Podcast Player Episode 059

Dr. Robin Stern: Welcome to The Gaslight Effect podcast. I'm Robin Stern, co-founder and associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and author of the bestselling book, The Gaslight Effect. I'm an educator and a psychoanalyst, but first and foremost, I'm a wife, a mother, a sister, aunt, and healer. And just like many of you, I was a victim of gaslighting. Please join me for each episode as I interview fascinating guests and explore the concept of gaslighting. You'll learn what it truly means to be gaslighted, how it feels, how to recognize it, and how to understand it, and ultimately how to get out of it.

Dr. Robin Stern: Before we begin, I want you to know that talking about gaslighting can bring up challenging and painful emotions. Give yourself permission to feel them. Some of you may wanna go more deeply with your emotions. While some of you may hold them more lightly, no matter what you're feeling, know that your emotions are a guide to your inner life. Your emotions are sacred and uniquely you respect and embrace them for they have information to give you. If you want to listen to other episodes of the Gaslight Effect Podcast, you can find them at robinstern.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for being here with me. Welcome everyone to this episode of the Gaslight Effect podcast. I'm really thrilled to have with me today, Elise Hu, who is a journalist, a podcaster, and an author, the book Flawless, please order it and read it. It's really important. And also the, um, the host of the TED Talks Daily, which is the flagship podcast of TED conferences and many other things. So, Elise, welcome. Thank you for being here, and please tell the audience about yourself.

Elise Hu: Sure. Thank you for having me, Robin. I'm delighted to be here with your listeners. Um, that is correct. I primarily identify as a journalist in terms of what I do, for my labor. Um, I was born in St. Louis, the daughter of Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants, and grew up both in St. Louis and then later in Dallas, Texas. I have been a journalist for all of my adult life. Um, most of my career I spent at NPR, where in 2015 I opened the networks first ever Northeast Asia Bureau. So I was in charge of covering North Korea, South Korea, and Japan. Nearly four years later, I repatriated to the United States and live now in Los Angeles. And around that time, COVID broke out. And so it was an a, a, a reckoning for all of us, and it gave me an opportunity to slow down a little bit and write what then became flawless. My book that came out in the spring of 2023.

Dr. Robin Stern: Elise, how did you come to be a journalist?

Elise Hu: I decided I wanted to be a reporter when I was in third grade.

Dr. Robin Stern: Oh, I love that. And this is

Elise Hu: A, tell us a testament. Yeah, I I actually, I have some questions about whether you should really be doing what you wanted to do when you were eight years old, or whether maybe that's not such a good idea, but I felt it was a true calling and it really married my passions for reading and current events and, and my natural curiosity. I was always the kid who was like peppering my mom with so many questions she told me to stop. So it, I couldn't imagine a better career and a more exciting life than to be able to ask people questions, often uncomfortable questions and get paid for it. And then later when I learned that you could be a foreign correspondent and get paid to like swan about the world, um, how exciting and how expansive. And so I wanted to do it when I was very young.

Elise Hu: It was all thanks to a program in my public school district called, or it was the talented and gifted program in my public school district that would send kids to a different campus one day of the week called the Center for Creative Learning. And at the Center for Creative Learning, they taught, uh, in the more sort of, I guess back then it was like the more innovative pedagogies, right? Like the new ways to teach kids. And we got to choose our classes, for example, or spend dedicated time on just paleontology. Or one semester we just spent the entire semester on crayfish or building a computer or the 1992 presidential primaries, and we would just do a lot of dedicated, focused learning. Um, it

Dr. Robin Stern: Sounds wonderful. Yeah.

Elise Hu: And there was one semester on broadcast news and everybody in the class was assigned a different role. You could be a camera operator, you could be a field reporter, you could be an anchor. And we learned the mechanics of actually putting together a newscast over the course of a semester and wound up doing it on like public access cable, uh, for the, at the end of the semester.

Dr. Robin Stern: It's like your school community and and local community. Yeah,

Elise Hu: Yeah. In, in St. Louis. So it really birthed my, it introduced me to the idea that you could be a reporter for a living, that you could do it on television, and then what happens be behind the scenes in order to do it. I mean, you had third graders who are kind of like punching up the different monitors as directors in the, in the control booth you had them operating cameras. It was very cool and very hands. And, but for that, I don't know if I would've gotten introduced to what I ended up doing for a living. So I'm very appreciative. I ended up going to Missouri, um, the University of Missouri Journalism School, which is the oldest and one of the, one of the finest journalism schools in America. Um, returning to Missouri for college after living several years in Texas in my teens.

