite
