Ch’oe Yun’s Mannequin is a novel that reflects on the meaning of beauty and its many facets of existence. The beauty of the main character, Jini, is captured through a carefree imagination that describes it as “the music of the wind,” or something that can’t be described in words. Through the beauty that penetrates and captivates us in fleeting moments, the novel leads us to critically reflect on the question of what true beauty is in a world where people are captivated by the beauty of advertising models in a flood of new products. In that respect, Mannequin, as the title implies, is a sad allegory on a capitalistic society in which a woman’s body, artificial and standardized, becomes a product.