Dr. Robin Stern: That's really, that's fantastic. And I, I hope that, um, our listeners will seek out those unusual, innovative, and progressive opportunities for their children too. Uh, you know, when you think about choosing your career early on, I think I chose mine as well. I used to sit my front step and people would, um, come and talk to me about their problems.

Elise Hu: Yeah, yeah. Well, I always say, you know, psychologists, counselors and journalists have a lot in common.

Dr. Robin Stern: Absolutely. Those tough questions, those tough questions that are sometimes uncomfortable.

Elise Hu: Yeah, yeah. But really trying to get to the root of understanding and, um, bridging bridge, helping people bridge their connection gaps too. So I think that's all really important and it's something that you and I share.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yes, definitely. And all in the pursuit of wellbeing, right. Better lives. So in that spirit, um, where does beauty fit into all of that, and how did you come to, to be focused on that and to write flawless?

Elise Hu: Yeah. I didn't really think I was, you know, I didn't really consider myself much of a feminist journalist or a woman, you know, a, a a writer on gender topics until I moved to Korea. And in the very early days, I was inundated with the beauty culture of South Korea. South Korea is probably the most, I describe it as the most looks obsessed placed on the planet. You

Dr. Robin Stern: Know? Did you know before you went or you just were

Elise Hu: I only knew that it was a time, this was 20 14, 20 15. It was a time in which Korean sheet masks, snails, serums, um, foot peels, pimple patches, those were all becoming in vogue all around the world. South Korea has now become the world's third largest exporter of skincare and cosmetics behind the US and France. And this is a country that punches way above its weight. Its population is only about 50 million. It can fit in the space between Los Angeles and California, or Los Angeles and San Francisco. So it's not a huge country. And yet the world's third largest exporter in cosmetics and skincare. I knew that k beauty was coming up at the time. I didn't realize until I really experienced it, how many pressures existed for just women within Korea to look and behave a certain way. There were a lot of gender norms, gender norms about femininity and performing femininity and womanhood that still remain pretty intractable in South Korea, even with the growth of, um, feminist causes and activism there on the ground. So I didn't ever feel my gender as forcefully as I did until I moved to South Korea.

Dr. Robin Stern: How did you experience those, um, messages coming at you? Were people talking to you about it? Oh

Elise Hu: Yeah. Strangers will just tell you. Strangers would be like, oh, you can get those freckles removed. Or, or like, Elise, I'd come back from America and, you know, somebody would say, Elise, you've gotten so dark and that's frowned upon, you know, 'cause you wanna have light skin so you don't look like you were poor, you know? 'cause there's this , there's this notion that goes back to the dynastic times that you wanna have lighter skin because that means that you've been indoors and not outside working the fields and the agrarian culture or in agrarian times. And so, um, yeah, they would make comments about my freckles, uh, after I had, I had two of my children in South Korea, and so there were lots of offers to shrink wrap me down, or reminders that I was a big size . And

Dr. Robin Stern: These were just, these were not your family or friends.

Elise Hu: Oh, no. Strangers. Yeah. You can walk up and down the street and like store storekeepers, especially if they sold larger sizes to Americans. They would just say like, big size, big size to try and lure you into the store .

Dr. Robin Stern: So, oh my

Elise Hu: Goodness. And South Korea, like, there's also structurally a lot of mechanisms to remind you that you need to look a certain way. For example, there's an entire chapter in flawless called Free Size isn't free. And what I mean by free size is clothes are sold in one size only, and they call it free size. So there isn't like size two or size eight. Free size is just a US size two or four. And so if you don't fit in the clothes, there's nothing for you in lots of stores. And, and it, and bigger folks would just have to order online or find other places or get their clothes made. I think it's gotten a lot better, you know, within the last 10 years there has been more push for more size inclusivity, but in general it was still very difficult. And so yeah, you, I was constantly made aware on that front of my shortcomings.

Dr. Robin Stern: And was that also happening at work? Would people at work make comments or did you feel more pressure to look a certain way to, to do things, to look a certain way?

