The Final Trimester [#10]

Getting psyched to meet the book baby. And thanks to a local store, you can now you can pre-order a signed and personalized copy.

Annyeonghaseyo!

It’s the calm before TED 2023, when a sea of humanity will descend upon the Vancouver Convention Center for five days of talks, performances and big ideas. I’m headed that way in my role as TED Talks Daily host and I’m eager to see an on-stage conversation with the CEO of TikTok, talks from Krista Tippett of On Being, Dr. Becky, the parent whisperer, and overall, to be introduced to crazy and/or inspiring new concepts. Also, the food and coffee are really good at TED.

This week while at the wheel, I tried to reach for my seven-year-old in the backseat, and my shoulder popped out of its socket! Thankfully my ER doc friend, Jenn, was able to rush over to relocate my shoulder (pop it back into place). I am traumatized and in a sling, but on the mend.

Various things are going on in the book process at this point. I’ll share a few:

• I’ve been writing opinion pieces related to body image, beauty culture and ways to think about it in this hypervisual, hyper digital moment that use the work for Flawless as a jumping off point.

• The publicists are pitching and setting up interviews with press. Today I spoke with an Italian reporter who ended the interview by asking me what my big Korean skincare takeaway is and, as I said on TikTok … it’s SUNSCREEN.

  

  @whoelise#kbeauty #skincare #skincareroutine #skincaretips #ajumma #koreanskincare #skingoals

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• Announced the tour to the wider community this week! I caught grief for not having Dallas as a tour stop, at least not yet. “Ummm Elise, do you remember when you LIVED in the DALLAS area,” one commenter wrote, after the tour card showed Austin and Houston stops, but not my former hometown. We are working on Dallas, it just will be later in June so that announcement will come once everything is squared.

• I also caught grief for not having a public event in my former home of DC, at least not yet. Excited to share with you first that Council of Korean Americans is going to host a DC event on June 21st. It will be free and open to the public, so DC squad, we can get together there!

• A reader in Phoenix who happens to be an administrator at Arizona State took it upon herself to host an event at ASU, so we’re adding Phoenix on June 13! Woo hoo!

Booklist is out with its review, and while I don’t have a Booklist subscription, I’m grateful they read it and got something out of it.

Finally, I’ve been engaging with Korean women in Korea. I wrote this book with their voices and their experiences in mind, and if there’s one north star in this long process of reporting, writing and publishing, it’s that I want each of us to feel less atomized and alone in our struggles with how we look and how much it seems to matter.

One of the arguments in FLAWLESS is that beauty pressures deserve more attention when we talk about policy issues like demographic and social change, because beauty work is labor, and gendered expectations are political, and multi-billion dollar industries thrive on selling bodily “improvement,” which is economic. Beauty is a tentpole of modern women’s experience everywhere, and globally relevant.

Finally, I’m really excited to share that Skylight Books here in LA is now taking pre-orders for signed, personalized copies of Flawless. The campaign ends May 18th, so you have to get your orders in. Make a note in the order comments who you want the book signed for or any other details and I’ll write you something special. :)

That’s it for this week’s update. What do you want to see more of, less of, or hear more dish about? What questions could I answer about what’s going on at this stage of book publishing, or about any of the ideas we’re trying to amplify in Flawless?

Thanks as always for subscribing and following along on this journey. Your interest, support and friendship is so meaningful to me. Share with any friends who might be interested!

Keep those joints in place,

E