In East Asia, men’s skincare and beauty regimes are complex. Some established cosmetic brands—Laneige, for example—have developed a complete line of products exclusively for Asian men. Laneige Homme’s collection includes moisturizers, oil-control emulsions, sun block, and anti-ageing cream, alongside some combination eye and face cream targeting the busy modern man.

Laneige seems to make these investments because Asian male consumption of cosmetics has drastically increasing. Chung Yong-Hyen, a thirty-five-year-old marketer in public relations from Hong Kong, has a daily morning ritual of five skin care products before heading off to work. He also visits a spa once or twice a month and spends around $500 on various cosmetic products “to maintain and take care of” himself.

Contemporary male beauty standards highlight the combination of traditional Chinese soft masculinity and the Western metrosexuality. Anthony Fung, professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, notes that the androgyny is nothing new in Chinese aesthetics. “During China’s Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911), men were depicted in paintings as ethereal, feminine creatures, he says. “That refined ideal is best found in the Chinese classic novel, The Dream of the Red Chamber, in which one of the main characters, Jia Baoyu, applies makeup and writes prose in his study instead of battling enemies. And he gets the girl!”

Asian male beauty echoes the Western metrosexual phenomenon through the image of kkominam, meaning “flower boy”. The term originates from the Japanese comic industry: when the pretty boys—with their typical long legs, slim feminine faces, long and/or wavy hair, and sweet smiles—appear in a comic, the background is almost always filled with flowery patterns.

These flower boys who used to appear only in Japanese fantasy comics has been brought to life thanks to K-pop. In the book “Korean Masculinity and Transnational Consumption: Yosnama, Rain, Oldboy, K-pop Idols”, author Sun Jung suggests that K-pop has profited from producing and selling the flower boys’ standardized beauty to the public. K-pop flower boys appear on stage, on screen, and even on cosmetic surgery advertisements in subways.

This new version of handsome requires more than just powdering up faces. Idealistic images in the media control mindsets and drive them to pursue the same look through plastic surgery. Kang Jang-seok, who runs a plastic surgery clinic in Gangnam district, Seoul, said that most patients in their 20s are very specific about how they want to change their faces. In most cases, patients bring a photo of a specific star they want to resemble.

Dr. Park Sang-hoon, head of a plastic surgery hospital in Seoul, said that the obsession for flower boy beauty standards makes up 90 percent of Asian men potential patients because they are not born with those types of features naturally. “Men consider their noses as a symbol of sexuality. So they like higher nose bones to look more attractive like Westerners,” he said. A fairer skin tone and smoother skin is another popular procedure.

It is no longer shameful for men to openly pursue a new, enhanced look as society has become more accepting. This attitude change among ordinary people is also attributed by many to the influence of K-pop stars, “scrambling to compete with the digital technology that mercilessly exposes not only their physical imperfections but also any attempts to remedy them”.

“Wide-screen and high-definition TV put pressure on them to look good in close-ups,” Rando Kim, a professor of consumer science at Seoul National University, explains. “And with the Internet, where people like to post ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures, they can no longer hide it. So they go public, often talking proudly about it on TV.”