Elise Hu: Well, that's the thing about South Korea being kind of this extreme beauty scape. It's an extreme beauty scape because your looks matter. But also on the flip side, there are all these modifications and tools and procedures that you can avail yourself with at a really accessible cost. And so it's not just that people kind of enforce or police your appearance, it's that there are routes that you can take to improve your appearance. And so the logic then becomes if this particular improvement or modification exists and you can buy it, then why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you avail yourself of this way to have lighter skin or remove your freckles or lose weight? And I really think that that's baked and see these economic ideas, right? That you have more economic power if you not only look a certain way, but perform working hard to look a certain way,

Dr. Robin Stern: Perform working hard to look a certain way. That's really interesting. So that, so what, so that people know that it matters?

Elise Hu: Yeah. So such that it is framed in a way in which, okay, head shots are required on resumes, for example. And this is not just for modeling or acting jobs, this is for accounting jobs. And before 2018, it was for government jobs, any job you would have to put a headshot on a resume. So you were judged by your appearance. Um, passport photos were photoshopped by default, kind of showing you what photos as

Dr. Robin Stern: The new technology like you

Elise Hu: Expected you to look like. Yeah, I mean, they would, they could do it by hand. Like, you know, these passport photo agencies would have a guy who actually photoshops you right in front of you. Or, you know, the, the photos, which is thanks to AI technology and other improvements, just use machine learning and figure out these are the traits that are important. We need to thin down the jaw and we need to smooth out the skin. And that's kind of universal. And they would do that to the images. And so, again, and again, trying to look better according to conventional norms was framed as a matter of personal responsibility. And when it's framed as a matter of personal responsibility, if you fail to improve how you look or fail to at least try, then you are seen as lazy or incapable. Now, these things actually shouldn't be, just to be clear, these things shouldn't be linked. How I look aesthetically should not have any bearing on whether I'm a hard worker or whether I have great character or whether I can do the job assigned to me or that I'm applying for. But in a culture in which lism, so appearance based biases in which lism reigns, then you are judged in all sorts of ways. Your character is getting judged based on your appearance. And so you're kind of locked into this system, this matrix in which your looks really matter, and then you should spend money in order to improve them.

Dr. Robin Stern: And, and of course, my question is, and if you don't, it means that somehow you failed your personal responsibility. And how, how do people feel about that? Like, what do you hear in your friend groups? What do you hear in your mom groups? What do you tell your children? I mean, it's really fascinating to, to have those things linked. If you, if you are a responsible person, you are getting rid of your freckles. Well, what if you like your freckles? Right? It's not okay.

Elise Hu: What a lot of women have said to me, especially young women in Korea who have grown up this way and feel like there's no other way out, is one of two things. One is, well, this is just the way things are. You know, things have always been this way. My mom told me this things were this way for her. My grandmother said this. It was like this for her. You know, women have to walk a very narrow tightrope, and this is what it means to just survive economically and do well in the dating market. Like, everybody cares about how you look. So what? So that's one way that it goes.

Dr. Robin Stern: So does that, does, is that aligned with how you raise your children? Or do you raise your children to care about their integrity and their boundaries and their, their honesty, but oh, by the way, this other stuff is important or is that lined up right alongside of integrity and honesty and all the values that, that I suppose you and I agree on,

Elise Hu: They're one and the same. I mean, I think they go together and it's because you are making a really, to step away from it and not participate in the beauty culture means you could lose out on jobs. Mm-hmm . You could be disconnected from your social circles. You could be like uninvited to parties or, um, bullied on the street or bullied at work. And we know this because the women who have chosen to opt out from beauty culture and cut off all their hair and wear, uh, gender neutral clothing and not wear makeup are constantly commented upon and constantly bullied. And then some have lost their positions or lost promotions as a result of not participating in the culture. So it's very difficult to sit out of the party. So as a parent, a lot of mothers and fathers are just frankly very practical about the way that pretty privilege operates.

Elise Hu: And instead of the United States where we're often telling our kids, oh, it doesn't matter how you look, it's your character that counts, but then having pretty privilege play a role mm-hmm . In Korea, it's kind of different in that they acknowledge there is this thing such as pretty privilege, and that's just the way it is. And so an extension of my maternal love is to make you get that eyelid surgery, or make you lose weight, or make you wear skirts or whatever the prevailing norm is of the day. It's just a pragmatic calculation that this is the way things are. We are not going to change it in our generation, and therefore just buck up, participate, change your face. And so in some ways it's more honest.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yes. It, I was gonna say, it sounds like there's less gaslighting right, about that because you're brought up to believe that this is important,

Elise Hu: But I it is draining all the same. Yes. And so, so much of my work and my advocacy now focuses on the idea that there are all these material benefits to being more conventionally pretty as defined by society or the society you're living in at the same time. Everything has a cost. And so you actually have to break apart the power that you receive from fitting in materially as a sort of economic power and split that from the existential energy and power that gets drained from you by having to stay on this hamster wheel of self-improvement, which is only in the form of aesthetic improvement. It is draining. And I think it separates us from one another. It atomizes us further in a society that's already facing a loneliness crisis or in some cases an epidemic.

Dr. Robin Stern: You know, we, it reminds me of something that we talk about at the Yale Center and emotional intelligence, um, called emotional labor where what you're feeling on the inside is very different than what you have to present on the outside. And it sounds like, um, not only is that actually physically true in, in Korea, but um, or in the way you're describing it. But that even if it's, even if you're not achieving the goal that you are setting out to do initially, that you're trying for something all the time, that may be different than the way you really feel. And then of course, that can lead to gaslighting because then you question all of that about yourself. Well, why am I thinking this if it's, um, really different than that? And, uh, and so emotional labor is exhausting,

Elise Hu: And it gives you this real illusion of control over how you looked, but you can never, at least in my case, I felt like you could never actually enjoy the fruits of that labor, that private labor to try and regiment your body or, um, smooth out your skin or whatever it is you're doing, right? Like you could never really enjoy the fruits of that labor because every compliment that I got about my appearance when I was like super skinny and starving myself in the late nineties was just a reminder of the pressure I felt to maintain it. So like, the more you are working for this kind of futile end, and the more you actually get affirmations of it, then the more you're reminded that you have to keep doing it . And that's, that is part of that exhausting cycle. And, and crucially like it robs from us life force and it might not be aligned with the deepest longings of our soul and therefore takes away from our, the potential to feel more wholehearted, to live a more fulfilled life and to be connected with one another.

Elise Hu: I talk a lot about, I think a lot of young people especially, but not even young people, like more elder millennials like me, are sort of like, gosh, you know, what do you do? What do we do about this? Do I get the Botox? Do I, you know, do I try and take the ozempic or whatever the hot thing is at the moment? And I say just like, first as a practical measure, just take a beat, see what you do, and sit in the discomfort of not getting the Botox. You know, and like seeing how it feels and whether it really takes anything away from you just to learn how to evolve with your body as it evolves. Because that's actually the harder thing to do. And I think, you know, a quick fix is always in, in order to relieve anxiety, can always relieve anxiety. Maybe in the short term in the moment, ,

Dr. Robin Stern: But you're still aging ,

Elise Hu: You're still aging. That's like never the fact, the fact that, you know, nature is dynamic and our bodies are constantly changing and constantly dynamic is actually something beautiful. And I don't know why we feel as though we all have to kind of magically stay somewhere looking around the age of 35 because, and I think that's just kind of like a toxic notion that we are sold by the beauty industry. Because I actually think it's really beautiful when I, I saw this really old, like this 11-year-old golden retriever yesterday, and she was just, I, I was moved, you know, because, you know, she looked like she had lived a life like a full life. And, um, I don't know why society doesn't afford humans the same kind of reverence. And I mean, I have some notions as to why, but it is kind of beautiful that we're constantly changing and, and, and our lives can become more expansive and we can become fuller human beings as we grow older. Um, but yeah, so there is no real accounting for just how much time and energy we spend pri spend over the course of a lifetime primping or plucking or dying our hair or dieting or whatever it is. But crucially, we have to remember that it is labor. It takes time and energy

Dr. Robin Stern: And to the, but to your other point, if you're not doing it, even if you came to the understanding that this is, this is really depleting my resources, I'm not able to work at my full potential 'cause I'm so distracted about with my pimples or my freckles.

Elise Hu: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Robin Stern: Um, and then do you sacrifice belonging?

Elise Hu: Well, that's what I was going to say. You absolutely sacrifice belonging because you're constantly looking over your shoulder, right? You're in this endless competition against filtered images of you yourself. You're in competition against, you know, the other people that you scroll on, on your Instagram feed. And that's the curse of beauty labor, right? Even if you are, and technology, like even if you're looking good, it feels hollow because you are robbing yourself of being accepted for who you really are.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah. And that's the gaslighting that the, the, that the, that the beautiful face, the um, lightest complexion, the narrow that that's what's most important, but it's actually not what sustains you over time.

Elise Hu: And we have to remember like what's so beautiful in all of biodiversity is difference, right? It's that like there's so much range between who humans are. We, there's so much range in nature and in animals, and yet we are, especially because through the algorithmic gaze, right? And all of the filters and what the machines are showing us, we are trying to rig the results of our bodies to look increasingly similar and more Cy Borgian and inhuman. And that's not what everybody's attracted to. Like we all have our own individual preferences and we, we should and celebrate and we should, should celebrate diversity and, and the wide range of who we are and how we look, because there is, there is somebody who likes that, you know, there is a preference. People all, we all have kind of very different preferences. And the more we sort of rig the game or the social platforms rig the game towards sameness, the more we're wiping out a wide pool of what others might find very attractive and compelling. So

Dr. Robin Stern: I imagine that as a mom, you're sharing this information with your three girls and how does that go? You know, you're, you're raising them in America, so it's very different than if you were still in Korea.

Elise Hu: In Korea, right, .

Dr. Robin Stern: Um, but what are they believing? Because I think that our listeners, especially our mom listeners or grandma listeners, will be very, really paying attention to what you have to say.

Elise Hu: I loved an interview that I did for the book that maybe later came out in a shorter piece in the Atlantic where it was a researcher, I think, and she talked about how the more you say to your girls, oh, looks don't matter, girls or boys, however they identify, um, oh, your looks don't matter. It's your character that counts. The more we say that, that's actually a really complicated form of gaslighting. Yes. Because you're telling kids that what they see out in the world where pretty people are rewarded and those considered ugly or unacceptable are not rewarded . That they're not seeing what they're seeing with their own eyes. . Um, and especially in this very visual culture where so many of the kids are growing up on TikTok or scrolling TikTok. And, and, and these platforms are largely engineered to show you content that's not even from your friends or people you follow, right? It's just whatever's trending or whatever's popular. And so you are constantly presented with images of what you're supposed to be looking like and trying to tell kids, oh, it's just your character that counts is a way of being, I don't know if it's, I, I suppose it is gaslighting, but it is, it's not the full picture

Dr. Robin Stern: , it's not the full picture. And it's, it's not the reality they're living every day. So that even though, so I think parents have a very hard job because those, those inner values, um, that kindness and honesty and authenticity is what we wanna foster, but it's not what the messages we're getting from the world,

Elise Hu: Right? And so to your question about how I handle it with my daughters, this sounds soic solipsistic, but what I try to handle first is myself. Like I try to reckon with my own hangups and my own baggage and my own beliefs, maybe wrongly held beliefs about beauty and how much it matters. Because I think with parenting, what I have learned, and I haven't been a parent that long, my oldest is only 12. And so, you know, I defer to those who have done it for 40 to 60 years. Um, but what I've learned is show don't tell that children really observe so much more of what they see from you and what you model for them than you even realize. And a really clear example of that is with my own mom, because my own mom would tell me things like, oh, you look great, you know, you look great at any size.

Elise Hu: But then I would see her weighing herself constantly. She kept a scale in the kitchen. In the kitchen, so like she would weigh herself after a meal. And I guess I just internalized that as normal. And to me, when, what the effect of that was that I became very sort of weight obsessed in my teen years. And , it's funny 'cause my mom actually told me the opposite. My mom told me that these things didn't matter, but she showed me something different, right? And so for me, what I try to model for my kids is actually less beauty labor or as little beauty, I mean almost no beauty labor sometimes because I don't want them to grow up with seeing their mother like spending a lot of time and energy this way about like putting on her face, if you will, and an outward self. And I don't want them to grow up seeing me in front of a mirror or puzzling over my appearance or questioning my appearance.

Elise Hu: I'm very careful about how I speak around my girls. Like we never make aesthetic judgments first. You know, I try to talk about girls and like their girlfriends in the same way that I would talk about boys. Like, oh, they're strong, they're clever, they're curious, whatever it is. So it is like very, I'm very focused because these are my politics and this is my issue on making sure that we de-emphasize aesthetics even in our like, individual home. Maybe it ripples outward, maybe it doesn't, but we constantly focus on your body is an instrument, not an ornament. And so even when you're trying on clothes with the kids, before I say, oh, that looks so cute on you, we always ask, how do you feel in it? Can you move? Can you jump? Can you do all your activities? And so it's really focused on what our bodies feel like, you know, what we feel like in our bodies, that kind of mindfulness, that kind of just being embodied first before we step outside of ourselves and try and like see or worry about how we are perceived no matter what.

Elise Hu: As they go through adolescence and as they learn subjectivity, they will end up seeing themselves as others do or like worried about their perceptions. But as much as possible, one of the antidotes to this beauty culture that we live in is to be embodied and to like really appreciate and know how we feel and have that autonomy and that extent that has ripple effects far beyond beauty culture, right? That also has ripple effects for women, you know, as they're dating and as they're at the risk of sexual assault and all these kind of, and as they have to make decisions about reproductive freedom. Like it's really important to be in our bodies. And so even at a very young age, I try and not in a preachy way, but just try and like remind them to think about it, right? Just to be conscious of how they're moving and how they're feeling.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah. So thank you for all of those really, um, wise words. And, uh, just to reinforce what you're saying, that modeling is the best kind of teaching as parents and I, I think a lot about the, the, um, what I used to call the car after event conversation that we would go to an event as a family and then what's the conversation in the car? And all too often when I was, when I was young, the conversation was about, oh, did you see cousin so and so didn't she look x, y, z or did you see cousin, whatever, she should lose a little bit of weight. And so I was very conscious of that when I became a parent myself. And I have a daughter who's 34 and a son who's 37. So I've done it a little bit longer than you. But, um, but in the same mindful way, if my kids were here, they would say, well, most of the time, um, I did it in a mindful way and they'd be right.

Dr. Robin Stern: But I would def consciously say, wasn't it so nice to to be with our cousins? Wasn't it? So wasn't it great to see how much they loved their whatever, their new home or that they, it was great to spend time together. I had really had a great conversation so that we focus on what happened in the interaction. I felt so comfortable in their home. To your point, well, how did it feel to you? What did you think about? And then to acknowledge that those messages about the way you look are going to come at you and that you can hold it lightly that you can, you don't have to say, no, it's terrible. I can't listen to this, but hold it lightly. Okay.

Elise Hu: Yeah. It's not that I think looks don't matter at all, and they shouldn't matter at all. I think lot like fashion is really fun, for example, it's a way to express yourself. A lot of makeup can be a lot of fun. I like, I celebrate some parts of beauty culture, like getting your hair washed at the salon or getting my nails done with my girls. Like there's a lot about beauty culture that has a lot of touch and nurturing embedded in it, and I really love that. And so I don't take that away or want to take that away from anyone. I just don't think in the sort of personality pie that it needs to take up that much of a, your pie . Like it doesn't need to be a huge chunk or a huge piece of who you are. Um, and so I'm just echoing what you're saying there. I'm yes, anding you.

Dr. Robin Stern: And getting back to, um, what we were saying a little bit earlier about technology, one of the things that I think is so scary about the influencer culture is, um, the, the messages that girls are getting, and I mean, their boys are getting as well, but I, I remember talking to a teenage girl who said, I didn't really know there was anything wrong with my hips until so and so who I was following was talking about a hip blip. I didn't know I had a hip blip. I didn't even, I never even heard of a hip blip. And then all of a sudden becoming self-conscious and turning your attention in a way that self-critical and judgy to parts of your body, rather than thinking about something else to talk to, think about the, the part of the pie that it's taking up. Like rather than thinking about that friendship, you're thinking about your hip lip, right?

Elise Hu: It is the creation of a problem in order to solve it. Right? And this is what I saw again and again in South Korea 10 years ago. And this is why I ended up writing the book, flawless. So this kind of goes to your original question. The thesis of flawless is that the future has already arrived, it's just not evenly distributed. And what I saw in South Korea was constantly this notion of problematizing a thing about your body by using some scientific haze, um, to define an ideal, if you kind of divided your phase into thirds, like you were folding a letter, the top part could be one, the middle part could be one, but the bottom part needs to be less than one. So one to one to less than one. And so the less than one part was supposed to be your chin, which is why, which then justified a bunch of surgeons to surgeons selling the idea v line surgery to thin out your jaw line. You know, there's a lot of jaw shaving procedures going on in South Korea, and it was all based on this specification,

Dr. Robin Stern: But surgery in in surgery there Yes.

Elise Hu: To thin, yeah. To make, to create a more streamlined, thinner, skinnier jaw. And it was all based on this specification, if you will, like a tech specification. And more and more we're seeing that culture of optimization that you see in technology, you know, as you talk about your gadget or your computer and the specifications, the specs that you can get with a gadget, gadget being applied to the face and being applied to the body. So, and then you see that kind of spread by TikTok influencers and the like, basically saying, oh, you don't wanna have a thigh gap or you wanna have this particular ratio, or you wanna be this to this, to this. And, um, again and again, that's an example of this notion that I talk about a lot, which is called the technological gaze. We're all familiar with the male gaze, which is how women were supposed to perform for a male perspective, right?

Elise Hu: The technological gaze is more insidious because it's an algorithmically driven perspective. It's the machine perspective that we are learning to internalize and optimize for and perform for, because our feeds are constantly showing us how we're supposed to look, what we're supposed to be acting like, the ratio of our faith, the ratio of our waist to hip, like that, the whole notion that there can be a correct human or a flawless human or a perfect human is broken. But what I'm here to talk about is that even trying to get there, even the pursuit of it will be incredibly costly, draining and exhausting to your soul.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yes. Yes. And to bring gas lighting into the mix, to undermine your own perception, looking in the mirror, you feel like you, I look good. And then to be told, no, you don't look good, is so deeply troubling and has the ripple effect of where else don't I know what I'm talking about? Where else am I seeing things that are not real, that, that only I'm seeing this and maybe I'm wrong. So that kind of inadvertent undermine, well intentional, um, telling you that this is reality and undermining your judgment about, and your perception of reality is so deeply troubling to me, which is why I'm so excited to to be with you and to hear what you have to say about it because you're giving so much to our listening audience and your words are so wise and, and new. It's a completely fresh perspective. And maybe you learned about it or you studied it internally when you were in Korea, but it is right here, right now in this country and all over the world.

Elise Hu: Absolutely. Korea has just a more concentrated example of the looks obsession and this technological gaze idea that exists everywhere in the developed world. Yes. And we all have to reckon with it, especially in this age of ozempic. And because there aren't just personal costs, there's also societal costs in that the more narrow our idea of beauty is, the wider the pool of ugly or unacceptable becomes. And that's incredibly marginalizing, incredibly marginalizing for anybody who can't fit in for all of us who might not be able to fit in. But then it's exhausting and alienating for anyone who can kind of fit in because you're constantly having to pay for or make interventions in

Dr. Robin Stern: Order to, and keep up, keep up. This is always the next best thing. Mm-hmm . Elise, thank you so much for, for being here with me. Thank you

Elise Hu: For having me. I've really enjoyed our conversation. I feel like I got a free therapy session, .

Dr. Robin Stern: Well, I hope it was a good one. I hope it was helpful. I think that everyone really benefited from, I, I know I learned quite a bit. And thank you for sharing your personal experience and your wisdom, and please tell people where they can find you.

Elise Hu: Absolutely. Um, you can find links to all the places you can find me at my website, Elise hugh, E-L-I-S-E-H u.com.

Dr. Robin Stern: Thank you so much, Elise. I look forward to another time we can have a conversation and I, I really have enjoyed meeting you and being with you and to our listeners, what a treat, what a treat, and how important this conversation is.

Elise Hu: Thank you.

Dr. Robin Stern: Thank you so much. Thanks for joining me for today's episode. I hope you found it helpful and meaningful. If you want to listen to other episodes of The Gaslight Effect podcast, you can find them at robinstern.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. And please leave a rating and a review. I also invite you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. This podcast is produced by Mel Yellen, Mike Lens, and me. All of my work is supported by Susan Petitt Marcus Estevez and Omaginarium, also by Sally McCarton and Jackie Daniels. I'm so grateful to have many people supporting me and especially grateful for all of you, my listeners.